WWII Surplus 4831

[Char-Gar]

Back in the late 50's an early 60's I used allot of Hodgdon powder because it was cheap. He also sold WWII surplus 4895 which was used to load the 30-06 Garand round, and the original Ball C and I am not certain who the govt. used that for, but I sure burned allot of it.

[hydraulic]

I still have a steel lined wooden box that an old friend bought from Hogdon, years ago. He used it until he passed away in 2001. I bought it from the widow when it still had about 6 or 8 inches of 4831 in the bottom. I'm down to about 6 lbs, now, and I load 41 grs. under the Lee 200 gr bullet in my M1. It's dark out now or I'd go take a picture. Can't remember what it says--I took a flashlight out to the garage and read the print on the box. "150 lbs 4814 for (indistinct) calibre AP and tracer ammo." Dated 1941. I don't know what 4814 was, but it was bought as 4831. Maybe Hogdon used surplus boxes of any description for shipping.

[buck1]

Dad told me years agoit was used in the BIG guns on the WWII era ships.

[kgoodrich]

ok being as you guys have an idea about the old powders do any of you have any clue to the reload data for m1 garand 30-06 with imr1185 ive been serching and serching for a long time and cant find anything at all on it.

[Echo]

The Oerlikon/Hispano was the standard 20mm on both sides, used on surface ships and tank-busting airplanes.

(And the Bofors 40mm was the standard on both sides, too)

[pdawg_shooter]

I burnt many, many lbs. of the old H4831 back in the day. It had a distinctive smell when burnt that I came to identify with shooting. The new stuff does NOT have the same smell, darn it.

[azcruiser]

During 1943 just one plant produced 206.700.000 rounds of 30-06 per month .That used 1.476.430 pounds of powder or one 50.000lb railroad freight car per day . Another plant the smallest in operation made 1.2000.000 rounds of 50 bmg daily or 43.000 lbs of powder per day
The pulp used to make powder was called Purayonier it came in 500 to 600 lbs rolls. Guess when the war stopped there became a surplus of powder pretty fast

[MakeMineA10mm]

ok being as you guys have an idea about the old powders do any of you have any clue to the reload data for m1 garand 30-06 with imr1185 ive been serching and serching for a long time and cant find anything at all on it.

I had not heard of IMR-1185 until you posted your question here, so I googled it, and found the following information from various sites (many of which are no longer in existence, but that Google has conveniently cached for us...):

Post subject: Re: Which rifle powder is closest to the powder used in WW1 for30-06?

A little further info, mostly in regards to .30-06 match ammo. Pyro DG powder was used thru 1919. In 1920, IMR 17 1/2 was used. In 1921, IMR 1076. From 1922 to 1924, HiVel 2 powder. From 1925 to 1927, IMR 1147. In 1928, IMR 1185 was used. In 1929 and 1930, IMR 1186 was used. In 1931 they switched back to IMR 1185, and stayed with it thru 1940 when it was replaced with IMR 4895. The pre-war Palma and International ammo sometimes used a different powder than regular match ammo. Alot of precision load development was taking place in the 20's and 30's. The first year that a 172gr 9 degree BT bullet was used in match ammo (later designated M72) was 1925. -- Don

From US Army Ordnance School text, January, 1942:

Cal. .30propellants. - IMR 1185 (Improved Military Rifle). - This powder is no longer standard for loading cal. .30 ammunition. It is found in the cartridges, ball, M1; A.P., M1; and in early lots of tracer M1. It is a nitrocellulose powder containing powdered tin or tin salts and coated with graphite which gives it a black, shiny appearance. The powder is cylindrical in form and has a single perforation through its long axis.

From what I could gather (which included no reloading data), 1185 sounds like it was not hugely agreeable with the M1 Garand. Sounds like it was one of the early IMR powders that the Ordnance Corps switched to in the mid-20s through the 30s, but then dumped in 1940 when 4895 came along. I know I've read somewhere about the reason the military disliked the early IMRs (although they were apparently better than the prior "smokeless" powders, such as Pyro D.G.), but I can't remember where right now.

You might want to look in old Handloader magazines and in Hatcher's Book of the Garand for more info. Those two sources are jumping out in my memory.

Couple things we know for sure:
1) If you have a usable quantity of that powder, be wary of it's age, because it looks like none of it has been made since the 1930s.

2) The Garand was not in wide-spread issuance while 1185 was being loaded, so it looks more like it's an '03 Springfield powder than an M1 Garand powder (though it should work in the Garand, if you could just find the right load...).

Lastly, those tin salts bother me. Anytime I see the word salts, I think corrosive. Not in the traditional sense, but more in the "if you don't clean it quick after firing, the salts deposited in the bore will attract moisture, which then can corrode your barrel."

[atr]

when I started reloading in high school I bought a 20 lb keg of 4831 for next to nothing..
used it for loading my 30-06 bolt action,,,,,great stuff ! wish I had another keg at that price !

[leadman]

Info I have gathered from reading the old (1930-1970) American Rifleman magazines is the tin had a tendency to coat the bore and cause accuracy problems. This along with the cupro-nickel bullets led to the use of ammonia to clean the bores. Unless I had a very large amount of 1185 I think I would turn it into fertilizer.

