Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters New IMR powders for sale from Hodgdon

In 1919 IMR # 15� added 2% tin to IMR # 15 to reduce metal fouling from jacketed bullets. (this powder is commonly known as IMR 4064

In 1923 IMR # 17� added 2% tin to IMR # 16 to reduce metal fouling from jacketed bullets. (Commonly known as IMR 3031)

Dupont patented adding Tin dioxide to rifle powder in 1912 or 1913 as a decoppering agent in rifle barrels for the military.

Hatcher or Whelen talked about cutting up Tin foil and putting it in 30.06 cases which decreased the copper fouling in the early rifles designed for the new High pressure 30 cal.

Powder valley had 4166 and has 4451. Tempting.

FYI, new burn rate chart with the powders: https://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Burn%20Rates%20-%202014-2015.pdf

Sorta +1; mine would be RL15 & Hunter, though.

IMR 7977 looks like it would be great in four of the cartridges I run. 243 Win, .257 Roy, 6.5x55, and .300 Win Mag.

Anyone done some loads with these yet?

Just picked up some 4451 at the LGS to try in my 338WM when conditions improve.

Used to try to find the perfect powder for my load. After the first Obama powder shortage I bought quantities of Varget and H4831. Am giving up some performance but will never be hurt by it.

+10000, and Alliant as well.

I may have already pointed the following out on this thread, and have on other threads, but will do so again:

Most rifle powders aren't "produced" by the companies that sell them. Instead they're made by various factories around the world, per contracts with the powder companies we know, such as Alliant and Hodgdon. Essentially our familiar powder companies are contractors and distributors, often ordering and selling powders from several different factories in different countries.

These factories are producing as much as they can. There have been problems with some supply lines, whether due to accidents at factories or bottlenecks in shipping, but the big problem isn't in producing tons of powder.

Instead it's much like the "shortage" of .22 rimfire ammo that's being going on ever since Obama was reelected in November of 2012: Shooters are buying far more of everything than they did before then, including all the powder of a certain type whenever they find it.

The .22 "shortage" is worse, because apparently some people are still buying rimfire ammo to resell. But U.S. handloaders have become hoarders, buying more than we used to (which often means everything on the shelf, or we're allowed to by a mail-order company) any time we find powder, bullets, cases or whatever else we often use.

Various companies have recently told me that they've seen demand slacken a little, though not much, and certainly not like what firearms companies have seen in the past year. But we're still buying far more components than we used to--and far more than we probably will in a year or two, especially since the recent American election went so well for Republicans.

Some companies have added a manufacturing capacity, but not much, especially the foreign companies that make powder for U.S. distributors. Why should they? They're selling everything they can make, and in fact most are growing a little weary over the insatiable demand of America. I know American .22 rimfire makers are tired of it, because many are located in areas with limited numbers of available workers. While many workers at first appreciated the overtime involved in 24/7 manufacturing, many also grew tired of working all the time and found some other job.

Most of the shooters who like to complain about companies not producing all the stuff they used to find on store shelves should take a look in the mirror. They'll find the main culprit looking back.

John,

You certainly have far more access to far more sources of information than I, but the cause of the problem might be more multi-faceted than your note above suggests.

In speaking with sales reps at Powder Valley, Midway, and Graf's over the last few years, they all say that while they have abnormally high numbers of orders in recent years, they are not receiving product to fill orders. One rep a couple of years ago at Powder Valley noted that they were actually shipping far fewer powder orders than they had just a few years beforehand and their actual number of completed transactions for powder was down due to the inability to fill orders. That was a couple of years ago, maybe it is better now.

I've read a few times that with respect to powder coming from ADI, the US and New Zealand imposed new transportation regulations, which restricted (i.e. reduced) the movement of powder by sea compared to prior practices. That is just one example of one cause other than the man in the mirror.

Also, is it not coincidental that just before hunting season/elections, all of the sudden powder and ammo again appeared on shelves?

