Alliant steel

N555

N555

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New Mexico and Texas panhandle
The price was right. Free. For a partial 4lb jug with around 3lb in it.
I don't load steel shot loaded shotgun shells, if I load shotgun I use lead and faster burning powder, such a unique, HP38, WST. Steel appears to be single base and slower burning that what I normally load shot gun with (like bluedot).
Anyone have any pistol loads for steel?
If not then I guess it's for sale.
$30 per pound, no tax, no shipping, no hazmat, located in the middle of nowhere between roswell NM and Lubbock Tx. It's smokeless so obviously I can't and won't even try to ship it. $30 per pound is a "steel" these day.
 
I've seen where it is on the powder burn rate chart and see it on either side of respected pistol powders..... but that means nothing. It could be something like Blue Dot, 2400, or Longshot..... but maybe it's not. No data for pistols loads for it unfortunately.



I've read another thread on this, and Alliant responded something like : "No. We have multitudes of pistol powders for loading for pistols. We've optimized this powder (steel) for Steel Shotgun loads only.

You may just hang onto this powder until you come across another reloader who loads shotgun loads, and can trade you for something you can safely use.

Anything free is worth saving up for!
 
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BD, 2400, longshot all good 357mag, 44mag, 30carbine powders, or I could just look up lead shot loads that use AL steel powder, if there are any. I do need to make new runs of heavy lead shells, some loaded with lead BBs and others loaded with lead T shot.
 
The crew at cast boolits worked up a 357 load. When I contacted Alliant directly about it they just said no....
 
I got a 4 pound jug at an estate sale and I use it for 10 mm. The performance with 10mm is quite good, but the powder metering is terrible. I can only use it with a charge dispenser, but even then, it will often bridge when I dump it into the funnel. I won’t repurchase it again due to this reason.
 
It took a while but I finally got to visit my family member who had the Steel.
I think heard them wrong, or they didn't know exactly what they were going to be getting when they told me about it. There's two 1lb containers that are filled nearly all the way up, they have what feels like 2 to 3lb each in them. I thought it was 1 container with 2 or 3 lb in it. More powder, not complaining.
It's single base and burns like bluedot so I'm already thinking "silencer load".
I would like a 44mag silencer at some point. But I have AL410 to use in 44mag.
I probably can't fit enough single base flake powder in a 9mm to make it run right with heavier bullets. But I can try. I already have this problem with CBI in 9mm it makes great 115gr loads and that's it, can't fit more than 5.5gr of cbi in a 9mm case.
It will probably burn too fast to run an M1 carbine. Plus I have AL410 to try in 30carbine.
Maybe 45acp, 45 likes medium speed powders like this, but bludot gave me high SD and unburnt flakes when I tried loading regular full power 45acp and +p about 20 years ago.
Maybe 357mag.

**Brian19** said:
I got a 4 pound jug at an estate sale and I use it for 10 mm. The performance with 10mm is quite good, but the powder metering is terrible. I can only use it with a charge dispenser, but even then, it will often bridge when I dump it into the funnel. I won’t repurchase it again due to this reason.
Click to expand...
I had that problem with a powder called CBI, it's a faster burning single base flake powder with irregular grains, good for loading pistol ammo. It likes to bridge when dumped through the funnel, well the funnel was necked down to about 20cal so I took a dermal and hogged out the funnel hole to about 30cal. No more bridging. Just have to make sure I don't use that hogged out funnel on any 22cal or I'll have a mess.
 
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N555 said:
It took a while but I finally got to visit my family member who had the Steel.
I think heard them wrong, or they didn't know exactly what they were going to be getting when they told me about it. There's two 1lb containers that are filled nearly all the way up, they have what feels like 2 to 3lb each in them. I thought it was 1 container with 2 or 3 lb in it. More powder, not complaining.
It's single base and burns like bluedot so I'm already thinking "silencer load".
I would like a 44mag silencer at some point. But I have AL410 to use in 44mag.
I probably can't fit enough single base flake powder in a 9mm to make it run right with heavier bullets. But I can try. I already have this problem with CBI in 9mm it makes great 115gr loads and that's it, can't fit more than 5.5gr of cbi in a 9mm case.
It will probably burn too fast to run an M1 carbine. Plus I have AL410 to try in 30carbine.
Maybe 45acp, 45 likes medium speed powders like this, but bludot gave me high SD and unburnt flakes when I tried loading regular full power 45acp and +p about 20 years ago.
Maybe 357mag.


I had that problem with a powder called CBI, it's a faster burning single base flake powder with irregular grains, good for loading pistol ammo. It likes to bridge when dumped through the funnel, well the funnel was necked down to about 20cal so I took a dermal and hogged out the funnel hole to about 30cal. No more bridging. Just have to make sure I don't use that hogged out funnel on any 22cal or I'll have a mess.
Click to expand...
Steel was tested a lot on cast boolits. They seemed happy with it, I never got any because I didn't need to hunt down a project. You might use their testing in 357 as a data point.
 
From my Hevi-Shot reloading, Blue Dot and Steel were the most commonly prescribed powders.

Without looking at a burn rate chart, I would say it would work for .357.
 
