35remington
06-15-2007, 08:46 PM
This was almost entirely predictable, being one of the corollaries to Murphy's Law: Discontinued powders shoot great.
I've rebarrelled my .25-20 Contender with an expensive OTT barrel to replace the Contender Custom Shop barrel that shot boolits poorly. In going back over loads that shot at least passably in the badly throated Contender barrel, H4227 stood out in the new OTT barrel, averaging under a half inch at fifty yards using unsorted, unweighed bullets from a Lyman 257420 double cavity and a six cavity group buy Lee. In the somewhat fussy .25-20, any good shooting load is not to be ignored.
Now, the question.
H4227 was made in Australia, and was uncoated, greenish gray looking extruded granules.
As I recall, the IMR powder (was?) produced in Canada, and had a graphite coating. Painfully now aware that H4227 is no longer manufactured, I picked up a can of IMR4227 and noted on the label it was made in Australia.
Hmmm. Those Hodgdon boys are tricky. Please recall that Hodgdon "bought out" the IMR line.
So, are the Aussies simply coating the old H4227 with graphite and calling it IMR 4227 and giving lip service to their claim that they are "continuing" IMR 4227 while dropping H4227? Or, are they actually producing IMR 4227 to the original specifications for the Canadian powder? Why would they?
It's been awhile since my last can of IMR 4227 and I can't recall what the appearance of the powder was before this most recent can.
Supposedly the reason the IMR was retained while the H was dropped was that the IMR version was by far the most popular, which would argue that the Aussies would now produce 4227 to IMR specification rather than H.
The other question is that whether the two powders were enough different in performance that anyone would notice the difference if they were "switched"- or not switched.
I intend to find out whether the present IMR 4227 differs sufficiently from the H in accuracy in my .25-20, having never compared the two directly in this caliber. I'm hoping that they're similar enough that accuracy will be comparable. It should be - a nice gentle push for my low velocity small game loads (1250 fps). I can't imagine why one would shoot and not the other, as they're very close in burn rate. But you never know.
Thoughts? Facts? Even opinions appreciated.
John Wootters never bothered to distinguish between the two when using 4227 in his favorite .25-20 load, and maybe I won't need to either. I'm hoping.
I've rebarrelled my .25-20 Contender with an expensive OTT barrel to replace the Contender Custom Shop barrel that shot boolits poorly. In going back over loads that shot at least passably in the badly throated Contender barrel, H4227 stood out in the new OTT barrel, averaging under a half inch at fifty yards using unsorted, unweighed bullets from a Lyman 257420 double cavity and a six cavity group buy Lee. In the somewhat fussy .25-20, any good shooting load is not to be ignored.
Now, the question.
H4227 was made in Australia, and was uncoated, greenish gray looking extruded granules.
As I recall, the IMR powder (was?) produced in Canada, and had a graphite coating. Painfully now aware that H4227 is no longer manufactured, I picked up a can of IMR4227 and noted on the label it was made in Australia.
Hmmm. Those Hodgdon boys are tricky. Please recall that Hodgdon "bought out" the IMR line.
So, are the Aussies simply coating the old H4227 with graphite and calling it IMR 4227 and giving lip service to their claim that they are "continuing" IMR 4227 while dropping H4227? Or, are they actually producing IMR 4227 to the original specifications for the Canadian powder? Why would they?
It's been awhile since my last can of IMR 4227 and I can't recall what the appearance of the powder was before this most recent can.
Supposedly the reason the IMR was retained while the H was dropped was that the IMR version was by far the most popular, which would argue that the Aussies would now produce 4227 to IMR specification rather than H.
The other question is that whether the two powders were enough different in performance that anyone would notice the difference if they were "switched"- or not switched.
I intend to find out whether the present IMR 4227 differs sufficiently from the H in accuracy in my .25-20, having never compared the two directly in this caliber. I'm hoping that they're similar enough that accuracy will be comparable. It should be - a nice gentle push for my low velocity small game loads (1250 fps). I can't imagine why one would shoot and not the other, as they're very close in burn rate. But you never know.
Thoughts? Facts? Even opinions appreciated.
John Wootters never bothered to distinguish between the two when using 4227 in his favorite .25-20 load, and maybe I won't need to either. I'm hoping.