E4E
<br> I use a fair bit of surplus powder. My thoery on it is that if a powder lot suitable to a use with which you are very familiar is available, and you can find someone who will let you try a little, or has already done the load work up/correlation to a known canister powder, then buy enough to use for a few years and work up your loads carefully. I would not advise anyone to start into load development with a surplus lot. I feel you really need some experience with the cartridge involved and a good bit of chrony data for a number of canister powders in that cartridge before you can safely start into a surplus powder. While any given load may correlate to some canister powder very well, I have yet to find a surplus powder which tracked my lot of it's supposed canister "equivalent" over the entire range of a load work up. I would also consider each different lot # as a totally different powder for load developement.
<br>The lot to lot variation can be as broad as the difference between 3031 and 4831 (WC852) or AA#9 and H110, (WC820).
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