How Little Powder in this Case
I am trying to down load a 40 cal so it is more comfortable for my wife and kids to shoot. Right now I am at .2 grains below the recommended starting load for the bullet weight that I am using. Is there a powder charge or percentage of the case that is not recommended to go under? It seems that if your case does not have much powder there is more room for combustion. What is the effect on the accuracy? I understand that at some point the bullet will tumble and that is not a good thing but is it OK to down load until that happens? Thanks in advance for your help.
Jim
Jim
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Questions? Do you have a Charge Table? Are the Loads listed Max Charge?
What powder are you using? What Bullet Weight?
Fast burning powders leave lots of case room. Thats not a problem.
Charge tables that say max load, you ALWAYS start 10% under for that weight bullet.(I often go even less)
As for a lesser charge affecting accuracy just remember that target and match is always a lighter charge.
SOLD MY COW SO I DON'T NEED YOUR BULL [;)]0 -
If you are using this in a semi-auto, you will usually reach a point where the pistol will not fuction. You can replace the recoil spring with a lighter one and extend the functionality with lighter loads. You need to be careful that you don't stick a bullet in the barrel with very light loads. 0 -
Don't Go to low, as I am sure you are aware of the chamber pressure increasing very rapidly. and that would not be a good thing!
To little is as dangerous as to much.
Just my 2 cents
NRA Life Endowment Member0 -
PS. most important as I have seen with below recomended loads.
Do Not crimp your bullets. and belive it or not, that can make a big Diff. in chamber pressure.
NRA Life Endowment Member0 -
Because of the short barrel length, this is not always practical, but possibly you can switch to a slightly slower burning powder for a marginal improvement. The barrier you will encounter at some point is, as Peary noted, insufficient energy to function the action without modifications which may prevent you from using more powerful loadings.
On the issue of secondary detonation (or secondary explosion effect - "SEE"), that is a very rare phenomenom and only encountered in voluminous cases using very light loads of slow burning powder (e.g., IMR 4831 in a .30-06 or larger case). Definitely not an issue with the .40 S&W with its relatively small capacity. The worst you would see would be erratic ignition affecting accuracy. Well, unless you loaded so low there was insufficient energy to get the bullet out of the barrel, but you'd have action malfunctions long before that happened.0 -
Thanks for your input Iconoclast
FrancF had me scratching my head over getting higher pressure on lighter loads. I load i.e. 38 Spl 110 gr speer with anywhere from 3.8 up to 4.4 gr of bullseye and 148 gr wc anywhere from 2.8 to 3.2 gr of bulleye I couldn't see anyway my chamber pressures would be higher with a lighter loads. All I could think of was WTF is he talking about.
Didn't occur it was medium case rifle.
SOLD MY COW SO I DON'T NEED YOUR BULL [;)]0 -
If you are reducing charges to the point where you need a lighter recoil springs, chances are good, you will also have to change the hammer spring. 0 -
What I was trying to say Was, if you go to low on the powder charge
or well below the recomended start. It could be dangerous. Ther is a
mention in one of the older Lyman Reload books.
I my have miss quoted the book but that was how I under stood it.
Like the gas can Example. (I know this is extream but the principal is the same) A 1 gallon gas can 1/4 full is more explosive than one that is full. Beacuse of the lack of oxygen in the full can.
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NRA Life Endowment Member0 -
What FrancF was refering to is about right. Has to do with burning rates. With a light load you need to use a filler such as cornmeal over the powder to keep it in a column over the primer. With a small charge of powder in a case and without a filler, you can get ignition over the top of the charge. What this does is ignite more of the charge and increases the pressure as it causes the powder to burn faster. In a handgun it could be very noticable because they are carried with the muzzle down. This would cause the powder to be up against the bullet with a space between the primer and the powder. When you raise the muzzle the powder would fall back towards the primer and be on a slope. With ignition of the primer you would ignite the slope area which would be more surface than if the powder was in a column up against the primer. With an extremely low charge you could also get a secondary ignition which would be caused by the primer pressure moving the bullet before the powder ignites. This could lodge the bullet at the rifling before the powder ignited, when the powder ignites and with the bullet at the rifling even a small charge could build up pressure faster than it could be relieved by getting the bullet down the barrel. Might sound sort of strange to some people, but it all boils down to the fact that powder burns it does not explode and if you change the burn rate by igniting it in a different way it can cause serious problems.
Kenneth G. Morgan0 -
Please err on the side of caution: by all means take your wife & kids along to shoot & teach them safe gun handling skills, but don't risk their health & your family's happiness by screwing around with untested, inappropriate hand loads for firearms.
.40 S&W is a particularly dangerous round to be "experimenting" with! If you're handloading ammo for a particular weapon just to make that weapon comfortable for a shooter, who otherwise has trouble with it's recoil, CHANGE THE WEAPON until the shooter is ready to handle "safe" loads in it.
There's a wide selection of semi's in .40 S&W & each one is different regarding felt recoil. The shorter barreled, polymer frame models come to mind as being harder to tame. If you were to use a heavier frame, longer barrel model they'll have much less difficulty.0 -
FranF, road lizard and spclark:
Your advice is well taken, but S.E.E. was never an issue in handgun rounds. It is not a repeatable phenonmenon, i.e., the same load might have been used many times before it occurred. When the NRA did a study of it, their conclusion was that yes, it could occur, but not predictably.
I've seen two theories advanced for it's cause: (a) there is so much empty space in the case that before the projectile clears the neck, the propellant gases themselves ignite or (b) the force of the primer scatters and fractures the powder granules, radically altering the pressure curve.
road lizard, the use of cream of wheat, kapok and similar fillers was advocated for the purpose you described for many years. I have read in the last 15 - 20 years that this itself can be a dangerous practice if the filler material fuses / acts as a plug.
I've never had any personal experience with S.E.E. or the use of fillers in smokeless loads. I cannot offer any insight . . . nor do I advocate any position. But in all my years of reloading and reading on the subject, I've never heard of any report involving handgun cartridges or the comparatively fast powders used for this type of ammunition. There may well be other safety issues with loading below recommended levels in handgun ammo. Just because I'm not aware of them for sure is no guarantee they do not exist. All I'm doing here is reporting the data of which I'm aware.0 -
Thank you all for your responses. I have been out of town and could not respond until now.
Iconoclast, as always your opinion is greatly appreciated. You have help to clear the fog. Keep up the good work!
Spclark, I agree completely that is why I was asking here and then testing would be done by me until I felt it was safe for my family. I do feel that part of the fun of reloading is working a load for a certain weapon that fits a certain purpose.
FrancF, very interesting comments it really gives me something to think about. If not with pistols then defiantly with my '06 reloads.
22WRF, I am using 175 grain SWC with 3.8 grains of Winchester 231. The minimum per Speer and Winchester reloading manuals is 4.0 so I was working down 0.1 grains at a time. Once I got 0.2 grains below recommended I started this thread just to be safe and understand the mechanics.
Thanks again,
Jim0
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