Best powder for med. to hot loads, .357 revolver and carbine?

Unique works well up to moderate loads, 2400 for moderate to heavy.

H110/296, Lil Gun or 300MP for peak velocity, regardless of barrel length.

Look at some reloading manuals to find loads in a handgun with your barrel length that fit your criteria. Those should be fine in your rifle and generally you;ll pick up velocity in the longer rifle barrel. Just keep the loads safe in your handgun.

Neither are horribly clean but I agree with craigc. Unique works very well for the very low to the moderate loads. 2400 is very good for moderate to heavy loads. I shoot both from my 5" gp100 and my 16" rossi 92. I have recently had some very good results from BE86 as well but I don't have enough experience with it to really give it the thumbs up yet.

Moderate (~1000 fps) to less-than-top-end (~1200 fps), I use HS-6.
A bit slower than Unique/Universal, so a smoother recoil. Not as slow as 2400 or H110, so less of a bark, and more economical.

I would probably try CFE pistol or Unique

2400 or Blue Dot. Max loads use 296 or H110

I load Unique under 158gr lwfp cast for both both revolver and carbine.

For anything less than full tilt boogie loads, I use Unique.

While I am a big fan of Unique, I have started to use other powders instead. I have loaded a lot of .357 with Power Pistol and BE-86 with great results.

My favorite load out of my Rossi M92 is 10.0 gr of Power Pistol and a 125 gr JHP. It burns very cleanly. I have shot 3k+ and have not cleaned the rifle.

Don’t forget Universal. Burns cleaner than Unique on the lower end. But for upper end loads, tough to beat H-110. But weigh your charges. H-110 has a very small variance between start/max. Nothing to be concerned about if you do your part. Power Pistol is a great powder. However is seems to produce more “felt” recoil.

ColtPythonElite said:

I have shot 3k+ and have not cleaned the rifle.

Click to expand...

Not even the barrel?

V-N110 is my Go-To 357Mag powder for cast.
It does not need mag primers.
It does not need to fill the case.

My StdLd is V-N110/15.0gr/CCI-500 primer/StarlineCase which pushes
a 160gr gas-checked Lyman#2 bullet at 1,784fps from a 20" barrel.Megadittos here.

Using my 92Winchester, my two go-to's are:


V-N110 is a casefiller; does not need to max out like W296/H110, takes small pistol primers, and is superbly consistant.

Other than that I have no opinion.

LAWYER'S NOTE:
Your mileage may vary
Take Care.

MEHavey said:

V-N110 is my Go-To 357Mag powder for cast.
It does not need mag primers.
It does not need to fill the case.

My StdLd is V-N110/15.0gr/CCI-500 primer/StarlineCase which pushes
a 160gr gas-checked Lyman#2 bullet at 1,784fps from a 20" barrel.Megadittos here.

Using my 92Winchester, my two go-to's are:

V-N110 is a casefiller; does not need to max out like W296/H110, takes small pistol primers, and is superbly consistant.

Other than that I have no opinion.

LAWYER'S NOTE:
Your mileage may vary
Take Care.

Click to expand...

I used Vihtavuori N110. They’re powders are exceptional in my opinion. But dang it’s expensive.

BigBore44 said:

Not even the barrel?

Click to expand...

Not even the barrel.

When shooting 158gr to 180gr bullets in my Marlin levergun Lil'Gun delivers the best accuracy good velocity. I won't use it for my revolvers, I use W296/H110 there for the high end stuff. HS-6 handles the middle range stuff.

I gave recently embraced Power Pistol as a versatile less than maximum load in .357 Magnum revolvers. Over the years I have used Unique, HS-6, Accurate No. 5 and others in that role, but I really like Power Pistol, as it is more economical than 2400 or H-110/W296, while providing 90% of the performance.

I use Unique for mid-range 357 Magnum loads mostly because it is what I've been using for, like, forever.

If I could not get Unique, I'd probably work up a similar load with Accurate #5. I use it in many places these days.

W296/H110 for full powder loads but I have not loaded any top 357 Magnum ammunition is a long time.

There are lots other good powders out there. At my current stage of reloading, there are many other reloading projects on my "to-do" list and changing my standard 357 Magnum loads is low on the priority list.

Since the 90's Unique is the only powder I use 95% of the time for light/medium loads. It fills the case enough so a double charge is very unlikely and has also proven to be very accurate in different guns. Only thing I am going to change is to load my medium loads a bit lighter for general use. It is my favorite round and what I fire the most. You can actually get a pretty potent load with Unique if you have to. I've tried Universal and it is fine but showed me no significant advantage over Unique.

I regard Universal == Unique almost weight-4-weight except for shape.
Universal is spheroidal, however, and measures very consistently

For slightly less than full magnum, I really like BE86. For full-tilt loads that shoot well in both revolver and rifle, I like 2400 and N-110. But for full tilt loads that really shine in my 16" Rossi 92, I love 300-MP with 158gn XTP/FP.

I guess that I am boring.

I use W231/HP38 for low to mid-range loads, and W296/H110 for magnum loads.