Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Mule Deer- O'Connor- The Controversial.270 Win.- powders used

Mule Deer... For fifty four years I've wondered about the powder O'Connor was referring to. Was it IMR or Hodgdon? Because of the way he spoke of the powders it must have been IMR because this was approximately 1954 or so. There also seems to be a reference to slower powders from Hodgdon. My 1967 Hornady manual, years later, does not give info. as to whether it is IMR or Hodgdon. Listed velocities for the 130gr bullet is 57.6gr 4350 at 3200fps. The listed velocity for the 150gr bullet is 61gr 4831 at 3000fps. Your opinion is? I'll be a cautious Tennessee mountain boy and not use these old max loads. My 1974 Speer manual gives 130gr bullet 56gr IMR4350 at 3058fps. The 150gr with 58r H4831 at 2857fps. All of these old powders seem slower. OR, is this a lawyer proof situation? Today's modern powders, I have read, are faster than the old powders.

Hodgdon sold it but it was military surplus powder. Don’t know who actually made it but IIRC it was sometimes called IMR Data powder. Friend of mine still has a good amount of it and uses it regularily. He says it’s a bit slower than the new H4831 he also has.

Same here, still have around a pound of the old stuff. It looks good, smells good, no brown dust, shoots good.

I do keep it in a climate controlled area. I reckon it'll last a while longer.

It came in one pound paper bags in a divided cardboard box. The bags got so brittle, I had to be careful not to stick my thumb thru the side.

I transferred the powder into empty powder cans, re-labeled them with Magic Marker.

DF

John nailed it. Precisely my experience.

Loading for a bunch of 270’s for the last half century, and chronographing 270’s for the past 40+ years, mostly with 150g bullets, don’t even think about 61 grains of 4831 of either variety.

With 150’s the pre Extreme H4831 would get close to 2900fps with 22” bbls, I have a 25” custom bbl that would get just shy of 3000 fps with NBT’s and Sierra’s, but not with NPt’s.

The new Extreme H4831 seems to carry a bit less energy.

Last but not least, the new piezo pressure guns revealed a lot of the accepted loads derived from the copper crusher pressure method for the 270 were actually over pressure.

O’Conner’s loads were HOT…….

roanmtn,

Yep, John55 nailed it.

O'Connor's favorite .270 powder was the original mil-surp H4831, which was was designed and made by DuPont for 20mm cannons during WWII. Bruce Hodgdon got into the powder business after the by buying boxcar loads of the stuff and repackaging and selling it--as he did with other mil-surp powders such as H110, originally designed and produced for the .30 Carbine.

As for whether that original H4831 was slower or faster-burning than today's depends--partly in whether today's powder is IMR4831 (these days made in Canada, but originally made in the USA) or the H4831 that been produced in Australia since the 1990s and called H4831 Extreme. (Commercial H4831 was also made for a while in Scotland after Hodgdon ran out mil-surp stuff in the 1970s, but haven't seen any in many years.)

One of the deals with the mil-surp H4831 was that production lots weren't blended to produce approximately the same burn-rate, as most commercial handloading powders are. There simply wasn't time during the war, and a LOT of powder was being made as fast as pissble. Instead each lot was tested by the ammo factory, and the charge adjusted according to burn rate. So certain batches could have been faster or slower-burning, and consequently there is no firm rule.

As an example, I had an unopened can of the mil-surp H4831 for quite a while, and a few years ago decided to test it against the Australian powder. I loaded the same charge of 61.0 grains using both powders with the 130-grain Hornady Spire Point, and chronographed the load in a 22" barreled Model 70 Classic. The rounds with the mil-surp powder got 3118 fps, and the rounds with the Aussie H4831 (in this instance the "short-cut" version) got 3029 fps. This means the mil-surp powder was faster-burning--but another batch of the mil-surp powder might produce very different results.

Incidentally, Hornady's latest 11th edition of their Handbook of Cartridge Reloading lists 62.0 grains of the Aussie H4831 as maximum with 130-grain bullets, so those handloaders who "worry" about using Jack O'Connor's original load are worrying about nothing. I have yet to encounter a .270 that didn't work fine with 62.0 grains of the "new" H4831 and the 130 Spire Point. (Might also mention that my present batches of short-cut and "long-cut" Aussie H4831 produce the same results with the same charges.

This information originally appeared in an article in Handloader magazine about variations in the "same" powder, and a slightly updated version appeared as Chapter 9, "Different Batches of the 'Same' Powder" in my Big Book of Gun Gack II, published in 2018. It also contains the results of firing different manufacturing lots of other powders in cartridges from the .17 Hornady Hornet to the .338 Winchester Magnum.

Thanks Mule Deer and all. So, now that y'all are in agreement, am I safe in thinking the two powders mentioned we're old military Hodgdon Powders and NOT IMR Powders? Did IMR Powders arrive after the Hodgdon Powders?

In 1954 IMR4831 didn't exist. Like the "other" H4831s mentioned--those made in Scotland and Australia--IM4831 appeared not long after Hodgdon's supply of original mil-supr powder ran out.

Back then (unlike today) IMR was a DuPont brand, and DuPont had been making the IMR (Improved Military Rifle) powders since the 1920s--including developing IMR4895 during the 1930s, in part specifically for the military .30-06 load for the M1 "Garand."

I was never wild about IMR4831, mostly because the burn-rate was considerably faster than H4831, closer to IMR4350. Plus, DuPont's introduction of IMR4831 confused the 4831 issue further back then.

Yep! Yep! The confusion as to the dates of introduction of each two powder brands has been a question of mine for many years. Thanks for helping me get all of this in order. You guys are great. None of the reloading manuals in sixty two years of being a gun looney has ever explained the proper order in which these powders were introduced. THANKS!

