determining burning rate?

[singleshotbuff]

Gentlemen,

As I have posted before (at least I think I have), I have been using pull down powder from some 50s manufactured Yugo 8X57mm ammo in reduced loads using the same bullets. I just reduce the powder charge 15% and load it with the pulled bullets in commercial cases to avoid corrosive cleaning chores. Shoots good too, decent velocity spreads (40 fps extreme spread & 14.3 standard deviation).

I was just wondering how I would determine (WAG??) the approximate burning rate of this particular lot of powder? How do the surplus powder resellers do it? Any ideas?

Thanks

SSB

[Maven]

Couldn't you use identical charges of IMR 3031, IMR 4064 and/or IMR 4350 with the same primers and weight/brand of jacketed bullet and compare them to the milsurp powder to develop a bench mark?

[singleshotbuff]

Maven,

Kinda what I was thinking, just looking for any other ideas/input.

SSB

[Buckshot]

..............You could take your powder charge and velocity and compare it to velocities in the reloading manuals to ball park the data. In different firearms and components there will be variances.

Graf was selling some Vectan Nobel powders and a description for one sounded a lot like 4198. Ie: good is small/medium cases for full power and with lighter bullets in standard size case capacity, and words to that effect. I got some and tried a couple loads that were light for 4198 and it came in close.

I then loaded several different cartridges I had experience with using 4198 and boolits on hand to duplicate it. I loaded load for load 4198 and the Tubal 2000 (I call it T2K :-) ) in stuff from the 7.62x39 to the 45-70. Several of the results were exact matches and a few were off a bit, maybe what a person might experience in going to a different lot of the same powder.

I was satisfied it was enough alike I would just load it using 4198 data, excluding any 'hot' loads unless I worked it up first.

................Buckshot