I NEED 4 powders to load everything I load . I use 5 because the 5th one was cheap and as it turns out a really good decision for the odd mag out . Dad left me a volume of a 6th powder . I don't know that in application for the stuff at hand that there is a significant difference between IMR 4350 and H4831 but his pet loads in his 25-06' are all built around it so no point messing with a good thing . Dad's stash came with a lb of Herco and recently a gentleman member here tossed some in the back of my truck as I drove by so that brings It to 8 and 3 grades of Black in useful amounts .
11 powders , 6 primers and 17 cal , 4ga all covered ........ Nope not going to count cartridges . I forgot the 8-9# of Red Dot ......... 12 powders . From a 37 gr 22 to a 1.5oz 10 ga . Yep I could do everything I want to with 3-5 and I burn a lot of Unique . The 410 and steel shot cause problems and the 410 will share 4198 but the carbine gas 6.8 needs H322 to run clean the 223 and 222 don't care and 4350 would feed all of the other rifles , but that WM just fell in love with the W857 with H1000 data .......
Unique unfortunately also gets a a little narrow in the 20ga . Of course I could dump half the locker sending the kids their stuff and something for the grands sleeve the 410 back to a nice 7-30 , 30-30 , or 32? and get it down to 3 and be able to get about 25 sets of dies off the shelf . At that point I could get rid of 3-4 metallic presses and 3-4 shot shell presses and then everything would run with Unique and 4198 and 4350 . I'd keep 4 rifles , 2 shot guns and 2 pistols . But where's the fun in that ?