Powder Blending

[35remington]

Hodgdon pulled a little bait and switch with the 4227's. Despite what they said publicly, they actually dropped iMR 4227. The current IMR 4227 is the old H4227 Extreme with graphite coating added.

I'm not sure about the reason for the mendacity. A little digging uncovered the truth.

[nanuk]

this is one of the reasons I really like this site

"Don't Do It!" isn't worth squat, but when explained WHY? that is when we all learn.

I hope everyone who reads this thread understands the final (pretty much) agreed thinking on this, which was summed up pretty well by Larry Gibson, with a quote from SingleShot:

to wit: powders in the same burn rate range should be able to be mixed with predictable results that should fall somewhere in between the two and no faster than the fastest and no slower than the slowest.....as long as they are also the same type of powder, i.e. ball with ball, flake with flake and extruded with extruded


And this makes sense to me.

did I get this right?

Now.. on to the duplexing threads....

[Rooster]

Wow, six years!

I did blend those 4895PD kegs together to get one consistent lot out of the bunch. No problems and even though I type with one finger of each hand the rest of the digits are still dangling daintily next to them. I mixed them in an old fiber Unique keg until it satisfied my OCD tendencies. Now I would never consider mixing two powders of differing manufacture but this time, with the one powder type, it was OK. I had purchased these from Hi-Tech, back when it was cheap (crying emoticon here), in a large powder order and there were two distinct lot #'s in the one shipment. It seemed rather straight forward and sensible to me.

[xringshutr]

I have an example to share regarding blended powders....I think I have posted this before, but can't remember where. Here is the story, I'll try to keep it short. Keep in mind that I have been reloading and shooting for 25+years and have always been cautious and vigilant in my techniques and always err on the side of safety.
I "acquired" a sizeable volume of powder from a well known surplus component distributor. This powder was claimed to be pull down powder from 3 different lots of 223 Rem ammo. from a different well known ammo manufacturer. Apparently some the ammo had primers inverted in the pockets and obviously could not be sold to the public. Upon inspection, there were indeed three types of powder in the drum. Two ball powders and one greenish yellow extruded. When offered this powder I couldn't say "no" to $1.50/lb. He provided me with loaded rounds of each powder to see what the charge weight for each powder was. All 55gr bullets. I took the powder home with a huge grin the entire 6 hour trip back. Pulled a few bullets of each and the two ball powder rounds were around 23.7 gr, while the extruded was 24.7. I was initially going to screen the powder and try to get separate the extruded powder. But, I thought, what the heck, burn rates are similar, I'll give it a whirl. Loaded a very conservative 20.0 gr and worked up little by little over the chrono. Out of my 700V-223 Rem. It was clocking at around 3175 and producing around 3/4" groups at a charge weight of 23.5 and absolutely no signs of pressure. I may try it in some other cartridges too, but for now, I literally have a virtually endless supply of 223 powder that works fine for plinking and PD'ing. For the competition range, I wouldn't mess with it, but in this instance, blended powders of similar burn rates worked out ok. Let the mud slinging begin, but you aren't going to convince me that I am going to blow myself up.

[ROGER4314]

I have no problem with mixing different lots of the same powder. Powders change over the years and I noticed that Bullseye makes a lot more smoke than it used to. It also leaves a dry, dusty coating on the muzzle. Never noted that before.

I know guys who mix different kinds of powder with different burn rates. That's called a duplex powder. If they do it and get by with it, more power to them. The powders MAY develop an entirely different personality than either powder did separately.

Charge weights are spooky like that. Reduced charges will probably get lower and lower pressure until a point is reached when pressure can spike. The powder no longer burns at the rate it was designed to burn and explodes, instead. That's one of the reasons that we have minimum loads.

I run my reloading bench, I'm 100% responsible and make all the decisions. Here's how I do it.

I have a library of about 17 different powder/bullet/reloading manuals. If I can't find a particular or similar load published in one of those manuals, I won't load it. The manuals even disagree with the Lyman being the most conservative. I sort and sift the manual information and decide on my starting loads based on those tables. I'm not into experimenting. The powder/bullet manufacturers spend millions of Dollars to research that data. That's good enough for me!

In over 45 years....no KB's or mishaps and I've been a successful pistol and rifle competitor. That system has worked for me and others can do as they wish.

Flash