another CAS thread

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JLDickmon

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I notice Trail Boss seems to be the powder of choice...

Any reason other than availability, over other products like Tin Star or even like HP38 and 700x?
 
my thoughts..
not a full pound jug so be careful what ur store charges for it.
made to be a case filling powder,which it certainly is,just avoid the low end loads,they suck.
so fluffy they require the large powder bar in Dillon machines,no biggy there tho.

I think other powders get just as much play overall,I know cas folks who use lots of Clays and tons of Titegroup.
 
What about HS6 and Longshot? Those are my primary handgun powders because they will produce excellent case fill and won't produce double charges. And for magnum revolver H110 / 296 will do the trick as well.
GS
 
TrailBoss gets a lot of use from SASS members, but I still use the Bullseye I've been loading with for 49 years. It works for me.

A lot of SASS shooters are reloading for the first time. This is due to the amount of ammunition an active shooter goes through and the necessity of reloading to supply that demand. A powder that fills the case is much safer for a new reloader to use, especially when so many people tell them to buy a progressive for their first press, and they do. It's just like these forums, everybody has an opinion of what works best, so someone new just jumps right in with what they're told works, whether or not it's best suited to "them", or not.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
Howdy

A bunch of years ago, there were a lot of CAS shooters who just had to have revolvers chambered for 45 Colt, mostly because of the mystique of the old cartridge. But CAS is a speed game, and most CAS shooters also want light loads that do not recoil very much, so they can empty their sixguns with blazing speed while staying on target with light recoil. It really is stunning how fast some CAS guys can empty their pistols.

So a lot of these guys started loading the grand old 45 Colt way down, to levels that mimic the recoil of a lightly loaded 38 Special. Unfortunately, the cavernous case of the 45 Colt, and similar cartridges like 44-40 and 38-40, do not perform well with light loads. Most Smokeless powders need to develop about 5000 psi before the burn is consistent and predictable. Very light loads in 45 Colt and other large cases designed for Black Powder often result in spotty ignition and erratic performance because of the large amount of air space in the cartridge. I can't tell you how many times I have been to a match and we were not sure if the bullet actually left the gun barrel, the report was so light.

So Trailboss was developed, specifically to perform well with light loads in large cases such as 45 Colt. It was not about insuring against double charges, it was to make the large old Black Powder cartridges perform well with light loads. I remember some of the conversations that were going on at the time with some CAS shooters who actually work for Hodgdon. Trailboss was developed specifically to fill up some of that empty airspace that usually resulted with light loads in 45 Colt, 44-40, and other large capacity cases.

More recently, fewer and fewer shooters are shooting 45 Colt, 38 Special has eclipsed 45 Colt in popularity on the CAS ranges, specifically because it performs better with light loads. With the 45 shooters, many have discovered that using the shorter 45 Schofield round, or the even shorter 45 Cowboy Special round gives them much more freedom with light loads and traditional powders, so there is much less emphasis on Trailboss these days than there was when it first came out.

I can tell you that Trailboss is not necessarily the powder of choice with CAS shooters. I probably know more shooters who load with Titegroup than load with Trailboss. Personally, I usually load with FFg. On the rare occasion that I load Smokeless for CAS, I use Unique.
 
The only thing new about TrailBoss powder is the name. It's a reincarnation of one of the original smokeless powders, which was developed before the turn of the 20th Century, even though they claim it's something new. The idea was to duplicate the volume of black powder with a smokeless powder, mostly in the larger cases. It fell out of favor right about the time Bullseye was invented in 1913. It was brought back by IMR, now owned by Hodgdon, due to the demand of SASS shooters.

The SASS shooters I shoot with that use .38 Special, me included, do it more for economy than anything else. The firearms cost about the same, but when you're putting a few thousand rounds down range per year, the economy of the .38 over the .45 really starts to add up. For every .45 Colt bullet I cast, I can cast two .38 bullets with the same amount of alloy, and I use about half as much powder to put the .38's downrange. With both my wife and I shooting several matches per month, that's a big savings. Just in the next couple of months we'll be shooting in our home state of Oregon, Washington, Nevada, New Mexico and Arizona.

About the only thing I use TrailBoss for is some .45 Colt loads and a few .45-70 loads. In the .45-70 it's proven to be the most accurate powder I've tried with 300 to 350 gr. bullets, but I swear that a good runner could beat the bullet to the target. You know it's slow when you can hear the bullet hit the cardboard at 50 yards, and have to wait for it at 100 yards.

Hope this helps.

Fred
 
I shoot a lot of CAS, which I also shoot .38 special, and I really like Trail Boss. As long as you can get it to meter well, its great, and for me I will continue to use it. LM
 
I think my use for Trail Boss is recreating the old BP loads in the small obscure cartridges that data is scarce or non existent. Like 32 Colt or 32 S&W short for a couple examples. I like to keep the pressure down while filling the case more in the variety of top break revolvers I own in several calibers and this is where TB shines IMHO.
 
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