I smell Empire....

http://www.hodgdon.com/news/imr.php

Yo Dude,
That's like, ancient history! Ya been out in the mountains hunting dinosaurs or somethun?

This might be ancient history for some, but if ADI in Australia has been making Hodgdon's powders, their webnews states that IMR powders are made in the same facility! That means (if my logic is correct) that ADI (Oz) makes the best powders in the world! (OK, I've had a couple of glasses of wine - humour me!) If this is the case, ADI's AR2213SC = h4831SC, then what does IMR 4831 equal in the ADI range?

I was under the impression that IMR powders are produced in canada.

I don't know where IMR powders are made these days, but Alliant and Norma powders are made in Swede, and the Vituovori numbers come from Finland, and all three contain some real useful stuff, like MRP, RE 7, RE 15, 19 and Re 22!

Do a search on that topic... it has been posted here before...

The conclusion as I interpreted it, was that ADI made all Hodgon extreme powders and other like H414, H380 where Winchester to name a few.

My question is this then... WHY DO SOME WEB SITES STILL LIST DIFFERENT BURNING RATES FOR THESE POWDERS. It defies logic.

If AR2213SC is H4831SC and AR2208 is Varget.. then why do we still see different load data for these powders in manuals? Stupidity?

My 2 cents

The next Hodgdon manual could be an interesting one..

Millsie, the problem is that it's still not really practical to make a powder strictly conforming to a specification set in advance. You get what you get when you're done, which hopefully is pretty close. Sometimes it's not, as in the case of the milsurp WC852 that burns like IMR 4831. It was supposed to be a close equivalent to 4895. Commercial ammo loaders can deal with wide lot-to-lot variations in powders by testing and loading different quantities. That doesn't work for those of us loading from a book recipe, so the sellers of canister powders blend lots to try to maintain consistency. Maybe they end up with a whole bunch of a particular burning rate left over after they've made their blend. It gets sold to a surplus powder vendor like Hodgdon used to be or Accurate still is. With a different name, of course. If it catches on with buyers, eventually they'll have to make new powder blended to match the characteristics of that original lot closely.

And powder makers often have batches of different burning speeds of "the same" powder available to the commercial loaders, who may have reason to prefer slightly different burning speeds.

Quite possibly something might be happening like this hypothetical scenario: The makers of Winchester 760 may have found they were getting a bimodal distribution of burning rates coming out of various batches. Some of it would blend well into canister-spec 760. Much of it fell into another consistent burning rate range that was a little different, and it didn't work to blend it with the rest as it'd throw the burn rate of the blend out of the desired range. So they kept the main batch to sell as 760 and sold the rest to Hodgdon, who labelled it as a "new" powder, H414.

I'm not privy to the development and marketing histories of these powders. I'm just showing how "the same" powders can really be different.

The smaller companies selling the surplus stuff are at the mercy of the manufacturers and have to take what they can get. Look how variable H380's been over the years. When a little surplus powder company gets big like Hodgdon's done, though, they have lots of pull with the manufacturers to get powder made to their specs, and somebody else gets to take the leftover surplus. I'm expecting Hodgdon's stuff from now on to be a lot more consistent than it used to be.

The reason burn rate charts change is not only the lot-to-lot variations: the more nefarious reason is that burn rates actually CHANGE depending on the cartridge and pressure loaded. In other words, each chart is only valid for ONE cartridge at ONE level of pressure.

The order for a 40,000 PSI 45/70 load is a different world from a 65,000 PSI '06 load. FWIW, Dutch.