N555 said:
Yeah see post 6.
Maybe I'll find it gives high SD and unburnt powder like bluedot in 45acp.
Click to expand...
I would not expect unburnt powder based on the operating pressure of 357 vise shotgun. If one loads it in 38 that might be the case but once you get to a max load in 38 your getting really close. 38 +p is shotgun pressure so I would expect it to be more in the design burn curve.
 
My old 3 inch heavy magnum bluedot loads operate well under 45acp pressure and gave little to no unburnt powder.
My only guess is small bores like 45 leave unburnt BD is they have too much entropy compared to burning 5x as much BD in a shotgun load. But I don't know, it's finicky in something like a 45acp, 40sw but great in a shotgun.
 
N555 said:
My old 3 inch heavy magnum bluedot loads operate well under 45acp pressure and gave little to no unburnt powder.
My only guess is small bores like 45 leave unburnt BD is they have too much entropy compared to burning 5x as much BD in a shotgun load. But I don't know, it's finicky in something like a 45acp, 40sw but great in a shotgun.
Click to expand...
It appears that BD needs a long barrel to complete its burn. Best guess is the way the inhibitors are designed to work in conjunction with its primary design criteria in magnum shotgun loadings. This would lead me to believe that loadings in carbines work a lot better than pistol due to being much closer to the original design constraints.
 
Burned up just fine with 13 inches of barrel in the 12gauge, but they were intended for a 24 to 30 inch barrel.
Never did test BD with 45acp in longer than a 5.5 inch barrel.
 
N555 said:
Burned up just fine with 13 inches of barrel in the 12gauge, but they were intended for a 24 to 30 inch barrel.
Never did test BD with 45acp in longer than a 5.5 inch barrel.
Click to expand...
I did my initial test in a 4" pistol but am moving to 16" carbine. I'm hoping to find a good load before I run out to log and move on to the next testing powder.
 
Barnes has some data for it for their bullets.
I've used it in 357 Magnum, starting with Barne's data.
It consists of big circular flakes that are impractical to meter in pistol volumes. I was weighing every charge for my testing.
It burned dirty, which suggests to me that I probably could have increased the charge to raise the pressure. I did reach the max of Barne's published data (SAAMI limited).
With a charge in the middle of the book range, 5-shot average velocity for 140 grain XPB was 1300 fps out of 5" revolver barrel. With book max, the velocity did not increase but the 5-shot SD increased from 29 to 36 fps.
So velocities were similar to high-end BE-86 loads, similar to Longshot and Blue Dot overall.

After testing, I went another way. I could achieve the velocity I wanted with BE-86 with more consistency (lower SD). Steel had potential for more velocity, but I did not want to go that fast in the load I was developing. If I was going for max-velocity, I would have used H-110 or Lil'Gun, even N-110 or N-105... or one of the powders I've not tested like 300-MP etc.
What remains of my pound of Steel is unused for now. Maybe someday I'll load some up. Maybe if I bumped the pressure up to CIP max it would burn cleaner, or maybe the SD would just open up more. Aren't shotguns low pressure? Maybe the sweet spot is at lower pressures. It's definitely a viable powder for pistol. It's just that there are better.
 
BD is great for shotguns but seems like it burns eradicly in lower case volume or lower pressure loads. Put it in a full power 357mag or 44mag and it seems fine.
But yeah H110 makes much better magnum loads the ES on my 44mag H110 loads is like 30fps.
 
westernrover said:
Barnes has some data for it for their bullets.
I've used it in 357 Magnum, starting with Barne's data.
It consists of big circular flakes that are impractical to meter in pistol volumes. I was weighing every charge for my testing.
It burned dirty, which suggests to me that I probably could have increased the charge to raise the pressure. I did reach the max of Barne's published data (SAAMI limited).
With a charge in the middle of the book range, 5-shot average velocity for 140 grain XPB was 1300 fps out of 5" revolver barrel. With book max, the velocity did not increase but the 5-shot SD increased from 29 to 36 fps.
So velocities were similar to high-end BE-86 loads, similar to Longshot and Blue Dot overall.

After testing, I went another way. I could achieve the velocity I wanted with BE-86 with more consistency (lower SD). Steel had potential for more velocity, but I did not want to go that fast in the load I was developing. If I was going for max-velocity, I would have used H-110 or Lil'Gun, even N-110 or N-105... or one of the powders I've not tested like 300-MP etc.
What remains of my pound of Steel is unused for now. Maybe someday I'll load some up. Maybe if I bumped the pressure up to CIP max it would burn cleaner, or maybe the SD would just open up more. Aren't shotguns low pressure? Maybe the sweet spot is at lower pressures. It's definitely a viable powder for pistol. It's just that there are better.
Click to expand...
I'm curious if you would get better burn with steel with a heavier bullet.
 
I picked up 3lbs of Steel a while back and still havent gotten around to reloading it. At some stage will try it out in my 44 mag rossi 92. I did quite a bit of reading over at castboolits threads and it seems they class it slightly slower than Blue Dot, and good velocity consistency.
 
From the link that posted the email to Alliant:
"We tried some STEEL in 44 mag years ago and the results were dismal.
The velocity/pressure variations were extreme. …”

Perhaps I’m just not as adventurous as y’all, but when I was on a powder buying spree years ago I thought Steel would be a good shotgun powder to try but Alliant’s data only had 10 and 12 GA data…. Hmmm….. And it didn’t show up in manuals either, at least the ones I had.
There are a lot of other powders out there.
 
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