POWDER BURN RATE CHART

like most burn charts....HMMM.
to me they always seem to get something askew no matter if it's left to right brand to brand charting or up and down by number they seem to always have someone's stuff out of alignment.

other than some of the accurate powders that one looks pretty good to me.
 
That's Hodgdon's chart, unless I'm mistaken. And, unless I missed it, IMR 4320 is not listed.
 
True Blue is about 12 clicks too far up. Never heard of Reloder 16. Reloder 7 is slower than either of the 4198s in both straight and bottlenecked cartridges. The rest of it is pretty close but it twists my brain to read "Hodgdon Hi-Skor 700X". Something just wrong about that.
 
I hope not.
yeah Steel seemed a bit far down, especially after the reformulation that sped it up.
it really shouldn't be down any further than right behind 800-X
 
I expected it to be closer to Blue Dot and 2400 . There's not much over lap from 12ga to 410 , 2400,4198 & 4227 show up in 410 a lot . 28/20 was kind of high too with Unique being barely usable in 20 ga ......... Perspective .....I did and would some more but I've done a lot of bones shotgunning for groceries not reviews ......
 
Steel was made to replace bluedot in reloading steel shot. BD had a problem with not igniting or burning correctly in low temps. The main use of steel at the time were duck and goose hunters hunting in winter months. Steel factory loads were pathetic when they first came out. We tried to use them for several years but always had lead stashed to actually hunt with. Lots of bloopers and duds. So we just stopped using them. Then we started to reload steel shot and found you had to run them fast and HOT to get them to kill. But BD was it for powder.

Then Steel powder came out and velocities went up about 300fps with lower pressures. It is a couple tics slower than BD. Factory loads got way better and we only reloaded specially type loads. I had a 1oz #3 shot for ducks and geese hunting out of layout boats. Shots were less than 20 yds. These were going 1750fps And they killed! But you had to limit them to 25yds MAX
 
4756 was also good for steel shot loads but everyone forgot about it's existence.

I ended up going the other direction with my shells.
I limited the speeds to 14-1450 fps and used larger shot.
number-1 and B were my two main suspects when it come to stuffing hulls.[or a mix of 1's and 2's]
through an improved cylinder choke I could lay down the bigger ducks [mallards, red heads, gadwalls] out to 40+ yds. with ease. [a bit more if I went to a light modified]
[you wouldn't think 80 pellets would have enough pattern density to hit/kill anything but they did stay in a nice tight little group]

I have some hyper speed 3's and 4's type stuff leftover here somewhere, but I never had any real luck with it.
3's were my choice for stuff like ruddy ducks and scaup in the later part of November.
they were closer and more in your face type shots, so I'd switch over to a straight cylinder bore choke.
still at that I had to be careful about not making mince meat poofs so kept most of my shots on the head.
then I discovered disruptor type loads where I could place some larger T size shot in the #3's payload and open the patterns fairly quickly.
not always predictably [what shot shell patterns are] but good enough for 5 yd shots.
 
I didn't care for Steel and the little bit of BD I did shoot was fine down to about 30° . I don't know what it was about the Steel , might have been the Fiocchi cases , but it just didn't click . Hindsight maybe it was the W209s

4756 ! 1-1/16 oz of 1 or Bs in a CSD 118 with in the Fiocchi 2-3/4 cases . I can't even count the ducks that fell . Killed a few Western Canada's and snows too . With the 105 ct of Bs in a BPS special steel field it delivered 95-97 inside 27" at 40 yd and 4.17 ftlb per pellet assuming I was actually getting my 1470 fps at the muzzle .

I started with MEC wads , 800X and BB in 94' after the 93' season was a follow up train wreck shooting 3" FC 1-1/4 or 3/8 BBB ....... 1,2,&3s weren't readily available ...... The cripples I picked up smelling of almond and turning bright green , makes me sick even now .

Glory days .
PMC , Blue Steel ,and Kent Fasteel are loaded with the same components I was loading and the first 2 with probably with BD got so cheap I couldn't afford to load them . 20.80/100 vs 53 & 58/250 retail after tax wasn't worth setting up the press , making a run and stacking for a guy that had it down to a box a weekend .
 
the Kent fast steel and the Fiocchi mag loads were both good ones.
I still have a few cases of both downstairs.
once the price of steel jumped up like it did I couldn't make them as cheap as I could buy those.
I did get lucky and bought a bunch of bags of steel shot at a close out sale along with a bunch of SAM-1 wads.
plus got kind of lucky digging through their shelves and found some bottles of the MEC polished shot and MEC wads.
all in all I ended up with about 300 lbs of shot and somewhere around 5,000 wads for like 200 bucks.
 
Thread drift ALERT!!

We were able to shoot lead in the fields for a bunch of years after they made it mandatory on the water. i was hunting with Art Ladehoff(owner of Bigfoot Decoys) and a few other friends in a field. All the guys but me and Art could not kill a single goose. 25-30 yds MAX. While me and Art were dropping them dead in the air. Well it turns out they had Federal 1.25oz #4's and that was when they were like 1250fps. The reason we used lead instead of steel.

Anyway Me and Art had our limit and were getting mad at the guys for they way they were shooting. We gave them our lead as it was still legal in the fields at the time. It ended up the other 3 guys limited out of geese in about an hour after that. Amazing what a 3" 1.5 oz of copper plated #4 lead can do.

Oh yah, the range I shoot at is on one of Art's farms. That was why I am not able to use it during waterfowl season. I think I mentioned that a few times before. He past away last year but his son still has the farm and are able to still shoot there.
 
complete thread drift alert.

steel is a catch 22 at best.
make it bigger to have more mass for retained energy and it has more air resistance, you lose pellet count, and it has more frontal area to overcome [for penetration]
make it smaller to have easier penetration and you lose the retained energy to drive the pellet into the bird.
the thing is they originally said to just up your pellet size and that's what most guys did.
the key is to up pellet size and up the speed to compensate, but not go past that balance point where you have no pellet count.

the 20ga. actually had an advantage back when the factory's first started producing shells.
they were able to get their speeds up to 1400 fps as a by-product of the powders burn speed and the 20 having a little higher pressure MAP.
I don't think it was intentional, more a just that's how it worked out.
the 12ga. stuff was all the normal what you'd have bought previously type loads with lead only with steel pellets.

as noted above a load of number-4's at that speed would hardly be adequate for dove shooting, the geese they shot were probably bruised up a bit at worst.
 
I took a lone honker 98 or 99 , I think , that had 3 hits of varying states of healing one was a plated BBB none were found in the body cavity . Mine went through at 35 yd with above loads . The 2 steps up advise was good but breaking 1400 fps was a better step .
 
These charts vary so much. I've seen one chart with Solo1000 one step above Green Dot, another one step above Red Dot. My old jug of Scott brand Solo1000 is down to the dregs, need to replace it someday. Stuff is so clean with my 12 ga loads it's really surprising. Of Course, I was comparing it to old formula Red Dot.
 
The problem with burn rate charts : none of them match! Always different placements of powder. So which to believe?
Can't trust them
 
I find that this one is about the most accurate ....for comparisons
 

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Have yet to see a burn rate chart that I totally agree with. Some are just plain terrible.

Don
 
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