I am showing 6.7 grains as my starting load for 230 grain bullets with Power Pistol. The note on my spreadsheet says it came from the Lee Manual.
Since you are new to reloading, let me remind you that you NEVER just make a load in a general range between min and max loads and go with that. Always start at the min or starting load and work up, watching for signs of pressure at every step. You need to come up with a test plan and then follow it. Personally, I load 3 cartridges at each load weight in steps from min to max and the steps are in increments that depend on the overall powder weight (little increments for little loads essentially) and spread. I fire these off a sand bag at 25 feet and through my chronograph, writing down all the chrono data, measuring the group sizes, taking note of any thing different about these loads and checking the brass for pressure signs. When I get home I go over the data and you should begin to see a sweet spot of velocity, consistency of velocity, and group size. I then load more (usually 5 each) in that sweet spot (both up and down in finer increments), return to the range, go through the same process and look to see if any load sticks out as better than the others. There is a whole lot more to it than this, but in simple terms this is how it works. This process develops a load that works best for your pistol.
Now I'm usually starting with at least 2 different powders and a number of different bullets. So I'm bringing my test lot way down after the first trip. Some bullets and powders I may decide after that first trip are not going to work well in my pistol and I drop them. I'm looking for what works best in my pistol. The resulting reload will be what works best for my pistol and only for my pistol.
If you only have one powder and one bullet that is fine, you still go through the process the same. First trip, 3 rounds each to make sure you are not having high pressure issues and to get a velocity average and group size. Second trip is to zero in on what is the best load. You can still develop a load without a chronograph just using group size and watching for pressure signs, but the chrono can tell you so much more, like diminishing returns on increasing load sizes, or wide variance in velocity (this could point to issues other than just the load). The only limitation on not having a chrono to you have to be more careful when approaching max loads, but then your most accurate loads are typically well short of max.
Bottomline is that if you are just loading something a buddy told you about without properly working up a load and even though you are using the manual to make sure you stay within the reasonable safety limits, you are still missing the best part of reloading, maximizing the load for your pistol, or making a better cartridge than what you can buy...oh, and at a whole lot cheaper price.
