Vihtavuori Pistol
Vihtavuori N32C Tin Star
Purpose-built for Cowboy Action Shooting with lead bullets in single-action revolvers and lever guns. Also used for subsonic and blank loads.
Tin Star is built for one job, lead bullets in single-action revolvers and lever guns for Cowboy Action, and it is very good at it. Vihtavuori deliberately gave it a very low bulk density so a light load actually fills a .45 Colt or .44 Special case rather than lying in the bottom of it, which improves ignition consistency and, more importantly, makes a double or triple charge unmistakable. Clean-burning and easy to ignite. Outside cowboy loads, subsonics and blanks there is no reason to reach for it.
- Cowboy Action .45 Colt
- .38 Special lead loads
- .44 S&W Special
- subsonic revolver loads
Who has Vihtavuori N32C Tin Star today
Checked October 10None of the retailers we track list Vihtavuori N32C Tin Star right now. See what is in stock.
Official Vihtavuori load data →
Specifications
| Manufacturer | Vihtavuori |
|---|---|
| Product family | Vihtavuori Pistol |
| Status | Currently produced |
| Application | pistol |
| Grain form | extruded |
| Composition | single-base |
| Burn-rate position | 34 of 198 (fastest = 1) — what this means |
| Typical cartridges | 38 Special, 357 Magnum, 44 S&W Special, 44 Remington Magnum, 45 Colt |
Grain shape
Extruded tube grains made deliberately bulky; the low bulk density is the whole design, forcing a light charge to occupy real case volume. Neutral-burning, so the pressure curve stays gentle in a black-powder-era case.
Why geometry decides burn rate more than chemistry does: Shape Is the Product.
Vihtavuori made N32C deliberately bulky, with markedly reduced bulk density, so that the large-capacity cases of older cartridges fill properly. They note that the resulting high loading volume makes an accidental double or triple charge far more obvious, and describe it as burning very clean with easy ignition. Vihtavuori keeps Tin Star in its own product group rather than inside the N300 series, and it does not appear on their published burn rate chart.
Burn rate
Vihtavuori places it between N320 and N330.
Chart agreement: coverage gap in the OPPOSITE direction - listed and ranked by Hodgdon and Wolfe/LoadData, but omitted from Vihtavuori's own current tabloid chart. Ranked by: Hodgdon, Wolfe/LoadData.
Powders charted near it — neighbours on the chart are not substitutes, and adjacency tells you nothing about what charge either one takes:
- Hodgdon HP-38 (position 31)
- Winchester 231 (position 32)
- Alliant 20/28 (position 33)
- Winchester WinClean 244 (position 35)
- Alliant Unique (position 36)
- Hodgdon Universal (position 37)
Sources
The specifications above come from Vihtavuori's own published documentation, linked below. The two “RCM's read” sections are ours, not theirs — our assessment of what this powder is like to load, drawn from its published characteristics and from what handloaders consistently report. No manufacturer endorses them and no source below backs them. If you think we have one wrong, tell us — we would rather fix it.