Loading some .32 special this morning (and the adventures/vagaries of handloading).|Winchester Rifles|Forum|Winchester Collector

I had a small batch of .32 special fired cases to load up this morning.  I have a jug of H-380 and hadn’t recalled using that in the .32 special before. So, I grabbed my Hornady manual (circa 1982) and observed that for the 170 grain jackets bullet, 30.7 grains was the starting load with a max load listed of 36.2 grains.  Ok, good to go, I’ll start on the low side.  I will note here, I could have just as easily grabbed by Lyman manual (also circa, 1982).  And in fact, I did as I realized the Hornady manual didn’t provide a trim-to-length and I knew the Lyman manual did.  I grabbed the Lyman manual, found the needed trim length and, glanced at the powder charge.  For H-380 with a 170 grain jacketed bullet, the suggested starting grains was 36.0 with a max charge of 39 grains.  So Hornady’s max charge is 0.2 grains smaller than Lyman’s starting charge.  Had I just grabbed the Lyman manual, I probably would have went with the 36 grains (suggested starting).  By the way, I settled on 31 grains (and didn’t use a magnum primer).  Oh, and once I got loading, the second bullet (Federal brand) I pulled out of the box, almost fell into the case.  I mic’d it.  Sure enough, it was .308.  The rest were fine.