What a great thread all-around, with excellent minutia from Mule Deer.

DF, would love to see a pic of that powder and its container

I have probably 15# or so of the old military 4831 in my possession.
I inherited it from my old elk hunting mentor many years ago. In came to me in the galvanized bulk container and he had several jars of it preloaded in there for his immediate use.

So one day I loaded some 200 gr Speer bullets in my 30-06 with it, using my old reloading manuals that referred to it only as 4831. I stayed away from top ends loads. Found something that seemed to work just fine and called it good. The plan was to roll an elk with it.

Before that could happen though, my oldest son whacked a fat blacktail buck with the load.
He looked right at me after the shot and said that it felt "different".... He handed me the empty and there was a bright shiny spot where the brass imprinted with the plunger extractor on the head stamp!

I pulled all the rest of those loads and haven't touched the powder since - over two decades now in fact. I still hang on to the powder, I suppose because the darned stuff cost so much these days. I might try it in my .270 one day, working up very carefully and not trying for top velocity.

I'll admit to being just a bit gun shy of it though...

Blackmail,
Could it actually be some powder other than 4831?

He also gave me a container of 4895.

Neither bulk container was marked, but there were glass jars in each full of powder that were marked clearly. The assumption being obvious.

He was in really poor shape at the time. He called me over and pointing at all the reloading gear said “ get it out of here, it’s all yours”. He was in no condition to help me organize the mess and passed just a few days later.

I still have a metal bulk container, similar to what Blacktail53 mentioned, that I bought 50 pounds of the Mil Surplus 4831. I think I paid about 43 cents a pound for it. Wish I had taken better care of the can because it still had the label on it until a few years ago

I used all that up 5-8 years ago. Not in a .270, but .06. We were buying pulled surplus bullets from DCM through a gun club in Albuquerque. IIRC , they were about a penny a piece. Also bought tracers for a bit more. Forget the weight, but think they were in the 150 gr range. I used them in the NRA Matches for 200 and 300 yard. 600 yards, I used 172 gr Sierra Match Kings

It was hard to get 60 gr in an .06 case even with a drop tube. Typical loading technique was to dip the case in the powder, tap in on the bench, dip again and seat the bullet. You could not get enough powder into the case to overload it. 200gr bullets or so could get you into trouble. With those volumes , 1-2 gr difference had little effect on accuracy. Not that I would have known the difference, I was shooting a 03 Springfield rifle I bought at Montgomery Wards for $12. Back then DCM was selling 1911 45's and M1 carbines for $19.

There was also some powder that DCM sold for about 30 cents a pound that came in 1 pound paper backs with a plastic layer. The club bought a bulk order. I bought 10 pounds to use in my .308 and 7.65 Argentine mauser. Only data was to use 3031 data. I think it was H335

You have to remember milsurp powder was not canister powder. In other words as MD said, when a railroad car of powder came into the ammo plant they tested its burn rate and loaded accordingly. OTOH with today's canister powder we expect H4350 that we bought last week to have close to the same burn rate as the can we bought 5 years ago. So your particular lot of milsurp powder may be closer to today's 4350's than 4831 or could be a lot slower and has no relation to what Bruce Hodgdon had 70 years ago.

This has turned out to be an informative thread.
I also have some , inherited from my Uncle and when he was around he used it and remember it was war surplus.
JOC might of mentioned its origin too, I was also an avid reader of Outdoor Life.
Muledeer, you always seemed to teach me something.
My Uncle used IMR tins and clearly identified them as H4831. I still have some and I will check on this.
Memories of my youth. Thanks

Never gave it any thought, always 58.5 gr of Hodgon’s H4831 under a 130 gr Partition here.

The following was in a Jack O’Connor Newsletter:

Hodgdon lists H1000 with a compressed load of 60 grains and Barnes 130 TSX at 2846 and a compressed load of 64 grains at 3025 with the Hornady soft-point in a 24" barrel. This is way, way short of duplicating Jack O'Connor's load of 3100 with a 22" barrel. In the above article, the author clearly didn't test the loads himself, but relied on the manual for his "information". I don't understand how the author claims to duplicate nearly 3100 fps in a 22 inch barrel with H1000 and 130's.

I know Allan Jones very well, and the load he mentions is listed in the last Speer manual he put together, #14. It's listed at 3117 fps from the 22" barrel of a Ruger M77 Mark II--the highest velocity of any 130-grain load. He did all the testing for the manual, since like Ron Reiber at Hodgdon, Allan was the head ballistician at Speer/CCI.

There at least two reasons for that sort of velocity, as opposed to the Hodgdon load. The Barnes 130 TSX is among the bullets that results in the least pressure compared to other bullets of the same weight and diameter, and the 130-grain Speer Hot-Cor produces some of the highest pressures--and hence velocities. Also, the TSX is very long for its weight, so Hodgdon probably had trouble getting more powder than 60 grains into the case while still being able to seat the bullet. The evidence for this is in Hodgdon's data, which lists the H1000 load as compressed--and the pressure as 48,200 PSI, which is considerably less than SAAMI's Maximum Average Presssure (MAP) for the .270 of 65,000 PSI.

The 130 Hot-Cor is also among the shorter lead-core .270 spitzers, which allows more case-room for powder.

Allan also used CCI 250 Magnum primers in the load, which are just about as "hot" as Federal 215s, and produce just about exactly the same results in both pressure and velocity. The second-fastest load listed in Speer #14 with 130s is 62.0 grains of IMR7828, for 3066 fps--in which also used the CCI 250 primer. Hodgdon's data was shot with Winchester Large Rifle standard primers.

Also like Rob Reiber, Allan was a source of much valuable information about handloading for many years--even after he retired. He particularly knew a bunch about primers, due to also being involved in the production of CCI primers.