I am loading my .458 WM shells for Africa this fall and I just opened a new bottle of AA 2230 and it has some inconsistent grains in it that are larger than the norm. Looks different from the first bottle I used. Is this OK? This is only the second bottle of this powder I have ever used? The first was very uniform small ball powder.

I'd call Accurate tomorrow and see what they say.

Mark

Western Powders says it is fine and it just looks that way sometimes.

It doesn't sound like the two cans are from the same lot. My advice it to work up your load again with the new lot. Start 5% or so below your old lot (assuming it was a safe load) and if you can chrony it - all the better. Work up to the old velocity and you're done.
Its good practice to find a powder that seems to work and then go buy more than you think you'll need, all of a single lot. You'll find a use for it!
Gary

ledvm,

2230 in a dangerous game rifle?

It's so temperature sensitive. I'd think that Varget would be much more practical powder for a 458 and it's what I'll be using in mine.

$bob$

I am no expert on this subject but AA 2230 was recommended to me by several pretty knowledgeable guys on AR as the best powder for the .458 WM. I shoots very well in my .458 WM. You are the first person to say it is temp sensitve.

2230 is ball powder and therefore is temperature sensitive.

You can get great velocity with reasonable pressures from Varget.

http://data.hodgdon.com/main_menu.asp

$bob$

Let's see how well this works...

Bullet Weight (Gr.) Order BW Powder Bullet Diam. C.O.L. Grs. Vel. (ft/s) Pressure Grs. Vel. (ft/s) Pressure

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

400 GR. SFT SP 400 Varget .458" 3.220" 74.0 2246 34,500 CUP 77.0C 2310 38,800 CUP
450 GR. SFT SP 450 Varget .458" 3.340" 70.0 2083 34,200 CUP 74.0C 2195 41,600 CUP
500 GR. HDY JRN 500 Varget .458" 3.310" 70.0 2056 39,400 CUP 74.0C 2152 48,100 CUP

All powders are "temperature sensitive" to some extent. Recently, powder marketers, who like all marketers are always looking for something new to put in their advertising hype, have started advertising that certain of their powders are "temperture insensitive".

From 40+ years of experience in handloading, I am confident that with most powders, whether ball, flake, or tubular, you'll find similar variations with ambient temperature. Besides, I can assure you that the temperatures that ledvm is dealing with in Texas in summer working up his loads will certainly be hotter than those in Africa during the Southern Hemishere's winter.

Lane: If 2230 is giving you the desired performance, use it. Plenty of game was successfully killed before Hodgdon started importing powder from ADI and "temperature sensitivity" became all the rage.

StoneCreek,

You are full of it. I've tested the same lot of Varget at 95 degrees and at 25 degrees and I can tell you that the variation was so small in the same rifle at the same range with the same bullets, primers etc. we weren't sure there was any.

We finally decided that the variation was less than 25fps and maybe around 15fps.

I've NEVER seen even one ball powder that showed less than 100fps deviation in those temperature extremes and that can mean a lot of pressure on a very hot day.

$bob$

A very knowledgeable person who does a LOT of load work and pressure tests alot as well, told me to use AA 2230 and not worry about it.

I am no expert but the powder gives me 2250 fps with 450 grain bullets fairly easily.

Going to stick with it!

ledvm:

I'm using AA2230 in my .458WM and have only good comments for same.

I shoot only 500gr bullets, at an average velocity of 2185fps. Certainly enough for hunting/killing DG anywhere in the world.

As an aside, I use this load in Zim when shooting elephant crop raiders. It works, wonderfully!

Go for it!