Hadn't been able to find any of the powders I regularly use, so I bought a can of Alliant E3 to reload some 7/8 oz and 1 oz 12ga target loads.

Has anybody tried E3?

Supposed to be clean burning.

Have not tried it myself. Good reports from those who have, when they could find it. I think a guy on Shotgun World has been disappointed with its metering. Don't remember what machine he was using. One guy in particular at our club loves it. He is using a MEC.

Boy I hope powder comes back this winter. I'm running awfully low. Find myself using up all the partial cans I tried for this or that and put away.

Yep....I'm in the same boat. I'm starting to think that load development (for shotgun & metallic cartridges) is pretty much a thing of the past......from now on, it's going to be load whatever bullets you can find with whatever powder you can get your hands on, and set it off with whatever primer you were lucky enough to stumble on to.

When I ran out of Clays powder I replaced it with 8 lb's of "E3". I load 1 once taget loads for which E3 is perfect. IMO E3 burns cleaner. I will never go back to Clays for the 12 gauge no matter how much "Clays" powder Hodgdon ships in a few months.

E3 did have metering issues in powder funnels with baffles. I load on a Hornady 366 and have not seen any metering issues.

Doc

Doc,

Thanks for the info, that's interesting to hear about the trouble with baffles. My Mec 9000 has a baffle under the powder hopper. I havn't opened the E3 jug yet, are the powder flakes that big?

Mark

No, you just have to plan ahead. I ordered powder this spring and it came in a while back.. 1500 bucks worth. You order enough for a full two years to start with, and then every year you order the next years 12 months early...

We did that when competitive shooting rifles anyway years ago. Just made for easier life.