Cleanest 9mm powder?

[DW357]

Is anyone aware of a true clean powder burning comparison? Most of what I've read seem to be subjective judgments. for example has anyone loaded 100 rounds of different powders with similar ballistic speeds and then photographed a clean gun after using each of the groups of ammo?

Good question. Sounds like a great experiment for someone to try...

 

[Duxprep]

I've never tried WST but when I was at a steel plate shoot in CT last month, there were a few USPSA shooters there and this guy was using 147 gr blue bullets with 2.7 gr? of WST if I heard him correctly. WOW, he was blazing fast in shooting down the plates. He was using a glock and it looked like he was shooting a 22. There was basically zero recoil which allowed him to transition very fast. He wouldn't tell me what they were chronoed at, but my guess is that they were definitely below power factor (which didn't matter as they weren't chronoing loads at this steel plate shoot). He had no issues beating guys with fancy open pistols with optics.

Anyway, didn't mean to derail the thread. Just wanted to note my observations of WST.

Are you sure it wasn't WSF? According to guys on Brian Enos' forum that's a powder I see as widely used for 9mm. I use WST for 45acp not for 9mm

 

[bill o]

Are you sure it wasn't WSF? According to guys on Brian Enos' forum that's a powder I see as widely used for 9mm. I use WST for 45acp not for 9mm

For a very soft load with a heavy bullet, it's more likely he used fast WST and not the slower WSF.

 

[DW357]

No it was definitely WST from what he told me.

 

[peterthefish]

Is anyone aware of a true clean powder burning comparison? Most of what I've read seem to be subjective judgments. for example has anyone loaded 100 rounds of different powders with similar ballistic speeds and then photographed a clean gun after using each of the groups of ammo?

The problem with a comparison is that cleanliness of burn is closely related to how completely the powder charge burns. That depends on bullet weight, charge weight, etc... A light charge of a slow powder under a light bullet all will generally be dirtier than a max charge of a fast powder under a heavy bullet.

Using the fastest powder that reaches the minimum required velocity should give you a relatively complete and thus clean burn.