Du Pont PB Shotgun Powder in Pistols?

[powwowell]

I was gifted an 8-ounce metal can of Du Pont PB powder, by a former shotgun reloader. It has always been stored indoors. Maybe not always in an air-conditioned environment?

I have read that PB powder was also used for handgun re-loading. I would like to try it in calibers that I re-load for. I'm not having much luck in finding data for it!

Any suggestion for 115 grain plated bullets in 9mm? 158 grain plated bullets for .38 Special/.357 mag? How about 200 grain plated bullets in .45ACP?

Thanks,
Larry

 

[dave33]

IMR bought the powder line from dupont which was in tern bought by Hodgon. Hodgon still has PB data on its reloading data site.

 

[dave33]

I’ve used PB before years ago but don’t remember much about it. It seemed like it produced good accuracy but I had to go over max load data to make power factor as I was shooting a lot of competitions back then.

 

[Toprudder]

I tried PB in 45acp. It worked with large primers, but the velocity was MUCH lower with small primers.

In 9mm, I used Xtreme 115 plated bullets, but the load data that I found had the max charge listed at 3.7gn, which wasn't enough to cycle the gun.

In 40, I had better luck. I used plated 155 bullets with a charge of 5.8, velocity of 1023 from a 4" barrel. I used up all the PB powder with this load.

 

[Toprudder]

How about 200 grain plated bullets in .45ACP?

I tried Xtreme 200 RN plated, seated to 1.220", 5.8gn, and saw 668 fps from a 4.5" barrel. I also tried 200 plated SWC bullets, seated to 1.235", 5.5gn, Win large primers, 664 fps.

I also tried different primers to see how much the velocity varied. All of the following were Xtreme 200 plated SWC bullets, 5.4gn charge.

Win small primer: 554 fps.
Win small magnum: 631 fps.
Win large primer: 652 fps.
CCI 500 small primer: 587 fps.

These were very low velocity loads for 45acp, but my gun seemed to like them. (Witness full sized steel frame, 4.5" barrel). I did these tests back in my early days of reloading, when I was extremely hesitant to step outside published load data. Knowing what I know now, I would have tried slightly higher charges for the 45 and 9mm. But, START LOW AND WORK UP.

This was also the first powder where I saw a huge difference between small and large primers in 45acp. I've found a few others that had even larger variations, as much as 200fps. Due to this experiment, I decided that I would always start a new load using large primers. If I needed to use small primers, I would use either small magnum primers, or small rifle primers, as they came close to the performance with large primers.