spacecoast
New member
Back in January I posted that I had found a really old can of Alliant 2400 that appeared to be in good shape despite the obvious age of the can, which looked to be post-WWII, maybe as "young" as the mid-1950s. I'm not advocating that anyone else should make the same decision, but since the powder looked to be in such good shape, and still smelled sweet, I decided to load up a dozen rounds and see if it would still shoot.
Alliant doesn't offer nearly as much information as Hodgdon, so I looked on various reloading sites for lowest level .357 loads I could find. I finally found a .38 sp +P charge for a 158 grain bullet that called for ~8 grains under a 158 grain JHP to yield around 920 fps. Alliant said that 14.6 grains would yield 1265 fps, so I went in between and used 9.0 grains under a 158 gr. plated Berry's bullet.
To be extra safe, I used my very stout N-frame S&W 28-2 to shoot these rounds. Happily, they shot just fine and I checked after each round to make sure I could find the bullet strike on the target. Accuracy was very good at 25 yards and recoil as as expected (pretty tame in the large gun). Like other light loads, there were some unburned powder grains that I noticed after bringing the gun down.
My next use of this powder will be some "standard" 158 gr. JHP loads with around 14.5 grains of powder. I've transferred it to Tupperware for dipping and the can now joins my collectibles.
Will standard primers do the job or should I go to magnum primers such as are recommended for H110?
Alliant doesn't offer nearly as much information as Hodgdon, so I looked on various reloading sites for lowest level .357 loads I could find. I finally found a .38 sp +P charge for a 158 grain bullet that called for ~8 grains under a 158 grain JHP to yield around 920 fps. Alliant said that 14.6 grains would yield 1265 fps, so I went in between and used 9.0 grains under a 158 gr. plated Berry's bullet.
To be extra safe, I used my very stout N-frame S&W 28-2 to shoot these rounds. Happily, they shot just fine and I checked after each round to make sure I could find the bullet strike on the target. Accuracy was very good at 25 yards and recoil as as expected (pretty tame in the large gun). Like other light loads, there were some unburned powder grains that I noticed after bringing the gun down.
My next use of this powder will be some "standard" 158 gr. JHP loads with around 14.5 grains of powder. I've transferred it to Tupperware for dipping and the can now joins my collectibles.
Will standard primers do the job or should I go to magnum primers such as are recommended for H110?
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