LiveLife
Member
Some in our shooting group did a bulk buy of powder to save on HazMat/shipping fees and 8lb of Alliant Promo got added for us to try. It was cheap ($82.60/8lb at Powder Valley) but only came in 8lb container. I believe it is primarily a shotgun powder.
According to powder burn rate chart, it shows right next to Red Dot and many forums/threads have posted that they use Red Dot load data.
It is a large flat flake powder that didn't meter too well in my new Pro Auto Disk - charges varied up to 0.2 - 0.3 grains with no consistency. When I used my 15+ year old Pro Auto Disk, it did a better job with occasional 0.1 - 0.2 grain variation. About 80% of the charges were fairly right on.
Since I was doing test loads for my ongoing jacketed/plated/lead bullet comparison test, I decided to load some test samples of Promo in 9mm and 40S&W. For more accurate load development, I would weigh every charge, but since this was just a test run, I used the press mounted powder throw.
125 gr lead RN 4.2gr at 1.08" and 1.10" OAL - Glock 27 with Lone Wolf barrel
180 gr lead FP 4.4gr at 1.125" OAL - M&P Fullsize
Since Promo wasn't metering consistently, I was expecting Promo groups to be worse than my match reference W231 groups. The Promo shot groups came close to matching the W231 groups. This is really promising and not what I expected from this "cheap" bulk powder.
Will be doing more comparison tests along with the ongoing jacketed/plated/lead bullet tests.
According to powder burn rate chart, it shows right next to Red Dot and many forums/threads have posted that they use Red Dot load data.
It is a large flat flake powder that didn't meter too well in my new Pro Auto Disk - charges varied up to 0.2 - 0.3 grains with no consistency. When I used my 15+ year old Pro Auto Disk, it did a better job with occasional 0.1 - 0.2 grain variation. About 80% of the charges were fairly right on.
Since I was doing test loads for my ongoing jacketed/plated/lead bullet comparison test, I decided to load some test samples of Promo in 9mm and 40S&W. For more accurate load development, I would weigh every charge, but since this was just a test run, I used the press mounted powder throw.
125 gr lead RN 4.2gr at 1.08" and 1.10" OAL - Glock 27 with Lone Wolf barrel
180 gr lead FP 4.4gr at 1.125" OAL - M&P Fullsize
----------- Range Test ---------------
It was almost closing time for the range so the 3 round groups were shot off-hand at 5 and 7 yards only (10/15 yards next trip) and average groups were measured excluding occasional flyers.
G27 9mm:
5 yard groups averaged 1" with one 3/4" group
7 yard groups averaged 1.5"
M&P 40S&W:
5 yard groups averaged 1"
7 yard groups averaged 1" with one 3/4" group
Since Promo wasn't metering consistently, I was expecting Promo groups to be worse than my match reference W231 groups. The Promo shot groups came close to matching the W231 groups. This is really promising and not what I expected from this "cheap" bulk powder.
Will be doing more comparison tests along with the ongoing jacketed/plated/lead bullet tests.