Powder and primer choice for S&W 500; H110? or Lil Gun?

[dmproske]

Was going to choose Hodgen H110 until I read a thread about just a small amount too much or little can cause a pressure spike; enough to cause a Kaboom.
For shooters here using H110 have you seen anything to indicate it is very sensitve in this regard? I would think as long as I follow the Hodgdon manual I should be ok.

Also seems like Hodgdon Lil Gun is popular for the S&W 500. Is this powder more pressure spike forgiving? How many here prefer it over H110?

My Speer manual states that they used Large Rifle Magnum primers for this cartridge. I have not seen any other loading data to indicate that. Is there a performace gain in this cartridge to use a magnum primer? I would not think there is a enough powder there to use a mag primer, no more than a .308 or .06.

Thanks for any thoughts yall may have

 

[Strongbad]

For my 500 S&W, H-110 was never a stellar performer in either accuracy or velocity and atleast in my gun, it's dirty as hell. I've used quite a bit of li'l gun and have had excellent accuracy and velocity out of it. I also tried H-4227 with lackluster results. My current hunting load is 32.5 gr. of AA9 with a 350 gr. Sierra which groups about 2.5"-3" at 100 yards with a 2-7x Burris scope. The gun will do better than that, but that's plenty good enough for me. This is out of an early 8 3/8" model. The AA9 loads are slower than Lil'gun by 100 fps atleast, but they're still moving out around 1600 fps. if I remember correctly. Plenty enough to get the job done.

As for primers, I've used CCI, Winchester LR, and finally Remington 9.5's. The Remington's are what I load now days. My 500 S&W has a weak hammer spring, so if you flinch it at all, and you have a hard cup primer (like the CCI) you actually take enough inertia out of the hammer to cause a misfire. Per a suggestion from Sierra I went progressively down the line in order of hardness (their opinion) until I got to the Remington's. They function fine. The pistol powder in the 500 S&W, isn't slow enough, nor in sufficient quantity to dictate using a magnum primer. Other than the aformentioned issue, LR primers have always delivered in my pistol.

 

[dmproske]

thanks for the reply I will give lil gun a try.

 

[Vagabond]

Funny, I gave up Lil Gun for H110/W296 in my 410's because the Lil Gun was dirtier and toasted cases quickly...different application, different results!