Reducing charges

[jdrslyr75]

Do any of you fine fellows have any experience using Mr. Lee's pressure and velocity factors for reducing loads for cast bullet use? If so, what were your results/conclusions as to the accuracy and safety of using these factors.

[Maximumbob54]

The only reduced loads I've done are with Unique and Trail Boss and Trail Boss worked the best for me.

[Ranch Dog]

Do any of you fine fellows have any experience using Mr. Lee's pressure and velocity factors for reducing loads for cast bullet use? If so, what were your results/conclusions as to the accuracy and safety of using these factors.

Yes, I have used them against my pressure trace equipment and found them accurate.

[jdrslyr75]

Thanks RD. Lee also states that charges can be reduced as much as 30% and in some cases as much as 50%. (The slower powders should be reduced the least) By reducing loads this much, a lot of air space is left in the case and the powder moves around a lot. Is this generally OK or do you have to look at powders individually to determine if it is OK or not? What I am trying to determine is which powder to select for .223 Remington loads where I will be loading cast 55-60 grain (Lyman #2 clone, water dropped) gas checked bullets with a muzzle velocity of between 2000-2200 fps. I'm having trouble finding this load in a published manual.

[jdrslyr75]

I should add that I am looking for about 28k psi or less (but not too much less) for this load.

[sthwestvictoria]

I use the Lee data but also hedge my bets by usually using AR2206H (called H4895 for the cousins). Hodgdon tell us that this is safe to reduce down to 60% of jacketed data so I feel very safe between this data and the Lee data.
https://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/H4895%20Red ... 0Loads.pdf

I have done some smaller reductions of AR2208 (Varget) using the Lee data for cast loads. I don't use a filler.
There is reduced loads for common cowboy loads in the ADI and Hodgdon free pdf downloads using AR2206H (H4895) or AR2207 (H4198).
For very reduced loads I use Trailboss.
http://www.imrpowder.com/PDF/Trail-Boss-data.pdf