[imajeep]

ive got a pair of eaa witness 40 smiths... tons of barrys fmj's and a couple of pounds of 296 for my 454..... can i use the 296 in the 40?
if so how much...?

I havent seen anything on the net regarding this...

i'm just looking for some plinking/wadcutting.... so velocity isnt an issue....

 

[br549y]

No

I would say no ! 296 is the same as H110 and should not be down loaded ! If you want to blow your gun apart or you hate yourself then go ahead , but 296 is for max loads and a heavy crimp , not for plinking . I don't see any loads for this powder in 40 SW in any of my books . I recomend you save it for the big iron with heavy loads !

 

[MikeG]

I thought I saw it listed for the 10mm once, in one of the Winchester freebie manuals, but it's not hand at to check. May have thrown them away. Running it through Quickload predicts a case full under a 200gr. bullet as only in the 20,000psi range in the 10mm, and much less in the .40.

Performance would be erratic to say the least. I don't think you would run into pressure problems, but I would not be surprised if bullets got stuck in the barrel either. Best try another powder.....

 

[TMan]

Running it through Quickload predicts a case full under a 200gr. bullet as only in the 20,000psi range in the 10mm, and much less in the .40. .....

MikeG, I don't have Quickload, but I'm curious as to what the parameters were for the 20K PSI were with respect to load density. The only issues I ever had with W296/H110 were with lower bullet weights below 100%. Fortunately, I was shooting a Ruger BH at the time. They were the flattest HG primers I ever saw, and extraction was sticky.

 

[jwp475]

ive got a pair of eaa witness 40 smiths... tons of barrys fmj's and a couple of pounds of 296 for my 454..... can i use the 296 in the 40?
if so how much...?

I havent seen anything on the net regarding this...

i'm just looking for some plinking/wadcutting.... so velocity isnt an issue....

Sure you could use it as long as you filled the case to the bottom of the bullet and had no air space. The performance would be lacking as velocities would be very low for the cartridge. The proper burn rate powder would reach the potentail of the cartridge

 

[MikeG]

MikeG, I don't have Quickload, but I'm curious as to what the parameters were for the 20K PSI were with respect to load density. The only issues I ever had with W296/H110 were with lower bullet weights below 100%. Fortunately, I was shooting a Ruger BH at the time. They were the flattest HG primers I ever saw, and extraction was sticky.

For the 10mm and .40, I fiddled with the charge weights till Quickload said the density was 100%, or thereabouts. You can't really compress the stuff much and it doesn't like airspace.

What bullet weights did you have issues with, and in what chambering? There are a few combinations, like 180gr. bullets in the .44 mag, where you can't get enough in the case to ever reach max SAAMI pressures.

 

[wildhobbybobby]

The quick answer is no...you will probably have hangfires and the loads won't be hot enough to function your pistol.

 

[MikeG]

I dug around looking for those freebie Winchester powder books from the 1990s and can't find any of them. Probably a casualty of the last move, or the one before that. Anyway.... while I can't find that Winchester data with the 10mm and 296 powder, there is an interesting fact that 296 / H110 can in fact function at very low pressures.... in the .410 shotshell. Less than 10,000 LUP per the Hodgdon web site.

The difference, I believe, is the ratio of powder to projectile mass. For the shotshell we are talking about 13 - 14 grains of powder, under 1/2 ounce of shot (218.75 grains), plus the weight of the wad (not much but perhaps bringing the total payload to 225 - 230 grains). No airspace under the shotshell wad either, presumably.

About 16 grains of projectile for every grain of 296. Contrast this with a (published) reload I tried years ago which was I think 26 or so grains of 296 under a 255gr. bullet in the .45 Colt. That load had about 10 grains of payload for each grain of 296, with airspace, and yielded some pretty spectacular fireballs at the range

My experience with 296 was that for it to work well in the .45 Colt at 30,000CUP-ish levels was that 300 grain bullets were a better choice.

Of course there may be other reasons we don't find the Winchester load in print for the 10mm anymore.

Just food for thought.

 

[TMan]

What bullet weights did you have issues with, and in what chambering? There are a few combinations, like 180gr. bullets in the .44 mag, where you can't get enough in the case to ever reach max SAAMI pressures.

MikeG, it was a .357 Magnum, with two loads. One was with a 140gr Hornady/16.5gr of W296, the other was a heavy bullet load with a 200gr Penn and 12.0gr of W296. That's from my notebook dating back to 1996. It was also my first exposure to W296, and I was unaware of issues with loads below 100% loading density. Both loads were sourced from non-manual sources. Since then, I have always tried to keep all ball powder loads at the upper end of the loading density range.

W296 and H110 are still on my bench, and I use them for max performance jacketed bullet loads in my .357/.44 Magnum loads for handgun and rifles, but I have avoided loads for handguns rated for less than .357/.44 pressures as a precaution. Mostly because I don't understand the physics of reduced loads causing elevated pressures.

 

[MikeG]

.357 too, as you have noted. I was putting some numbers in Quickload and at 100% density, the lighter bullet weights don't generate anywhere near max pressures.

I have moved to surplus WC820, not because of any problems with 296 or H110, but just because I could buy some cheaper. Still have some 296 and it's a useful powder, when used as recommended.....

 

[unclenick]

An important aspect of the issue of H110 in the small case is the expansion of this stubby round. In the .40 S&W, the bullet doesn't have to move very far before the volume behind it doubles the volume the powder started burning in. When the burning space multiplies too rapidly, slow powder just can't double the gas volume fast enough to reach the desired pressure. The space quickly gets too big for the amount of powder the case can hold to ever get there at all.

H110/296 seems to want a powder column under the bullet of straight wall cases to be right around three quarters of an inches tall. At least, that's so for the .357 and .44 Magnums. I'll have to check, but presume it would apply in the .41 magnum, too. In the .357, for example, assuming the full 1.590" SAAMI maximum COL for all loads, that powder column height fills the power space 100% behind a 130 grain bullet. That produces roughly maximum muzzle energy for that powder in that cartridge. Going to a 110 grain bullet you get less ME as the bullet is too light to offer as much inertial resistance as the powder wants to build pressure against. Going to a 158 grain bullet shortens the powder column too much, causing the expansion problem to come into play, so, again, the maximum ME is lower than for the 130.

Anyway, you can't get a powder column that high in the .40 S&W, so efficiency isn't good.

Mike, are you aware you don't need to tweak the powder to fill the case in QuickLOAD? Just type 100 into the case fill percentage window directly. The software will figure out the needed charge weight.

 

[MikeG]

Ah I just learned something!!!!