.40 S&W reloading with unique

[cygnus x-1]

Ok, I have posted before about stuff and gotten all manner of responses. Just looking for some help on this one. I was recently reloading some .40 for my wifes sig. I was going to use unique and the actual weight for the projectile is 165gr copper jacketed. When I measured the powder drop it was correct in weight but, it almost filled the whole brass casing. Is this normal with unique. And no I did not make any rounds with this.

 

[Larry Legend]

How many grains of powder?

 

[NavelOfficer]

The maximum charge of Unique (Speer 13: 7.2g) fills a 40 S&W to about 1/4" from the mouth in my test measurement.
In comparison, 7.2g Clays about 1/8".
Trail Boss is overflowing the 40 S&W case by about 1.2g (iow, 6.0 grains fills it to the brim).

 

[MmkShooter]

Trail Boss from what I've seen is a very light powder. I think it is 9 oz in a 1 pound container so I would think it would overflow a case at that amount.

I'm loading 40 S&W right now using Hogdon Universal at 5.1 gr and it's about 2/3 up the case.

 

[BostonBullit]

My 40 SW loads are "powder puffs" in an attempt to A)take it easy on my hands and B)get my sight picture back faster for IPSC type stuffs so I'm running 3.5 grains of Hodgden Titegroup under a 180gr XTP/HAP. I can get 3 throws into a case and have around 1/8" left before overflowing. I know this because I wanted to SEE what a double charge looked like and when I adjust the metering I like to run 10 throws that I dump back into the hopper before checking weight and to save time I'll fully cycle the powder drop station without engaging the indexing pawls before pulling the shell and dumping the powder....I can run 3 before I have to empty it

very soft shooting load BTW, I need to chrono it to make sure it's making power factor out of my USP.

 

[NavelOfficer]

Of course, I'm not implying that there is any published load data for 40 S&W with Trail Boss; I just used it as a comparison.