i am getting ready to buy an 8pd jub of W-748. i will mainly be using it to reload .222 and .223 bolt action rifles with 40-55 grain vmax bullets. is this a wise choice in powder?

also i will be using winchester small rifle primers.

i found the powder at a gunshop for $125. so i decided to give it a shot.

I've been reloading .223 Vmax 55 grain bullets with 26.5 grains of W748 and it works well in my rifle.

The problem I have now is I need to find someone that can shoot 80 grain .22 bullets. I've got a box that I can't use.

748 is good stuff.That is a good price.It also works good in a host of other cartridges.

Isn't it the same as H335? If so, it's one of the preferred powders for a .223.

Yes; H335 was supposed to be surplus 748; start low and check for pressure as some lots of it are hot. I blew a primer way back in a 1917 Enfield with a supposedly normal load of 335. Back then it was something like $3 a pound.

W748 is a good deal slower than H335 is almost every loading.

WC844 is the rough equivalent of H335.

W-748 works well in both 223 and 308 win loads. Wish I could find an 8 lb keg for that price....
Bill

I'm loading it in my .223. I bought a supply several years ago. It's maybe not the cleanest powder ever. But today the only things I'd try instead would be CFE223 and 8208XBR.

LWD

I have played with 748 in my .223, and was not successful. Others have found it to be excellent in their .223's. I would recommend a magnum primer such as a CCI 450 or a Remington 7 1\2. Ball powders like 748 are tougher to ignite than stick powders.

Good luck.

H-335 and W-748 are not interchangable load data like W-760 and H-414 are..

H335 gives much larger balls of fire at the muzzle in handgun barrels than W748 along with different velocities. They are NOT the same. The latter has been one of my standard powders for 30 years.



.

great powder - works well in many cases, in fact, a can of 748 was the second can of rifle powder I ever bought. 3031 being the first .. great choice for 223, but not the best


748 is NOT h335 -- the hodgedon/imr/winchester shows CLEARLY that h335 has a different pressure and velocity than 748, even with same weight and bullet weight .. you can go look it up yourself, h335 results in higher pressure, everytime, than win 748 ..

but they actually use pressure barrels to measure..

wc844 is slightly faster than h335 -- and can NOT use mid nor max loads of h335, as it burns faster

powder burn rate chart, which is kinda worthless to most reloaders, expresses h335 as 81, and 748 , as 101...
http://www.hodgdon.com/burn-rate.html

but.. tada.. blc-2, which is the commercial version of wc846 ... is 102, the same as blc-2...

therefore, h335 is decided not even CLOSE to win748 ... h335 is close, but not exactly, the same as wc844 ... wc844 is FAR faster than wc846 -- and wc846 is the military version of blc-2 -- which is pretty darn close to 748..

h335 isn't even CLOSE to 748 ,....

for the record, I have only burned through 2 jugs of wc846, 3 of wc844, at least 12LB of 748 in 257 bob, 308, and 358 winchester, and likely another 10 of blc-2, with most load dev shots, since about 1995, being over a chrony .. some even over an RSI pressure trace...

the most commonly used powder in my shop is h335 .. from 30 mauser-550 magnum .. when you are burning 100+grains at a time, powder goes quick.

All of these powders, whether branded Hodgdon, Winchester, or Winchester military, are products of the old Olin plant at St. Marks, Florida. They all vary slightly in deterrent coatings, and the military powders are sometimes treated to reduce muzzle flash. As with various lots of the same powder, these powders will vary in burning characteristics, but are essentially the same BASIC powders:

WC-844 = H335
WC-846 = BL-C2 = WW 748
H-414 = WW 760 (there is a also a lot of WC-852 which is equivalent, but since there is a large, mislabeled lot of much slower powder using the same WC-852 moniker, don't consider "WC-852" equivalent.

Now, before Jeffeoso blows a cork (or a primer) let me reiterate that WC-844 and H335 do not always behave similarly. The lot of WC-844 I am currently using yields slightly slower velocities than the 8-pounder of H335 I used right before it in .223-sized cases.

This powder varies a great deal in its apparent burning rate depending on the size of the case and bore it is used in. While it and WC-846/BL-C2/WW748 seem very close to the same burning rate in a .223, the 844/H335 is somewhat faster as case size increases. When you get up to cases (and bores) the size of a .458 Winchester, then you can use significantly more of 846 than you can of 844.

The bottom line is that the powders grouped together are all the same basic spec powders, but will vary from one another. After all, it is only a relatively small percentage of all powder produced that is close enough to the "standard" that it is packaged and sold as cannister-grade to handloaders. Most of it is sold in bulk to ammunition manufacturers which adjust their loads to match the tests they run on a specific lot of powder.

Back to the original question: WW 748 (nee WC-846/BL-C2) should work just fine in 222/.223. Ball C was the powder of choice in the .222 for many years on the benchrest circuit when that cartridge dominated competition. While I like H335 a little better for the small cartridges, WW 748 will work about as well.

By the way, WC846 was developed specifically for the 7.62 Nato (.308 Winchester) and WC-844 was developed specifically for the 5.56 (.223 Remington). Although either powder will work (and work fairly well) in either cartridge, they seem best when kept in the cartridge for which they were developed.

Stonecreek.
I do get excited when bad and unsafe data is bandied about as fact. Mixing utterly incompatible powders that can create an unsafe action requires strong response to prevent injury.

