308 and h450, is lee data good?

[clearwater]

Still trying to use up some h450. Lee has some data for some boolits about 170 grain, I have for 308.

I was hoping to start around 34 grains to keep leading down. Is there any hazard in reduced slow ball powders with cast boolits like there can be with jacketed?

[lotech]

Use the Lee data with caution. While the book contains many good, safe loads, they come from a variety of sources and bullets are often unidentified. I believe it's been a good while since H450 was produced and it's pretty slow. In the old Hodgdon #26 manual, they list a few cast loads for the .308. H450 is not among them. Your suggested starting load is likely much too light for this powder. For something better than this amateur Internet opinion, I would call Hodgdon. Good luck-

[clearwater]

Use the Lee data with caution. While the book contains many good, safe loads, they come from a variety of sources and bullets are often unidentified. I believe it's been a good while since H450 was produced and it's pretty slow. In the old Hodgdon #26 manual, they list a few cast loads for the .308. H450 is not among them. Your suggested starting load is likely much too light for this powder. For something better than this amateur Internet opinion, I would call Hodgdon. Good luck-

Thanks,

Hodgdon says h450 was made 50 years ago and couldn't recommend using powder that old.
I have 3 lbs, it looks and smells good. Used it in some 25-06 jacketed loads where it gave
just ok accuracy, 2.5", and velocity spread of near 50 fps. Kinda a waste of bullets and barrel.

What do people do when using slow powder in cast loads? Starting loads for jacketed?

[lotech]

Minimum book figure would probably be safe, but make sure your bullet alloy is suitable for whatever pressure/velocity your charge produces.

[runfiverun]

H-450 is right there with RL-19 as far as burn speed goes.
unfortunately the only loads I have for 4831/rl-19 etc in the 308 are near or at 2400 fps.
if you want to burn it up try 35grs of it in your 30-30 under a 170gr boolit that should fill the case enough and burn fairly clean.
the issue with H-450 was finding situations where the case was 95-100% full then it would settle down and do it's thing.
unfortunately it generally didn't fill the case much over 85% and got a little finicky.
instead of reformulating the powder or working on the deterrent coating they just dropped it from production.

I still have about 8 lbs of it I need to burn through and will seriously take a look at the medium [X57] case sizes to use it in.

[tomme boy]

Lee does not test any of the data they have. They rely on others to do it for them. Sooooo