Reloading pistol with shotgun powder with magnum primers?

1OKshooter

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I have always used W231 in my .40 S&W and .45ACP with regular CCI primers. Now that every prepper on earth wants to buy everything up I cannot find powder or primers. So I am entertaning the Idea of using Longshot for a replacement powder, but all I have been able to get is Magnum primers. Does anybody have any experience with this practice. Can you please help me figure this out? Thanks in advance
 

dennishoddy

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I've used blue dot which is a well known
Magnum shotgun powder with standard primers when loading .40 I called the mfg. customer service and got a starting load. Worked up from there.
My suggestion would be For you to do the same to err on the side of safety.
 

Zekernst

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I loaded quite a few magnum primers back after the last election when it was all we could get. I just made sure to start low and work up the load to a comfortable level, just watched for signs of pressure. Lately I've been using small rifle primers in my 9mm cuz I ended up with a couple thousand a few months ago.
 

oldglock

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Well, lots of shotgun powders have dual application(red dot, green dot, unique, WST, WSF, many more)
The faster burning powders such as red dot, WST, etc are ideal for low intensity loads, cast bullet loads, in most any popular pistol caliber.
The Hodgdon online data shows multiple loads for 9mm and .40 with longshot so you can compare velocity/pressure, etc. Note that longshot is considerably slower burning than 231 so you will need to use more for similar velocity using same bullet, etc.
No data is shown for tightwad but looking at shotgun data it seems to be much faster burning, close to red dot and much closer to 231 than longshot. It is a relatively new powder which may explain the lack of data or perhaps Hodgdon wants to keep it with the shotgunners. They burn a lot more powder. This link covers it pretty well.
http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3562578
I have never compared standard and magnum primers side by side but with a supposedly longer and hotter fire you would assume there likely will be some pressure increase.
Look at the data, start low and work up
 

Zekernst

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I know this is an older thread but I just read a really great article that might help other loaders out there. According to chris hodgdon (of the hodgdon powder fame), loading regular loads with magnum primers is fine, provided you start at the published load minimum and work you load back up. Just thought i'd share the info.
zeke
 

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