powder increments for pistol reloads?

[Mr White]

I've been erloading rifle calibers for about a year and have found that incrementing powder charges by a half grain when developing loads works out pretty well.

A few months ago I bought 1000 124gr FMJ bullets, 1000 small pistol primers and a pound of Bullseye. I got a set of 9mm dies for Christmas and I'm ready to start working on a good plinking load. I'll be shooting these from a few different guns so I'm not really worried about finding the perfect load for each gun yet. I'll work on that later. I'm more interested now in finding 1 load that works reasonably well in all of my 9mms. So if anyone wants to offer up any suggestions using 124 gr FMJs and Bullseye, I'm all ears.

Anyway, the more appropriate question is this: With pistols, since the powder charge is so small, what is a good increment to increase the powder charge for developing loads?

Thanks.

 

[Eric F]

depends on the powder I shoot 38 super and use aa#2 dont remember right off hand but I think there is a .4gr diffrence from start to max load. I went .1 gr at a time. I sugest looking at the manufacturer load data and go from there.

 

[Ol` Joe]

I use 0.1gr steps in smaller capacity cases/powder charges, like 38spcl or smaller and 0.3 steps with 44 mag and larger. I actually use the 0.3gr step with my 223 also. In rifle I go with 0.5gr for 308 sized and 1.0gr for `06 and up. I don`t know if I`m doing right or just lucky, but I haven`t had any problems yet working up this way.