Wednesday, March 28, 2018
Revisiting 2.7 Grains Of Bullseye
One of the first reloading articles I remember reading is Blowing Up With 2.7, by Col. Jeff Cooper, about 1980. The thought was that the standard load of Bullseye might occasionally detonate behind a .38 wadcutter load and blow up your revolver. Bullseye is a dense powder, and there is a lot of power in a little pile of the flakes. The issue of possible detonations still comes up, and pistols do sometimes blow up with handloads. Today I stumbled across an article in a 1982 American Handgunner magazine that addresses the issue, and it pretty well settles it for me. Read the article, pay attention to your quality control when loading, and you will probably never have your gun blow up in your hands. I never knew if light loads of Bullseye would actually detonate until I read this article, but I did decide to use bulkier powders so a visual check will easily catch double charges, and make triple charges impossible. Click Here to read the article, which appears on pages 8 and 69.
Always thought the detonation claim in pistol cases was the result of loading errors. I personally think loading on progressive presses is much safer as far as double and triple charges go, on the other hand squibs might be slightly more prevalent. In my old age I can afford a Dillon 1050 that I use for .45acp and 9mm. With the powder check alarm and visual check of the charge I've loaded many thousands of trouble free rounds. I do not load whole seasons or a years worth of loads ahead of time on the off chance there is a problem found I will only have 2 or 3 hundred suspect rounds to deal with instead of thousands. My only experience with squibs came from allowing the hopper to get too low while loading on my first progressive, a lee 1000. A very alert RO stopped me from hurting myself or at least the pistol while competing in a IPSC match.
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Thanks for your thoughts! I have always used bulkier powders because I have been wary of double-charging. That has worked so far!
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