Favorite pistol powders

Just wondering what everyone's favorite pistol powders are.

I'm looking for a clean burning, non powder position sensitive one that can be used for target loads of 38/9/45., (cast lead bullets primarily)

I have been using bullseye, and yes I can make the loads a bit hotter to increase the pressure and try and get a cleaner burn, I'm happy with the accuracy of standard velocity target loads that have been used for decades.


There are a lot of choices between pistol and shotgun powders.

Hp-38/231 may be better for what I'm looking for, but I haven't loaded with it since I had bullseye.

I like Titegroup, inexpensive at academy (19.99 a pound, which will yield 1000s and 1000s of rounds), seems pretty accurate in .38, only potential downside is the low charge weights make double charges less noticeable, but good reloading practices mitigate that risk.

I also have a 5ish pound jug of Accurate #2 I bought for half price from some guy here, it made some accurate .38 loads too, but charges near the minimum leave unburned granules that after a lot of shooting start to bind up my ruger service six.

I also use bullseye, for .38, 7.62x25 tokarev, and gallery loads to shoot from my 8mm converted carcano.

I have used Titegroup and Accurate #2 with berry's plated bullets, hornady wadcutters, and extensively with my own cast bullets (lyman 148 grain double-based wadcutter)

Mapper have you tried cfe pistol it burns real clean an groups very well out of all3 of my 45.Loading 5.6 grns under the plated 230 round nose Berrys

Johnny,
The only thing I've tried was bullseye, since I had it that dad used to use.

It works well in 38/9/45 , but a bit dirty.
The 38 has a lot of case capacity for those few grains of powder there.
Normally I shoot 158 gr 38,
124 gr or so 9
200 gr 45,
Just standard target loads.

I used bullseye back in the late 60s and early 70s thatwas some nasty tuff just about as bad as 700x from that same time.Started using green dot,red dot and 2400 instead.

Been running 231 for years in most all my pistol calibers.

I use titegroup and HP-38 for all my pistol loads with cast, plated, and jacketed bullets. Been very happy with both.

I primarily use Titegroup for my practice .40 loads, with the only down side being it burns hot. Cheapish, low weight charges so your pound makes more rounds, and meters very well in my progressive press. The hot burn does mean more smoke from cast loads, but if you can deal with smoke, you're fine.

The other powders I use are Power Pistol for 9mm and Unique for .45 ACP and .44 Special (meters terribly for me, though). I keep a few pounds of Bullseye around just because it can pretty much do anything well.

For match ammo only, I use VihtaVuori N320 in my .40's. Haven't ever used it for anything else.

Titegroup is fabulously not position sensitive in small amounts in large cases and when it appeared a few years ago it solved some "issues" of that nature for me... then along came Longshot and solved some pressure issues. I haven't looked into new powders for a few years now but that tends to be worth the effort, but it tends not to be something that you can ask your buddy about.