Whttailinmt said, "Just my opinion, but I'm gun shy of developing loads with Winchester's powder that's slower than 760; I've done it with two previous versions only to have it discontinued shortly thereafter. Hopefully that trend has ended with Hodgdon's ownership. Best of luck with whichever path you decide to take."
How true that is.
If you find a slow Winchester powder that works for you, buy up all you can of the same lot number. My .270 just thrives on WMR which sadly has gone down the trail of discontinued powders.
I've heard that WMR and H-450 were just different lots of the same powder. Might be some truth to that as both left the scene at about the same time.
Fishdog said, "I was never able to get the WMR powder up to the level I wanted."
That's strange, I've gotten good velocity and darn good accuracy in my .243, 6MM Rem., .257 Robt.,25-06,.270 Win., .280 Rem., 7MM Rem. mag. and .300 Win. Mag.
For some reason though, it does not work in the 30-06 until you go to 200 and 220 gr. bullets and then not too well.
The .338 Win. mag. doesn't seem to like it either. Could be the bore ratio is all wrong for those two cartridges. When I tried doing some load work up for the 30-06, velocities were some of the screwiest I've ever seen in the 28 years I've had a chronograph. The .338 win. mag. showed the same symptoms so I quit early on that one.
I found a great deal on four 8 pound cans of WMR, all with the same lot number so I'll not worry over much about runnimg out.
I think one of the big reasons WMR never went anywhere is I thonk only two loading manuals ever did anything with it and about the only gun writer that ever mentioned to any degree, and very little at that was Ken Waters, that mainly lamenting he couldn't find any to test with. Methinks if the public doesn't hear about it, how can they know whether to buy it or not? Same thing happened with H-205. Only Ken Waters and Clay Harvey ever seemed to have done anything with it, and it left the scene in about two years. I talked to a Hodgden rep about it being dropped and he said, "Frankly, the numbers were not there." If the gun writers don't mention it, we don't hear about it and then, of course it doesn't sell. IIRC, that happened with both RL-7 and SR-4759. Both got dropped and finally people made a big enough stink that it came back. Maybe, just maybe we have too damn many powders to play with these days.
Just a thought.
Edited to add: I have found out that in the .270 and .300 mag. that is seems to work better with the heavier weight bullets. The 150 gr. Speer Hot-core does an honest 2960 FPS and I get 2930 witht he 200 gr. Speer Hot-core from the .300. I forget the speed on some of the others but the .280 does best with the 175 gr. Hornady SP, the 25-06 with 120 gr. bullets, the .243 and Bob with 100 gr. bullets. (Twist in my Bob is too slow for 120s)
Paul B.