I finally fired some loads. The Hodgdon site shows 8.0 grains of Titegroup with a 168, so I tried 7.5 grains with a 150 Hornady fmj at 50 yards. I used lake city '18 brass weight sorted and neck turned and remington 9-1/2M primers. Five rounds into one hole success! It was just too fast with 7.5 grains - average was 1188 with a high of 1227, a low of 1164, with es of 63 and sd of 19.8.
Hodgdon also shows loads with benchmark, but only with the new Hornady Sub X bullets. Well I tried it anyway with 168 ELDM's, same brass and primers, and it was a disaster. I started with 15.0 grains. The first shot went 1245, then each following shot dropped about 100fps sequentially to a low of 690. I could see the bullets as they walked down the target! Average was 852, es 555, sd 188. The brass came out more sooty with each shot, so all I can figure is the pressure was too low to fully seal the brass and the barrel carboned up. I bronze-brushed the barrel and tried a couple more with 14.0 gr benchmark. They were also super slow, so I stopped.
Titegroup worked great except for the es and sd. I can hardly wait to try it with 168's out to 100y. TG is a compact powder, so I wonder if something more bulky like red dot might light off better. But I'm also wondering about CFE Pistol. It's slower than tg or red dot, more in the power pistol range, so maybe I can run a few more grains to add bulk.
