Favorite 9mm Powder

[M109R]

I have tried most of the popular powders and would use S1K if it did not very so much from lot to lot. I have finally decided to use Bullseye.

Edited May 27, 2012 by M109R

[gary2232]

Well I am, new hand loader but I have had good luck with Win 231 with Bear Creek lead moly bullets.

[njl]

I use Universal. It's recommended by Precision for their moly coated bullets. I stayed with it and loaded Rainier plated and Bear Creek moly as well. According to Hodgedon data it only makes PF reliably (with lead or moly) with a 124 grain bullet so that's all I've loaded.

How's the smoke? I like Universal for jacketed, but when I tried it with BBI's moly coated lead, the smoke was horrible, both in amount and smell.

[Sin-ster]

Another vote for N320.

And it won't yellow/melt your hopper (unless you leave it in there indefinitely) or eventually erode your breach face like some other nitro-heavy powders out there.

A caveat-- when people say "clean", they mean "clean burning". You get black stuff still of course, but you can wipe it off with a dry patch/cloth. Run your fingers over a dirty gun and they come up black-- not yellow and sticky like a lot of other options out there.

Another reason that I love it is the consistency-- lot to lot and across a broad range of temperature conditions. I tested at 31 degrees and 95 degrees at the same location this year (South Mississippi) and saw no significant changes in velocity, using the exact same load otherwise. It's more expensive for sure-- but remember that the powder is the least expensive component in the lot. If you wanna save money (and assuming you're getting free brass), look at switching projectiles.

[S391]

I have had great results with both 124gr and 147gr 9mm loads using WSF.

[Nimitz]

Ok , so I have to ask ... The title of this post is "... Loads for USPSA competition" but the poster says he doesn't care about how snappy they are just tight groups. Not sure why you'd focus on tite grouping in USPSA? Bullseye, sure but in practical pistol shooting speed and accuracy are key so finding a soft shooting load to help with recoil management seems to be to be one of the reasons to reload ... Among others... The A zone is pretty big after all, compared to what a bullseye shooter needs to worry about .... BWDIK

[Tul9033]

I found the same thing, while N320 has TG beat in consistency; SD and ES were very tight and accuracy was acceptable. However, TG was more accurate, cheaper, and easy to find. I wanted N320 to be cleaner, but I did not notice a discernible difference against TG.

I also played around with VV N320 but the accuracy was never as good as what I can achieve with TG.