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Unburned Bullseye?


carexpert

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Ok, so I just got back from a 3 hr practice session at the range, shooting my K38 with 148gr Zero HBWC, 2.8 grains of Bullseye. When I emptied my spent brass (about 130 rounds) onto the bench I noticed quite a bit of Bullseye "flakes". How much is too much, they all went bang and held respectable groups, but can't help wondering about the unburned powder, I never noticed this with my .45 brass. Any thoughts??

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Ok, so I just got back from a 3 hr practice session at the range, shooting my K38 with 148gr Zero HBWC, 2.8 grains of Bullseye. When I emptied my spent brass (about 130 rounds) onto the bench I noticed quite a bit of Bullseye "flakes". How much is too much, they all went bang and held respectable groups, but can't help wondering about the unburned powder, I never noticed this with my .45 brass. Any thoughts??

You are a few decimal of a grain bellow what Alliant recommends as their starting load for that weight of bullet. Unburnt powder flakes are very typical with light loads.

If you want to reduce or even eliminate these unburnt flakes you will need to bump up your charge a bit but, if you like the light felt recoil and the accuracy is acceptable, you might consider continuing to shoot this load.

The newer recipe of Bullseye is much cleaner than what it was some years ago. If you shoot at about the middle point of what their load data recommends, this powder burns much cleaner than others.

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148gr Zero HBWC, 2.8 grains of Bullseye. When I emptied my spent brass (about 130 rounds) onto the bench I noticed quite a bit of Bullseye "flakes".

Pretty normal. Nothing wrong with your load. It's a very traditional bullseye load usually with swaged HBWC's, excellent accuracy and light recoil.

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My standard 38 special load for many years was 2.5 gr of Bullseye with a swaged 148 gr HBWC, then I switched over to 3.1 gr of WW231, I shot a lot of PPC matches with that load of 231, it was common to see a few flakes of unburned powder on either load, but both were excellent performers.

These days I load 158 gr RN with Trail Boss for Cowboy shooting, I can't think what the exact load is, but I really like the Trail Boss since a double charge of Trail Boss completely fills the 38 case to the rim, hard to miss, and it meters beautifully! It does require a crimp for good ignition, but with a crimp it is extremely consistent.

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