231 in a 45 Colt

Ian

Ian

Notorious member
I don't know, USSR, unfortunately the price and limited local availability have kept me from experimenting much with Accurate powders. If it has the longer burn curve of Bullseye and not the spikey pop of Red Dot and Titegroup it should be pretty good.

I've been loading a lot of old Winchester 473AA in .38 and .45 Auto lately, it's a little sketchy though since I only have one source of load data (Speer #11), it does fine with target loads though, very accurate and consistent within the narrow temperature window I've tested so far.
 
fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
I would tend to believe that 473 is old school titegroup.

those vectan powders really are worth looking at.
they come in 1.1 lb bottles and you can mix and match them in a single order.
they run the normal shot shell speeds.
 
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RicinYakima

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Ian, it took me a while to think back about when I bought my last 8 pounder. It was before the last depression but after September 11th. And it was from a little gun shop that was going out of business, so don't know how long it was there. I am down to my last partial pound. And just looked at it, it is pretty flat and no shine at all, flat grey.

If they don't make that anymore, I will be in the same boat you are now. SR7625 is good, but like PB no longer made. Accurate #5 didn't work well for me at the velocity I wanted 750 -800 f/s with 255 grain bullet. One of my friends likes Green Dot, but who knows how long that will be around.
I'm marking this thread to follow closely what others are using.

Thanks, Ric
 
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fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
green-dot now has that hodgon green to sort of compete with it.
I use Hodgdon international clay's quite a bit for a few different things.
if I [personally] were looking for a PB replacement, International clay's would be a good place to start.
it has a pretty broad range of shot shell applications [12 and 20ga with a open window of velocity's] but limited jacketed data available.
that doesn't mean it isn't good for brass cases, they just haven't developed much data for it beyond a cowboy manual a few years back.
it has a lot more uses than low pressure pop gun rounds.
 
pokute

pokute

Active Member
There's a lot of confusing stuff in this thread. Hodgdon Universal is an almost equivalent to Unique (but very different chemical formula) that was becoming increasingly popular before the factory that made it burned down a few years ago. It is generally available again, and is a very good choice for 45LC. HS-6 is practically the same powder as HP-38/W-231, but is not flattened so much, so has somewhat less surface area, so is slower and more appropriate for slightly peppier loads with a gentler pressure curve. It meters exceptionally well.

Folks with some background in energetic materials and experience with the reaction kinetics of a variety of smokeless powders will find the forensic powder database invaluable: http://www.ilrc.ucf.edu/powders/ Careful perusal of that site combined with direct experience will make it possible to extrapolate interesting conclusions about familiar powders. 4227 and 4198 are a fascinating pair, for example, differing ONLY in one of the particle dimensions, and otherwise identical.
 
Ian

Ian

Notorious member
fiver said:
I would tend to believe that 473 is old school titegroup.

those vectan powders really are worth looking at.
they come in 1.1 lb bottles and you can mix and match them in a single order.
they run the normal shot shell speeds.
Click to expand...

I'm looking, had no idea the stuff was available until you mentioned it.
 
fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
Pokute.
there are whole series of powder burn rates that are the same chemical makeup.
they retard the burn speed by size and coating.
a simple one is 700-x and 800-x they are the exact same mix, they just differ in burn rate through the size of the flake.

think about a long skinny tree branch burning versus a short fat chunk off the trunk.
they both come from the same tree but the speed they burn is different because of the surface area.
 
pokute

pokute

Active Member
fiver said:
Pokute.
there are whole series of powder burn rates that are the same chemical makeup.
they retard the burn speed by size and coating.
a simple one is 700-x and 800-x they are the exact same mix, they just differ in burn rate through the size of the flake.

think about a long skinny tree branch burning versus a short fat chunk off the trunk.
they both come from the same tree but the speed they burn is different because of the surface area.
Click to expand...

"Coating" is a change to the formula. There are limits to the degree that a given formula can simply be cut into bigger or smaller pieces without changing the burn characteristics. Retardant coatings (for example graphite) will produce variations out of proportion to simple changes in particle size as peak pressure rises. There are surprisingly few powders similar enough to predict relative behavior based on geometry. Some powders are identical except for surface texture, and they have wildly divergent behavior. Single base powders tend to be much more predictable than double base.
 
pokute

pokute

Active Member
I was once asked to promise not to tell that Unique was the single most dangerous powder in existence, because there are many loads for it that can be double or triple charged, and there are cartridges that will, if fully charged with Unique, turn even the strongest gun into a grenade. Apparently the same is not true of Bullseye only because the person likely to create a grenade using Unique is not likely to be a big user of Bullseye, except to create duplex loads o_O
 
Ian

Ian

Notorious member
Actually, the medium-speed, double-base rifle powders are probably the most dangerous due to SEE near the muzzle when the heavy deterrent coating finally burns off. Nobody believed this for a long time until someone who understood it well deliberately created normal-pressure loads which blew the muzzles off of 24" rifle barrels.
 
pokute

pokute

Active Member
Ian said:
Actually, the medium-speed, double-base rifle powders are probably the most dangerous due to SEE near the muzzle when the heavy deterrent coating finally burns off. Nobody believed this for a long time until someone who understood it well deliberately created normal-pressure loads which blew the muzzles off of 24" rifle barrels.
Click to expand...

