Well, I've been working up some loads for my 204 Ruger. I started with Benchmark and didn't get the speed or precision I was looking for. Moved on to X-Terminator, which the jury is still out on because I got the speed but not the accuracy I'm looking for.

I've moved on to RL-10X. One thing I immediatly noticed was extremely bad sooting of the brass. I initially thought it was because of the lower load starting but the sooting never really went away until I got into the higher powder loadings; however, the accuracy faded.

Therefore, now I'm looking at a couple loads that seem to be fairly accurate, with bad sooting and speed lower than desired.

Here are a couple of the powder loadings that show promise.



Even with the one shot to the left, this group measured 0.770 MOA and without this shot MOA was down to 0.383.



The brass used was new Winchester brass that I only ran the expander ball thru, ran thru a primer pocket uniformer, chamfer and deburr.

I'm wondering if some of the sooting might go away once all of the brass has been fired. Then again, I' not really happy with the speed of these loadings and I might just continue on with another powder choice. Any thoughts?

I would recommend RL-7. See if it works for you.