The 2007 C.I.P. CD with update won't be available until later in the fall, but the kind folks at the Birmingham Proof House sent me a copy of the 2005 edition for the time being.

C.I.P. stikes me as being much more thorough than SAAMI. The latest SAAMI set I have dates back to the early 1990's. In any case, the C.I.P. CD-R provides a wealth of information.

I also wholeheartedly recomend the Patrone und Lagermasse CD that is available from Herr Treibel in Germany.

The SAAMI set does a fair job with the statistice of managing a production run so that very few cartridges get over the published maximum pressure line.

Well, off to the bank on Monday to wire transfer funds to Johannsen Jagd for the latest edition of RWS Weiderladen.

I plan to eventually buy brass from Germany, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, the Balkans and the USA. Then I will load American bullets over Belgique, Swedish, Australian, Canadian, Czech and Finnish powders for sale to all of the above (and much more).

Half of the fun lies in cross referencing loads in six languages (seven counting Australian).

A fellow poster was kind enough to reference a review article about cartridge pressure specificationn, complete with hyper links.

Just FYI, some of the powders sold as French powders are in fact Belgian powders. If you ask the developer of Quickload in Germany he can send you an update which will include what Nobel Sport calls the Vectan SP 11 and SP 12 powders (spherical, double based). Since the French government will not allow the release of the required information to the Quickload developer, it is only the Belgian made powders sold under the French name which appear in Quickload. By the way, SP 11 is a great powder for the 404 Jeffery, but Tubal 5000 is even better but there is no Quickload data. I'll send you my results when you get around to loading with French powders.

Thanks for the update. I'll give it a few months, then, and order a copy for myself. I plan to have them do a little digging on some old British NE rounds at the same time.

Thanks Wink,

It has been fun piecing together what powders are really what. We will have to test 404 cartridges on Lord Darby Eland one of these days.

LD

Lawndart -

If you happen to speak to any of the people at Gevelot in your powder explorations, perhaps you can ask them who supplied the powders called RP-3 (Rifle Powder 3) and RP-4 (Rifle Powder 4) which were used at their Saskatoon, Saskatchewan ammunition plant until it closed in 1971 or '72?

Those are two of the nicest to use powders I have ever run across. Both are extruded, but I believe are the smallest grained (both diameter and length) extruded powders I have ever seen. They throw from a measure just like ball powder... Also very shiny powders, which suggests to me possibly a heavy graphite coating. I suspect they are double-based, thus providing more energy than the same weight of single-based powders

Anyway, they sold it off in 100-kilo boxes when the plant shut down and I have been shooting it ever since, but now am just recently out of RP-4 and have maybe 10 pounds of RP-3 left.

The RP-3 is very nice for .308 and .358 Winchester and similar capacity/pressure cartridges; seems to have a burn rate between IMR 3031 and IMR 4895. The RP-4 seems to burn more like it is somewhere between IMR 4064 and H-4350 and has worked very well with heavy bullets in chamberings such as 7MM and 8 m/m x57 and slightly larger cases.

At least that seems true with my lots. It was non-canistered, so who knows what the next lot would have been like?

Anyway, am not suggesting you might have a desire or need for it, just am curious as to who made it and what the maker called it, to see if I can find some more, somewhere, somehow.

Thanks,

AC

When I begin to make the rounds of companies to get some training on this subject I'll ask around.

When we look at those "relative burning rate" charts it seems like there is a bazillion powders out there. Many times one powder is sold by three or four companies under different names.

LD