Unique is a intriguing powder. It has been on the market for something like 120 years, so you'll see recipes for it everywhere. It is possibly the least dense ("fluffy") powder, until you get to Cowboy Action powders, like
Trail Boss. So it's main job these days is filling large revolver cases. In smaller auto pistol cases "case fill" will be between "excellent" and "too good". Do not worry about compressed loads. Almost every load with
Unique is compressed in some way. It's a very docile powder with a wide load range. Modern powders have largely displaced its use, mainly because they all took aim at replacing it. This is because
Bullseye and
Unique probably owned 70% of the handgun powder market in the 1970's and 1980's.
Unique has 2 issues in 9mm...
• It is known to "bridge" in some powder measures due to its coarse, crystalline structure. So watch your case fill levels closely. Even then you may have slight powder variations which may lead to less than optimal accuracy. I would also expect higher SD numbers for the same reason.
• It's burn rate is right on the cusp of being too slow for 9mm. (It
IS too slow for blowback guns like 32ACP and 380Auto.) So it's only going to burn correctly in cartridges constructed for the higher end of the range. If you build low power "plinking" ammo with it, then expect a lot of black soot, which is the natural consequence of inefficient and incomplete ignition.
So as a 21st century shooter, you've been exposed to many of the newer handgun powders. Since all of the newer powders you have ever tried are in direct competition with
Unique, I would tell you not to set your expectation levels too high. Remember, all these other powders have packed in 100 years of improvements that
Unique simply doesn't have.
As long as you can put up with "respectable" performance and a little gun cleaning you'll be very happy. Every craft beer drinker keeps a 6-pack of
Miller Lite in the back of the frig just in case the crazy next door neighbor or the ding-a-ling brother-in-law drops in to "bum a beer". Everyone has it. It's a standard. It's simply ubiquitous.
Unique is just the
Miller Lite of the powder industry !
The only difference is that
Miller Lite is '
less filling'.
