Suggestions for a new load w/ golden sabers?

[Matt Dillon]

Folks, I recently picked up 100 380 102 grain Golden Sabers from Midway USA to load up for my new CZ83.
This weekend, I tried my new load of 92 grain Meister cast lead bullets over 3.9 grains of Unique, with Winchester small pistol primers and S&B brass, seated to .970 COAL.
I liked how it shot, and will be loading up quite a few of these in the near future.
Does anyone have any suggestions for a load for the Golden Sabers? I'd kind of like to develop a +P load for these pills, but I have seen no data on what might constitute a +P .380 load.
Does anyone have any suggestions, as to either a normal load, or a +P load for these Golden Sabers?
Can I use my current powder weight of 3.9 grains of Unique, even though these bullets aren't cast, and weigh 10 grains more?

Thanks so much in advance!

 

[Steve C]

As there is no SAAMI recognized +P pressure for the .380 ACP you will not find any data. Alliants current load data online says you can use up to 4.3grs of Unique with a 100gr Jacketed RN so as your 3.9gr load would be about a 10% reduction of this and 102grs is very close to 100gr. I'd say you'd be fine trying 3.9grs. You have to watch pressures in small cases like the .380 as it goes up quuickly will only a very small increase in powder charge.

Remington's balistics on their factory .380 ACP 102GS says its leaveing a 4" barrel at 940 fps. Alliants says that 4.3 grs of Unique pushes a 100gr JRN at 1,005 fps from a 3.7" barrel. In any case you should be very close to factory balistics with that 3.9grs of Unique. How much over or under will depend upon sall things like your primer selection. If you have a chrono let us know what kind of velocites you're getting. The best thing is to have factory loads to use as a baseline. If you duplicate the factory loads with your hand loads then you have pretty good ammo.