Bright idea from Hodgdon - Handloader

Guns Magazine, May, 2004 by Charles E. Petty

Every time we begin to load for a new cartridge there are lots of decisions to make. The wonderful variety of components available to us today gives great versatility but also vastly complicates the decision making process.

Powder selection is probably the most difficult because there are literally dozens of propellants that could be used in almost any cartridge you'd want to load, and the process of trial and error that we must follow in powder selection can gel downright expensive. And the heck of it is that all guns are individuals and just because my rifle likes one powder is almost a guarantee that yours won't.

Hodgdon Powder Co. has a bright idea to help out. They call it the Xperimental Pack. There are three different packs, each contains four ounce samples of four different Hodgdon powders grouped according to basic applications for: Hunter Rifle, Light Varmint and Magnum Rifle class cartridges. The chart shows contents and recommended applications.

I'm sure you can look at the list of cartridges and add quite a few to each category and you can also see that a couple of powders are included in two categories and I'd put Varget in all three if I were king. That has become a great favorite of mine and has shown promise in the short and super short cartridges when you aren't trying to reach the speed of light. In tact when I'm trying for good accuracy in any of the medium sized cases Varget will always be on the test sheet.

Another good feature of the selections for each group is that they've included both extruded and "spherical" powders. We have to be careful here because the uninitiated might look at those and call them "ball" powders. Actually they are, but Winchester owns the trademark for "ball powder" so Hodgdon came up with their own term. Actually the term may be more descriptive because if you look at some powder under a microscope most of the grains are anything but round. Nor is it any secret that both are made at the same St. Marks, Florida plant.

Among serious reloaders there is still debate over the merits of each type of powder and it is plain that neither has a universal advantage--or disadvantage. In very general terms I expect to get better accuracy from the extruded types but that certainly isn't always the case.

If you're going to load large quantities of rifle amino on a progressive tool extruded powders sometimes present problems to powder measures because the larger grains of ran get cut and it just generally takes longer to drop the powder charge. The solution to that is to use ball or spherical powders which flow much more smoothly through measures running at tipster rates.

It is funny how quickly we become habituated in our loading practices. For example I began loading all those years ago with two powders: Bullseye and 4831. Back then Hodgdon sold only surplus powders and H4831 could be bought for $1 a pound. I used it in just about every centerfire rifle cartridge I loaded. It probably wasn't always the fastest or most accurate but the deer that fell to handloads using it were surely as dead. It had a wonderful safety margin for a learning loader too because with cartridges like the .30-'06 or 6mm Remington you simply couldn't put too much in there, but I wandered off to newer, trendier powders.

Hodgdon's got some of those in the kits too. Benchmark is one of their new offerings intended specifically for the short fat cases like the PPC and BR versions. In a way they've begun to compete with themselves in that ballpark because H322 has been a top choice for the PPC cartridges ever since they were invented. 322 began as another surplus powder but is now made for Hodgdon in Australia--as are most of their other extruded powders.

If you look at the powder numbers Hodgdon uses you will see a striking similarity between theirs and those we find on cans of IMR powder. This can be a source of some confusion for while the powders are quite similar they are rarely interchangeable. For example you'll find that Hodgdon's 4895 is just a tad faster than IMR's but H4831 is a little slower than IMR 4831. All this means is that we must be sure to use the right data.

The new reloader is really likely to be the biggest beneficiary from this packaging initiative because he can find out what works best in a specific gun, but it is also a great opportunity to learn how different powders behave in the same cartridge. Either way it's a an opportunity to learn something.

POWDERS INCLUDED RECOMMENDED CARTRIDGES

                   MAGNUM RIFLE

H4350              25-'06, .243 WSSM, .270 Win., .270 WSM, 7mm Mag.
H4831              7mm RUM, .300 RUM, .30-378, .338 WM, .338 Lapua
H1000
Retumbo

                   HUNTER RIFLE

Varget             .223 WSSM, .22-250, .220 Swift
H4895              7x57, 7mm Rem. SAUM, .30-30, .30-'06
H414               .308 Win., 300 SAUM, .300 WSM
H4350

                   LIGHT VARMINT

H322               .222 Rem., .223 Rem., .22 PPC
Benchmark          .22 BR, 6mm PPC, 6mm BR
H335               6x47, 6mm TCU, 7mm BR, 6.5mm BR