Powder Selection for 9mm-38/357-45

I used 700x for 9mm, 38sp, and 40S&W for a long time. It works great in all of them. So much so that I ended up buying and using two 12 pound kegs of it. The only issue I had was with an M&P9. The 700x was burning too fast for it to cycle the gun right. Power pistol works excellent in that gun. I use HP38 in 45acp and 380. I tried unique but it meters terribly. I had an 8 pound jug of red dot that I got on sale cheap a long time ago and started using it in 38sp and I'm happy with that. I use imr 4227 in 357 mag and 44 mag.
 
I just picked up some CFE pistol to try in .45. Been using titegroup for 9 so I might do some of each and compare.
 
I've reloaded thousands of 45 rounds with w231 and have good success. Just started loading for 9mm and shot my first 50 rounds of 147gr copper plated and they were great with I think 3.5gr of w231. I also bought dies for 38/357 and picked up a jug of w296 that I need to try for the 357.


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I know this is an old tread, but appears to have new posts. Ive been using both Win 231 and CFE Pistol. I've loaded lots of 9, 10, 40 and 45 auto pistol rounds with CFE Pistol and it works perfectly. The other day, I got a used lee loader, for 38/357 and wanted to try the manual loading process (meaning without a press). I didn't have any .38 or 357 suitable bullets. I got to thinking that I had 115G jacketed 9mm bullets and after the math, it seems were only about .003" smaller than optimal for 38 Special. So I loaded up 6 rounds using the lee loader and 5gr of CFE pistol, which I knew would be a tad light, but that load worked well for my 9mm sensing the larger case volume would not be a huge down side. Additionally, I have a powder measure which measures exactly 5 gr of CFE Pistol. Because the Lee Loader is a pocket portable unit, I wanted to be able to do this without the use of a scale or other "technology" if I needed to. I did cheat and used my caliper to measure OAL, but could do this without the caliper, and simply have the bullet fit just short of the cylinder length. All six fired fine, at the 7yd target line, hit POA. Are they match grade? No but I wanted to see if I could load under the handicap of not having all my equipment. As noted they were a bit of a "power puff" round, but for a proof of concept CFE pistol worked fine.

Now to what I wanted to point out. Hogdon has 8 or more 357 mag loads on their site for CFE pistol covering a variety of bullet weights. If you compare it to others mentioned here, like 231 or Universal and Trailboss, CFE leads the velocity rating in both lowest and highest recommended powder weights. So I would not worry about getting "Magnum Performance" as it will deliver. My observation is CFE Pistol, makes a good powder choice for a number of pistol applications. One note is, it's pretty sooty when loaded at the low end but that's not unique to CFE Pistol. Next step is to get the right bullets and load some 38 Sp and 357 mag rounds with CFE Pistol at appropriate powder weights.
 
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