Coffee's on   
Mostly cloudy with a high of 84 °F and a 56% chance of precipitation.
  What was to be a RAIN event now named TS Arlene has move south headed toward western Cuba.
I thought sure (eh! so did the guessers) we'd see squally conditions all weekend.
We'll see rain but that's not unusual.

After quite a bit more research, I found that 4.0 grains of Unique is a duplicate for the original 1892 Army load (150 grain hollow base bullet over similar smokeless powder). 

In my earlier test, 3.3 of Unique worked well with the 148 grain hollow base wad cutter, loaded out 1/4 past case mouth. (That is the load for flush seated 148 HBs) It was still on the light side (though not as the Trail Boss, which - though accurate, were absolutely mouse f@rt loads).

The Bear Creek hollow base bullets are loaded longer, increasing case capacity with bullet in it.  Based on my experience, 4.0 grains would seem to be about right, and give more boom for expansion/obduration into the bore.


Right, is myy .38 Long Colt load, 150 grain Round Nose, Hollow Base bullet from Bear Creek over 4.0 grains Unique.  On the left is a pre-war .38 Long Colt Army load from Remington-UMC.

Not yet!!! But I was prepared to update my profile avatar to a skeleton filled with arrows & tag line "why don't he rite?" 😅

who would have thought?  Happily the base temp was not say -5 F