Frankly i am usually easy going about mistakes -but dangerous misconceptions can result in people being hurt and our sport damaged

Last year I phoned Winchester to ask some questions on the WC867 and WC872 surplus powders. I talked to an engineer there and he informed me at that time Winchester or Olin hadn't made any powder for several years. That the powder end of the business was sold off. He told that General Dynamics made the two powders I asked about.

Somewhere on the internet is the whole story on W748, H335, 844, and 846 and its form a government site not forums. It said basically what Stonecreek said. I believe it said that W748 was the cleaner burning lots of 844. Like Stonecreek said there is a difference in burning rate between lots and that's true of all powders.

I wonder if Olin still operates the plant that makes the cartridge case and bullet jacket alloys. I heard they supplied to alloy in strip form to many cartridge and bullet manufacturers.

I've never used any W-748 but I have shot a couple of pounds of H335. My information that they were the same comes from casual conversations on the range.
Out of curiousity, I look at me Sierra load book for .223rem loads. It seems to give the same velocity yield for the two powders almost straight acrost the board. I find that curious considering that it's posted here that they are dramatically different.

smokinJ: Did you get any information on WC 867? I have used a considerable amount of WC872 and am comfortable with its applications. However, I bought a substantial supply of WC 867 not long ago and have not yet tried any of it.

"Winchester" (I put it in quotes because there are several different companies using the Winchester name; one makes guns, one makes ammunition, another makes gun safes, and yet another licenses the logo for all kinds of apparel and sundry items) might not have any information about the WC-series of military powders, but most -- or all -- of them were developed when Olin-Matheson (Winchester's parent company at the time) built and operated the St. Marks powder plant. Now that the plant has changed ownership (possibly more than once), I'm not sure who you would contact for institutional knowledge on these powders.

Hodgdon once distributed a "spherical" powder it called H-450 which was in the general burning range of H4831. Apparently, the WC-equivalents of both H-450 and H-380(?) were sold under the WC label of WC-852. This was likely an error of some surplus repackager, but it threw a wrench into the confidence level of knowledgeable shooters of surplus powders. Regardless of what you might understand about powder equivalency, always trust nothing and carefully test any surplus powder to establish its actual performance characteristics before going "full bore" with any load.

WC867 and WC872 are cannon powders. Many places claim you can use data from Accurate on their AA8700 powder. I've been using 867 heavily for the past few years. I can tell you that the lot I have isn't as slow as it's made out to be and acts differently in different cases. I've also used it with a faster burning powder as a booster in a duplex load and doing that one can get it to work very well in as small cartridges as the 5.56. I can this, it burn very very hot.

I had the website on General Dynamics specification for the powder at one time, but lost the info. It wasn't used in anything smaller then the 50 caliber. General Dynamics made most of it, but not all of it.

You remember ragulia (sp) was using 872 in his 264 Mag and I assume you know his barrel bore was fired cracked from excessive heat?

Surplus 4831 was a "cannon" powder also, having been formulated for the 20mm gun. It happens that powders meant for the .50 BMG and slightly larger rounds do pretty well in what we frequently refer to as "overbore magnum" rifle cartridges.

It was my assumption that WC867 would be faster than WC 872, but I wasn't sure by how much. Ironically, WC-860 (at least the lot I have) is very similar to WC-872 in speed, but it has never seemed as consistent or yielded velocities quite as high as WC-872.

As far as "fire cracking" in something like a .264, I'm not sure that it can be attributed primarily to a particular powder. With that cartridge you're funneling a lot of powder/gas down a rather small tube at very high pressure. Throat erosion is going to happen.

I've owned the same .264 for 47 years. While I currently use WC-872 in it, it's throat was fire cracked long before I began using this powder. Regardless of its throat erosion, it still shoots MOA, so what's the issue? This is a hunting rifle, of course, and not a thousand-yard bench gun; but if they were honest, most hunters would give at least one gonad to have a true MOA hunting rifle.

quote:

Originally posted by Stonecreek:
Surplus 4831 was a "cannon" powder also, having been formulated for the 20mm gun. It happens that powders meant for the .50 BMG and slightly larger rounds do pretty well in what we frequently refer to as "overbore magnum" rifle cartridges.

It was my assumption that WC867 would be faster than WC 872, but I wasn't sure by how much. Ironically, WC-860 (at least the lot I have) is very similar to WC-872 in speed, but it has never seemed as consistent or yielded velocities quite as high as WC-872.

As far as "fire cracking" in something like a .264, I'm not sure that it can be attributed primarily to a particular powder. With that cartridge you're funneling a lot of powder/gas down a rather small tube at very high pressure. Throat erosion is going to happen.

I've owned the same .264 for 47 years. While I currently use WC-872 in it, it's throat was fire cracked long before I began using this powder. Regardless of its throat erosion, it still shoots MOA, so what's the issue? This is a hunting rifle, of course, and not a thousand-yard bench gun; but if they were honest, most hunters would give at least one gonad to have a true MOA hunting rifle.

I believe the 867 to be a little faster then the 872 also. I remember long ago shooting H870 alone with no boosters in cast loads and how it performed. Well this 867 seems very close to it, definitely not slower. I can tell you that with a booster (in small percentages) of a fast tubercular rifle powder and main charge of 867 makes it perform pretty close to 4350. In fact if you add the weight of the two powders and then look up a load in the manuals for the same weight bullet using 4350 it matches the starting loads!

Let me give you an example of how it performs in a small case. Let's look at the 6x45. With a 2.0 grain booster load of Unique topped off with 867 (I don't have my data right here but that 867 is in the twenty some grain bracket) I get 26-2700 fps with a 76 grains cast bullet. The pistol powder booster makes it burn faster then 4350 in this particular instance.