Vintage Hodgdon 4831 Rifle Powder

[auto5man]

anyone have any old manuals that have suitable load data for this old powder. Orange and yellow can, lot says 69.

[Harter66]

I just use era data . The Hornady manual data remained unchanged through 78 that was within a half gr of 48th Lyman . Different bullet though .

[auto5man]

Thanks Harter, found some loads with it in an old Lyman manual I forgot about.

[gnoahhh]

Disclaimer: DO NOT TRY THIS TRICK AT HOME, KIDS!

Back in the mid-1960's I got my start in handloading under the tutelage of the old curmudgeonly local gunsmith. He had a sideline going whereby he loaded customer's .30-06 brass for them, and he put me to work doing it. (Back then in the area every Mother's Son shot a .30-06 it seemed.) Big break for a 14 year old gun nut. Guys would bring in their empties and we reloaded them for a couple bucks a box. The drill was this: 1. Full length resize and reprime (with Alcan primers, BTW). 2. Dip the case into a big keg of Surplus 4831, and strike the overflow off level with the case mouth with a butter knife. 3. Seat a 150 grain spitzer (from the Zero Bullet Company) by forcing it in and crunching down the powder. The theory was that an '06 case couldn't hold enough Surplus 4831 (there was no other 4831 back then) to get you in trouble. I guess that was true as we never had any complaints. On the contrary, word spread far and wide that our ammo was deadly stuff on deer and accurate to boot - business boomed.

Ah, for the simpler times....

[gumbo333]

In the late 60's the old surplus H4831 was the first powder I used. 70 cents a pound but I had to bring my own container. 6mm Rem, dip the case in the powder, shake some out half way down the neck, seat a 80 gr Speer hollow point that had a huge gaping hole in the nose. Why waste money on a scale? Go shoot a coyote. Used my Lee hammer/ whacker dies. Still have it. I don't think they have ever changed the load data for H4831 powder thru the years, old surplus or newly made powder.

[Texas by God]

Haha, you old guys! Our older mentors gave us kids some of that paper sack 4831 and we did the fill it, spill it a bit, and seat the bullet method in our 22-250 and .243! We called that ammo our “ Charging Armadillo Loads”! It wasn’t 300 yard crow accurate, but it worked pretty good.
Good times.

[dale2242]

I have a good supply of OLD H4831from 2 sources.
I use H4831 data from any manual with good success
.

[gumbo333]

dale 2242, lucky you. Wished I had a stash of old surplus 4831. We used white cardboard Dairy Queen pint ice cream containers.

[cp1969]

Paper-sack powder was common 40-50 years ago when gun shops would buy powder by the keg and resell it by the pound. Bought a lot of it back then.

[dale2242]

Mine are in 50# paper cartons sold by Hodgdon.
I bought one full in 1970 after the 1968 gun control act panic buy from a guy for $20.
The other was gifted to me by a friend a couple of months ago.