Additionally as part of the problem, as part of the military base downsizing policies over the last decades, which began decades ago, some government run ammo plants that produced ammo, powder and powder related products exclusively for the military were shut down in order to "privatize" production. I know of one very large plant in East Texas that was shut down in the early 1990's, which had produced ammo and other powder related products such as solid rocket fuel since WW2. I believe there was another similar plant in Alabama or somewhere in the South that produced powder and related products exclusively for the military that was shut. Thus, production capacity to fill government orders decreased, just before a major war effort ramped up.

That last point is one that seems to be lost or forgotten - we have been in a major war effort for over a decade now. The coverage on the evening news now is a fraction of what I remember from watching Walter Cronkite report every night on the Vietnam war. Today, watching TV at night or listening to the news, it is easy to not notice that there are 10's of 1,000's of men and women fighting, and we as a country are at war. That we can even buy ammo and reloading components in the midst of a war would amaze our parents who lived with food rationing during WW2.

fwiw for consideration and discussion.

One silver lining in this ongoing shortage, I was "forced" to try IMR and Accurate powders and some other powders such as the spherical/ball powders for the first time in a long time. In doing so, I found there are some nice products and I'll keep using them even when my prior favorites are available again. The shortage actually has made me willing to try lots of alternatives, and as a result, I've developed a broader base of reloading knowledge. So, there is one modest positive.

The reason distributors are getting less powder (and .22 ammo, and everything else) to ship is NOT because companies are making less, but because more distributors and store chains are ordering more. Orders exceed production by so much that manufacturers have to allocate shipments so that everybody gets some of what they ordered, but not everything.

I also know for a fact, however, that a few distributors and stores aren't getting what they used to get because they blame it all on the manufacturers. An example is a big sporting goods store in the Midwest that ordered a bunch if rimfire ammo. The company sent them their complete order, but the store allowed anybody to buy however much they wanted, so was out in a week, with a supply that normally lasted three months. The store immediately put in another order for the same amount of ammo, and when they didn't get it immediately started telling their customers the manufacturer wasn't filling orders. The manufacturer knew this because they started getting calls and e-mails from the store's irate customers. As a result they quit selling to that store.

I have mentioned the New Zealand problem with ADI and Hodgdon in previous posts, so only alluded to "bottlenecks" in this one. It's no big secret. The big problem, in fact the source of all the trouble, is exactly as I stated, shooters buying far more than they usually do, or they even need.

John,
My apologies, no offense intended and not trying to put you on the defensive, just trying to have a discussion to better understand the root causes.

Let's not conflate 22LR with smokeless powder shortages. I am really just interested in the powder shortage cause for purposes of this discussion.

Trying to sort through your answer, do you believe that the supply of Varget actually available to complete retail transaction in the US has been constant for the last 10 years? This seems inconsistent with the anecdotal reports of the vendors, and my own personal experience, as just one example.

What I see is that one particular powder will appear in lots of stores at once. Then months later all stores have a different powder, but they all have it.

The ADI (supplier of Varget) "bottleneck" equals a supply side problem. The problem is not with the powder manufacturer, and not the retail customers, but a change in government policy, which is restricting delivery, and thus reducing the supply in the US to fill retail orders.

Powder Valley customers cannot be hoarding that which is not even in the warehouse to fill an order, unless reading your example above you believe Hodgdon has cut off Powder Valley, Midway, Graf's and their colleagues, which would seem to be an odd policy.

Thoughts?

I'm not getting defensive, but now I am getting a little pissed. DO NOT assume anything about Hodgdon and Powder Valley because of the story I told about the .22 ammo. That was merely an example of how SOME people have tried to put all the blame on manufacturers, when the real problem was, again, much higher demand.

Let me state it again, a little differently, and maybe you'll grasp the problem: There's so much demand, more distributors are ordering more. There isn't enough powder to fill all the orders, so each gets a prorated part of what they ordered when powder does show up. The companies with the longest-standing orders get the first supplies.
I know this through talking to several different powder companies.

The reason Hodgdon powders tend to show up in batches is they come from Australia in ships. When a ship full of powder shows up, a bunch of Hodgdon powder shows up.

