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John - could you be "coerced" into revising "Loads That Work" - given the new powders?

I probably will at some point, though they keep introducing new powders!

MD - I've seen you mention a few times about your converting your 4350 loads to 4451. I'd pay to read a consolidated article about that including comparisons of the loads in each

I have those articles on my bookshelf above my reloading bench...they are my "bibles" when it comes to a new caliber I'm loading for. I refer to them constantly.

Loads that work aren't going to stop working. There are inevitable delays in the appearance of consensus that a given load is more than good enough across a range of action types and barrel lengths used around the world. So I don't expect loads that work every time to be revised annually. Maybe loads that work and go faster or loads that work in the hot sun or loads that work at negative 40 for aerial pest shooting.

A long, maybe very long, time ago now Neal Knox wrote that the future of powder selection was more and more niche powders. I believe this to be true.

Every time for years now I look at current prices I say when I've exhausted my stocks I'll have to find another hobby. Still I am torn between thinking that a few powders H4895 and 760/414 and 203B and Varget and Tac and Hunter

(where I bought 10 pounds each when it showed up briefly on Gunbot during the shortages of a few years ago - so I am torn between a sense that I must exhaust old stocks before buying the new improved and thinking I can find an excuse to stock up on the new and improved. I can always shoot the old loads along side the new. Maybe share the wealth with new shooters on free range days and sight in days and other such occasions)

will keep my guns going till long after I leave the range and thinking that something newer, newer at least in the local market, will indeed fill a niche better than one of the perennial powders that works every time across a broad range.

What I do think could be done is a list of newer in the market powders and suggested niches (cartridge and bullet) where there are loads in this niche that work a little bit better than traditional loads in the test guns. That is some guidance that says this or that newish powder really is a superior choice at least for this or that niche.

Perhaps not a minimum powder assortment but a maximum powder assortment so that every niche is filled by a just about ideal - for some value of ideal - choice powder?