First and foremost, I didn't notice it before but I DID this time,
THANK YOU TREMENDOUSLY FOR YOUR SERVICE
It is VERY MUCH APPRECIATED, in this house, and every house of my family members.
To be honest IF I were loading for a 40 I would probably look hard at he 170'ish grain stuff. I am running the 10mm with the 180gr Gold Dot, but I also have a 7" barrel to take advantage of the added velocity. With a standard lenght or shorter barrel I might drop down a bit in weight to gain a bit more velocity, but to be honest it is a toss up either way.
Yep you have time to study up on what your looking to do with yours. Me personally I like to stick with medium weight bullets per caliber, and medium to slower powders for the loads. There just seems to be a better gain using this method. You get a decent velocity with a decent weight bullet and if the accuracy is there you can hardly go wrong. I strive for the utmost accuracy even though I am shooting mostly standard factory off the shelf rifles. I have seen it put so many times you can't get better than such and such accuracy from them but mine get MOA or less, and get it consistently. It's all in the load development and why I use the powders mentioned above, they are more forgiving once you find a load.
If your serious about dialing your ammo in you will see a trend as you look through the manuals. Take a few notes, you will see the same powders popping up over and over again within certain capacity cases, use these to narrow your search down. Then look over and see what the pressures are doing with regards to the top end loads, and you will see some of the ones you picked giving top end velocities with a bit less pressure than one above or below it. Use this to narrow down a bit more. Before long you will have a short list of a couple of powders which give the best performance with the best pressure, within the parameters of the case your looking to load. Then you simply try them out and see which one does the overall best with your rifle or handgun.
Nowadays with the instant gratification crowd running amok, folks want to be able to ask and receive the best finite load, for what ever they happen to be shooting. Well if it were that simple, there wouldn't be many choices to look over. It takes time to research, then a bit more to develop a solid load, and even more, to test it out at several different ranges, and verify it is stable, maybe adjusting your seating depth along the way. This all said however, once you have it dialed in, you have it whooped.
Me I once played with all sorts of weights and powders, and primers looking for the perfect load when usually I had it right under my nose from the beginning. It's fun, but after a while, you pretty much get satisfaction out of knowing when you grab this rifle, and that box of ammo, it is going to shoot right where you point it, this time and every time. If it don't well take a hard look in the mirror, cause that is usually the first thing that goes wrong.
Take care and again THANKS