237 PF WOW

[mscott]

My standard major load has never been quite right in my Mech Tech carbine, so I did some experimenting. I have plenty of Hodgdon Longshot, so why not try it out. Hodgdon says my loading range is 6.5-8.0 grains, but with my past experience I know to be careful with Longshot. I loaded 6, 6.5, and 7 grain loads at 1.125 OAL. The 6.5gr load averaged 1,320fps with a spread of about 20 fps. Accuracy was plenty good at 1.5-2" for 5 shots at 50 yards with a red dot. The Mech Tech even seemed more like a rifle than just a little carbine. Recoil wasn't much to talk about, but a little more than my standard load. I also checked the chrono with my Limited gun to make sure it was reading correctly. I've had very similar experiences with Longshot in a 357sig. I'm under the starting load as far as powder weight goes, but over max load's velocity.

I'm a little hesitant to run this load for very long with the fear of my cases giving out. Anyone ever push .40 brass that much? I'm thinking to load them once and then scrap them, but wonder if even 1 time is a good idea. I didn't see any scary signs on the brass. Primers were barely starting to crater and flatten on the edges with the 7gr load.

[Justsomeguy]

I also use a load of 7grns of Longshot in my 40 pistol loads with 180grn bullets. The beauty of Longshot is it give good velocities without high pressure peaks. I think that actually we will get longer case life with Longshot than with say... TiteGroup or some of the other quicker burning high pressure powders. The reason you are getting such good velocities in the carbine is the barrel length. Longshot being a somewhat slower burning powder is taking full advantage of the barrel length. I get about 1100fps in a 4.5 inch barrel XDm with a Zero HP and 7grns of Longshot. That drops off to 1059 with a 4" Service model XD however. Accuracy was very good with both pistols and I have continued to experiment with Longshot with a variety of bullets with good results. In fact, with a Berry 180grn plated HP it will give 930.5fps average for 20 shots from a 3.5" barrel XD SUBCOMPACT... making major of 167.5 power factor. Not bad eh! Making major with a subcompact with no pressure problems. It would have easily surpassed this with the Zero 180HP's as they were going a bit more rapidly across the board with the same load than the Berry bullets were. I just didnt bring the XDsub with me the day I chrono'ed those Zero loads.