[rintinglen]

4831 was the first powder I ever loaded! A friend's Dad showed me how to reload on his Pacific C press, and of course it was a 30-06, and in 1970 surplus 4831 was still widely used, he had a green metal (?) drum that might have been about 3 gallon-sized, about half full of it.

[Char-Gar]

Info I have gathered from reading the old (1930-1970) American Rifleman magazines is the tin had a tendency to coat the bore and cause accuracy problems. This along with the cupro-nickel bullets led to the use of ammonia to clean the bores. Unless I had a very large amount of 1185 I think I would turn it into fertilizer.

In the mid-20s, Frankford Arsenal took to tin plating the bullets for National Match ammo. Several times the tin soldered the bullet into the case, causing some blow ups. They quit that tin plating nonsense pretty damn quick, you betcha!

[Blacksmith]

Check Hatcher's Notebook for information about adding Tin to powder. At the moment I can't remember why but remember him explaining it in some detail.

Blacksmith

[dualsport]

I scored a few pounds of the old 4831 20 years ago. I use it sparingly, it gives very good accuracy in a variety of cartridges.

[frnkeore]

I found it (1185) in Sharpe's "Complete Guild To Handloading". It gives a breaf disciption of it's use with the 172 gr bullet but, no loading data. It gives me the impression that it's like 3031. If I were to use it, I'd start at 10% below 3031 starting loads and work from there.

It said that NRA members, in those days (maybe '28-'30) could buy it as a bulk powder. There maybe more in Hatchers book but, you'll have to look completely through it to find out. There is a huge section on reloading the '06 with both corrosive and noncorrosive primers but, no 1185 loads.

Frank

[frnkeore]

I did fine one load for 1185 in "Hatchers Notebook". This one load makes it look more like 4064.

172 gr BT
49.4 gr 1185
2589 fps
ES 48
45,335 CUP

Frank

[MakeMineA10mm]

I did fine one load for 1185 in "Hatchers Notebook". This one load makes it look more like 4064.

172 gr BT
49.4 gr 1185
2589 fps
ES 48
45,335 CUP

Frank

Yes, but keep in mind that back in those days the pressure-measurement and velocity-measurement equipment wasn't as accurate as today. (A factor I believe has a lot to do with the toning-down of loads in modern manuals.) This isn't even taking into consideration the lot-to-lot variations in powders which we still deal with today, but which had a tendancy to be bigger back in those days as well...

All-in-all, combined with the age issue, I'd go very slow, if I went there at all. I might think about using it with some ultra-low-pressure cast boolit loads in something like a 303 Brit or 30-40 Krag rather than test a Garand's gas system with it.

I noted in doing a lot of research over the last year that most of the old information on loads for the Garand from Hatcher or the Ordnance Dept., always tended to gravitate around 50.0grs, regardless of powder. (I learned that the Garand's gas system was designed to work around VOLUME of gas more than pressure - although the pressure still has to be right around 9000-10,000psi at the port ideally - and 48.0-50.0grs is ideal, which means most "Garand-appropriate" powders will load at that level.) The invariability in velocities and loads made me distrust these old data sources as fallible, so I disregarded them. Now, using that powder for low-pressure, bolt-gun, cast-boolit loads seems more reasonable to me, FWIW.

If you have a lot of it to make the work worth it, I wish you luck! If you only have a pound or two, I'd make fertilizer out of it... Do you still have original commercial cans? If so, it'd be awesome to have a pic!

[frnkeore]

This data is most likely from the late 20's, before the Garand was even designed and was done with corrosive primers. There is also a a warning in Sharpes book saying that you need to reduce noncorrosive primer by 5% to get equal pressures. I believe that CUP presure units were the same as used in the late 20's and the reading is taken with a micrometer so, I don't see how it would be less accurate than current readings of CUP. The powder could deteriorate after all this time but, kept in air tight metal cans, I would think not. There is still lots of old 4831 running around that's still good. I would look at it, look for rust in the can and that it hasn't begun to crumple and make sure it still has the distint acetone type smell. If it passes thoughs tests, I'd try it with low end 4064 or 3031 loads and work up. I found nothing to say it has any tin in it but, it still could have. If it's still in good shape, I think it would be a good powder (I like 4064). There is only one way to tell but, be cautious.

Frank

[Big Dave]

Fiddled with the stuff a little back in the early 60s. Seemed to give pretty erratic performance in 30-40 Krag and 8x57 Mauser but worked well in a friend's 264 Win mag so let him have it and went back to 4064 and 4320.

[358 Win]

A friend of mine did some electrical work for a widow and asked him if he would like to take some gun powder her late husband had. He kept it in a refrigerator by the bench. He gave
me 2 full pounds of surplus H4831. Said he would not try it due to the age. This was 3 years
ago. It was in the red paper cans marked "military surplus". It smelled wonderful and no brown dust what so ever. I worked up some loads in one of my .270 Win rifles to see if I could safely get to the 60gr charge of it behind the HDY 130gr Interlok bullet. When I reached
60gr the velocity was 3150fps out of my 22" bbl. Accuracy was steller also. 358 Win