SEE?
 
RicinYakima

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
Diphenylamine and N-nitrosodiphenylamine are the normal deterrents. Graphite is used for mechanical lubrication, metering ease, and as a flash deterrent. If you research ball powders on Wikipedia you will find the original and patented composition of Olin's formula.
 
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pokute

pokute

Active Member
RicinYakima said:
Diphenylamine and N-nitrosodiphenylamine are the normal deterrents. Graphite is used for mechanical lubrication, metering ease, and as a flash deterrent. If you research ball powders on Wikipedia you will find the original and patented composition of Olin's formula.
Click to expand...

Dipenylamine is an energetic material that acts as a deterrent to spontaneous decomposition of stored powder. Graphite is, as I stated a retardant, which lowers peak temperature, and peak pressure. Note the word peak, which is significant. Graphite has been in use since the time of black powder. I've read a couple of thousand page books on energetic materials, but don't pretend to recall much of it.
 
RBHarter

RBHarter

West Central AR
pokute said:
SEE?
Click to expand...

Secondary explosion event .
The short version is that you get 2 or more shock waves going as a result of flame jumping or burn rate changes and they collide , kind of like a shot charge hitting a stuck wad or air space in BP . If you're lucky you get a ring or bulge if not broken parts .
 
pokute

pokute

Active Member
RBHarter said:
Secondary explosion event .
The short version is that you get 2 or more shock waves going as a result of flame jumping or burn rate changes and they collide , kind of like a shot charge hitting a stuck wad or air space in BP . If you're lucky you get a ring or bulge if not broken parts .
Click to expand...

Engineers call that constructive interference. Typically it can account for roughly a doubling of pressure. But if this is happening near the muzzle, that implies that the pressure in the barrel is very high when the bullet is almost out, and when the pressure in the barrel should be at a minimum. Sure sounds more like SOMETHING was stuck in the bore near the muzzle. Do you recall where the tests were published that reproduced the result?

Something that I have seen myself thousands of times is when a long tube is under high tensile stress, and it fails, producing two partially separated fragments, and the returning elastic waves in the two pieces collide to produce a dramatic compression failure at the junction (not enough time has elapsed for the tensile failure to acquire it's typical appearance, or it is obscured by the more destructive secondary failure). This would require at least partial blockage (possibly past the end of the muzzle) if it were to occur in a gun barrel, I believe.
 
Ian

Ian

Notorious member
Charlie Sisk did the destructive testing, the people at RSI figured out what was going on.

There are essentially only three flavors of smokeless powder, and like Fiver and Ric noted, surface area per unit mass and the usual deterrents are the varying factors. Once you get through the deterrents, it's all essentially Dynamite.
 
RicinYakima

RicinYakima

High Steppes of Eastern Washington
We talk a lot about powders; and we all know why. It is inherently dangerous stuff to deal with. So while we discuss all the minor things about powder charges, brands, etc. we are always talking about doing things safely. Once you get out of reloading "exact manual loads", close communications with other experience reloaders is very important. That is why these boards exists.
 
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Ian

Ian

Notorious member
Amen, Ric.

Understanding the material properties of powders is critical when experimenting outside of, or even within, the "box". Understanding how IMR 4198 and XMP5744 are very different even with a similar burn ranking, and how they will interview very differently under different conditions (loading density, projectile mass, chamber/bore proportions, starting resistance, peak pressure level, etc.) helps direct us how to best utilize them. Knowing when and why to use a single-base, extruded rifle propellant vs. a spherical, double-base propellant isn't exactly published in loading manuals. Throw cast bullets in the mix, or paper jackets, and we're pretty much on our own so sort this stuff out, but at least we can share anecdotes.
 
fiver

fiver

Well-Known Member
I believe SEE is also known by DDT [detonation deflagration] or something like that.

I am able to duplicate a similar event with a shotshell and it scares me to death to do it.
the pook......BOOM is kind of cool but I know what's happening and don't want to replicate the event.
start/stop/start events are not on the list of things I want to mess with.
 
Cherokee

Cherokee

Medina, Ohio
231 (HP38) has been my main powder for many, many years. I use it in everything, including 45 Colt. 7 gr with a 268 gr Keith is plenty of load for my use. Generally I use 5.3 gr and 230 RFN for SASS shooting. Gets the job done for me.
 
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