9mm powder alternative?

[Diamond Jim]

I know that obtaining components is difficult lately - ADI are not making pistol powders and other brands seem to be in short supply. I've even heard stories of people opening shotgun shells to harvest powder but can't verify if anyone has actually done that.
I have 2 kg of Nobel Glasgow 80 shotgun powder (yes, it's old but when I opened it it seems to be in perfect condition) that was given to me along with various reloading gear. 2kg of powder would last me a long time (around 11,000 rounds potentially) if I can find a safe load.

For 12G, N-G recommend 20grains behind 1.25 oz of shot for 1185fps.
ADI lists 12G loads using AP70 pushing 1.25 oz of shot of 23.8 grains giving 1250fps and 24.9 grains for 1300fps respectively. A load of AP70 giving 1185fps would be somewhere around 22grains.

ADI doesn't give a load for AS50 and 1.25oz.

So it seems that N-G 80 is slower than AS50 and faster than AP70

ADI gives load data for 9mm Luger for 125 LCN of 3.8 - 4.3 grains of AP70 and 2.5 -3.2 grains of AS50

Doing some graphs and math tricks, I arrive at somewhere around 3.4 grains of N-G 80 as a starting load with a likely maximum of 3.9 grains. Can anyone see anything obviously wrong with my numbers? I hope to make up a handful of rounds and check for signs of pressure etc. and go from there.

[straightshooter]

These burn rate charts might help.
I couldn't make the pdf upload work so I turned it into two jpg files.

PowderBurnRate1.jpg (279.36 KiB) Viewed 2990 times

PowderBurnRate2.jpg (224.09 KiB) Viewed 2990 times

[Diamond Jim]

Thanks SS, that's exactly the sort of information I need for this experiment.

[Oldbloke]

Have you seen this?

https://bulletin.accurateshooter.com/20 ... -download/

[Diamond Jim]

Thanks OB.

[Ninox-Strenua]

Thanks for the background research guys as I'm about to get some of this vintage powder which I'm told is in good condition. I'm planning to develop some "light" pistol loads for 32 SWL c/w Redback 98g SWC projectiles for ISSF 25m C/F matches. If anyone is interested, I'll post the velocity readings when I get them, Cheers.

[Sarco]

I recovered powder from 28g OSA Target Shot shells and loaded it in a small number of 9MM rounds and tested them.
Powder recovered looked similar to but not the same as AS30. Large flakes of the typical shot powders though. Bear in mind that these large flakes don't necessarily meter well in some reloaders. (eg. my Dillon Square Deal), hence these were individually trickled and weighed. Each cartridge produced enough powder for 5 rounds with a little left over (approx. 18gn).

Load used was 115gn Vindicator LSWC projectile, 3.4gn of this unknown powder, relatively light crimp and shot through Glock 17A (Gen 3).

Velocities measured (LabRadar) were surprisingly consistent (note only five rounds were tested though):

Stats - Average 1071.42 fps
Stats - Highest 1089.25 fps
Stats - Lowest 1059.81 fps
Stats - Ext. Spread 29.43 fps
Stats - Std. Dev 11.77 fps

Hope this helps.