WST and 9mm

I found older Hornady WST data in a Google search. Don't know why they pulled the data.

WST is cold weather sensitive. Not sure if they (Hodgdon) erred on the side of caution. I'm not sure by how much the weather raises the pressure. And I'm not sure when I shoot it in the cold, how much difference there is, as my hands are cold weather sensitive also.

Last year I shot some WST loads in 40 S&W when the weather was still below 40 degrees. The loads seemed more stout that they ought to have been.

I have used WST and some Xtreme plated 100gr round nose for a really light load. Started at 3.6 grains. It took 3.7 to cycle my new S&W Shield. 4.0 seemed to be more accurate and provided better cases sealing against the chamber. I need to come back and continue to work through developing this load.

My goal is an accurate mouse fart load with this particular combo.

@LiveLife has also worked through this combo too, I think...

I look forward to the responses on this thread. I have plenty of WST.

I loaded and shot 16 pounds of it through my 9mms primarily and wish I had more. You can google Brian Enos forum recipes or other sources but no mfgs that I know of publish data for it. I don't know why and it was my choice to use it. Great powder for low-midrange/bulk loads in all my auto pistols though. I love the light gray color also, and it meters well and is clean.

I’d like to expand that to 9mm but only if it’s safe to do so

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There's the rub. This all depends on your personal evaluation of what is "safe" and which sources you find credible. If you want factory support you're out of luck on this one.

If you can find some of the old Winchester data books they have WST data in them.

I'm running 4 gr under a 125-130 gr cast bullet and they are shooting like a dream.

A link to the Hornady #4 that has wst reloading data for the 9mm in it.
http://marvinstuart.com/firearm/Man...tridge Reloading - 4th Edition - Volume 1.pdf

WST took the place of trap-100/AA542 which was temp sensitive (cold), used to shoot a lot of aa452, would buy 10# caddy's.


When ww came out with wst they were on the downhill slope with their powders and never tested wst for anything but shotgun loads. They simply kept publishing their old ww231 data for pistols. Hodgdon bought ww out and at that time had came out with their clay's line of powder and was pushing that hard. The end result is wst never got tested in pistol/revolver cartridges.

It's too bad for the timing when wst came out. It's an excellent powder for target loads in the 38spl, 44spl, 9mm, 45acp that meters extremely well in every powder throw. I still use it to this day for my 9mm/50ft nra bullseye load. You need a load that will do 1" @ 50ft to be competitive, the squares are 1".

Steve’s Pages list 9mm Luger and WST
100gr 5.2gr to 6.2gr
115gr 5.2gr to 5.6gr
124gr 4.8gr to 5.4gr

Nothing listed for 147gr loads

I’ve personally loaded and shot WST under 115gr Berry’s CPRN. It has an interesting smell, like nice freshly ground pepper, without making you sneeze.

lordpaxman said:

I shot my (back then) EDC .40 with WST at our local PAL shoot and they claimed it smelled like garlic! It certainly has a different burn oder than other powders.

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I’ll have to try it in .40. I recently purchased a S&W EMP .40 3” that I was just breaking in before the lockdown. Only shot about 200 total rounds thus far, about 3 1/2 boxes of factory and maybe 50 rounds of with Universal. I can see where WST would be a vastly different experience, and just received an order of 165 JHP, so I may as well work something up in the hopes that one day the ranges will reopen.

A forum friend of mine uses WST almost exclusively in the .45ACP. I've tried it with 230grn bullets, but I don't think that's the best weight for it... sort of like 147grn 9mm. It does work well with 200grn .45's, and I'm hoping 124grn 9mm. I used to load it in 12ga AA-duplicate loads and it works very, very well there, I quit shooting and reloading shotgun some years ago, but I still have 2 or 3# of WST on the bench.

I used 452 AA for years with the 45 ACP and the 9mm Para. The use of 452 for handguns was pretty much driven by the AMU, they started using it for matches, winning match after match. Later there was questions of temp sensitivity, I never found it to be all that sensitive in my guns as used in IPSC. However I lived in FL during the time and after. 425 was very clean, leaving a gun looking like it had not been fired.

By the time I retired from competition, WST came along to replace 452. My limited experience with WST indicated that I could replace the target loads developed for use of 452 on a grain for grain basis with WST. Not that they will be exactly the same, but they will be safe for adjustment to best accuracy, major or minor loads, etc. As always, you start low and work up.

WST is reverse temperature sensitive. That's bitten me a couple of times since we have about 10 months of warm to hot and 2 months of warm to cold here in North Texas.

https://forums.brianenos.com/topic/144946-wst-for-9mm/?tab=comments

https://www.thehighroad.org/index.php?threads/9mm-and-winchester-wst.753966/

lordpaxman said:

Let’s limit this thread to WST and 9mm only.
The current online Hodgdon data does not include any WST loads for 9mm.
Does anyone know why?

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Because there were pressure issues in 9mm.
Winchester stopped publishing 9mm data for WST in the early 1990's. It had nothing to do with Hodgdon.
Yeah, the Hornady 4th edition listed load data but that ceased 30 years ago.....
Back then WST was made by the Olin Corp. now it's General Dynamics.
It's hard to imagine that WST is any more accurate than Power Pistol but I might try it. The powder in vogue right now is Sport Pistol.

WST is a great powder for reduced loads in 45ACP. Easy to reload with, although I have no 9mm experience with it. When I use it smells like burned smokeless powder to me.

Walkalong said:

I have not tried it in 9MM, although I don't see why it couldn't make good plinkers, but it wouldn't be a good choice for full power 9MM.

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Jack B. said:

WST is a great powder for reduced loads in 45ACP.

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My thoughts as well. My tests with WST in 230grn full-power loads put the charge at max to get factory equivalent FPS, which, as I mentioned, I don't like to do with fast powders. I was debating trying WST in 9mm factory equivalent loads, but I will probably try a slower powder... or, I might even just go back to Unique.

Charlie98 said:

My thoughts as well. My tests with WST in 230grn full-power loads put the charge at max to get factory equivalent FPS, which, as I mentioned, I don't like to do with fast powders. I was debating trying WST in 9mm factory equivalent loads, but I will probably try a slower powder... or, I might even just go back to Unique.

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I like using WST, because it is very light colored and easy to see in the case when you are visually checking powder levels for over or under powder charge and it does well when down loading so it is easy on me and my pistol.