Every serious handloader I know has been buying as much powder as possible whenever it shows up anywhere. Prior to Obama's reelection, most started looking for powder when their started getting low, because they assumed they could always buy more--maybe not today, but within a couple weeks or a couple months.

Now every serious reloader (and even some that weren't so serious) is buying as much powder as they can whenever they find it. Last summer one of the local stores got in a big batch of jugs of Hodgdon Extremes. They were gone in a few days, for exactly that reason. The same amount of powder used to last the store 6-8 months. That is happening all over the country, whether at retail stores or places like Midway.

Every time somebody on the Campfire finds powder in a store or on an Internet site they post where to buy it. And then everybody does, and it's gone, sometimes within hours, instead of the supply lasting weeks or months.

So the store or distributor orders more, when they just sold what would normally be several months worth of powder, but the powder company doesn't have any more, and won't for several months--and when they do, it has to be divvied up among more orders for even more powder, so nobody gets all they ordered, and some don't get any until the next batch shows up.

When customers complain about the lack of powder the store or distributor blames the powder company. It's that simple.

I'd love to look in the mirror and see that I'm part of the problem, but I haven't bought powder in several years. I figured the nonsense would run it's course in time and I should have enough to tide me over. Now I find myself in the position where not only can I not find the powder I ran out of anywhere, Bullseye, I can't find a single pound of any handgun powder.

As to the assertion that some people are buying more powder than they can possibly use, perhaps, but if you've seen powder availability dry up for a period of years, you're likely to buy a few years supply vs. a pound or two at a time.

I do know that if I happen to check powder valleys website on the day they show they've received a shipment of Alliant Handgun powders, I'll be ordering 48 pounds of powder.

Maybe you consider that hoarding, I consider it prudent to keep myself out of the situation of guns with now powder to feed em.

No, I wouldn't blame you at all, and in fact I finally started doing the same thing in the past six months or so, because often even the powder companies didn't have any of some powders--especially handgun powders.

That still doesn't change the fact that the problem is primarily due to far more demand than normal. I started buying some kinds of powder wherever I could, because so many other shooters continued to, for so long, that I had no choice. But I have had to plainly state in some magazine articles that XYZ powder wasnt tried because none was available.

On the up side I have more primers on hand than I've ever had and Mrs. Claus took a not so subtle hint and got me a Dillon 550. So I figure by the time handgun powders become available I'll have my new loading bench all set up and better organized than I'd ever normally achieve and should have a cast a large pile of handgun bullets.

Either that or I guess I'll have to do more rifle shooting in the near time as I did stock up on H-335 and RL15 after the 2008 election.

Great points Mule Deer. When the rush hit at its worst I swore I felt tectonic shifts when all that lead and powder were shifting back and forth across the country. Amazing we're able to get what we can considering the numbers.

Hate to see what would happen if there was a national run on toilet paper. With hard copy newspapers disappearing across the country it'd be a bit awkward wiping your a$$ with a computer screen.

MD - thank you for your insight into all of this. I have caught myself doing exactly as you said - buying powder and primers when I see them, even if I don't really "need" them.

I looked in my cabinet the other day, and I have probably way too much powder and primers for one person (at least my homeowners insurance would think so), so I'll probably slow down the purchases for a while.

I was late to the 22LR hoarding, so I'm not too guilty there.

Now I believe we are seeing another type of shortage - brass. It's hard to find brass for some of the less popular cartridges (257 Bob, 35 Rem, etc.) no doubt to the manufacturers turning out all they can of the popular stuff (223, 270, 30/06, etc.). I understand these "oddball" cartridges are usually seasonal runs, and these runs have been delayed with the production of more mainstream cartridges.

On the upside of all this - I see a lot more people out at the shooting ranges, enjoying our shooting sports, so that can't be a bad thing!

No, it's not!

One of the reasons for the brass shortage, aside from companies mostly making more popular cases, is a lot is being used for factory ammo. Believe it or not, most shooters don't handload, and ammo manufacturers need to fill their needs too. Plus, if a handloader really needs brass, he can always buy some factory ammo. It's not what we're used to doing, but if we really need the brass....