Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Temp. Sensitivity of R-26

I know this has been discussed here, but I can't find it.

How sensitive is R-26?

Thanks

I’m watching this as well. I use a ton of RL26 in the 243, 25-06, 6.5 Creed, 6.5 Swede, 270 Win, 280 Rem, 270 and 7mm WSM, 338 Win, 35 Newton and some others I’m probably forgetting about. So far the last couple of years it has been real good to me. I’ve shot the same loads from about 25-95 degrees and haven’t seen any drama with it. No idea on its actual temp sensitivity but the Magnetospeed hasn’t picked large enough changes to affect the accuracy.

What are you thinking of using it in Smokepole?

Anybody have any data for the 6mm Creed yet?

280 AI with 150's and 160's. It shoots well with those.

In my cold-weather tests in the .270 Winchester with 150-grain bullets, made at zero Fahreheit, RL-26 actually chronographed slightly faster than at 70 degrees. (In the same tests, RL-16 and 23 also proved to be very temp-resistant.)

I haven't tried 26 in the 6mm Creedmoor yet, partly because I do a search of all available data when working with a new cartridge, primarily looking for the highest listed velocities, and 26 didn't turn up there. But RL-16 did, and proved to provide very good velocities and accuracy.

Gracias MD. Hope you have a good hunting season.

I shot four 143 ELDs with RL26 in the 6.5, two at 6deg after sitting out all night and two at 65deg. They only lost 20-30 FPS.

Edit: RL16 lost nothing. Hodgdon extremes lose very little (I’ve tried Varget, H4350, H4895, & Benchmark), and 8208 is quite good. Ball powders have typically lost 70-100+.

An email I received from Alliant just a week or so back.


"Alliant Reloading
Fri, Aug 31, 8:07 AM (9 days ago)

Alan,
Alliant makes three temp stable propellants. These are AR-Comp, Reloder-16 and Reloder-23. There is another we call temp constant and that is Reloder-26.
The first three are full on temp stable propellants by their chemistry. This means that a load worked up at one temp will have relatively constant velocities across temperature regimes.
The Reloder-26 has slightly different chemistry from the three temp stable propellants but differs from the rest of the Reloder series. This makes it a temp “constant” product. Because of its chemistry, we can’t call it temp stable. But word from the field that in most instances this propellant wants to behave very much like a temp stable product. But, we can’t call it such and there have been a few instances where it has not behaved like a temp stable propellant.
All of the other Reloder series of propellants and the Power Pro series are not temp stable. Finally, all of the Reloder series propellants (with the exception of Reloder-17) have de-coppering agents in their composition. AR-Comp is in the Reloder series of our propellants.
Thanks,"

That’s a surprisingly detailed response from Alliant. I like when a company will actually tell you something.

Edit: The response I received from another powder company was that a particular powder I asked about met the military spec. Having read the mil spec that is about as useful as saying it will go boom in the cold.

That is indeed a detailed response.

That is great info, thanks - I'm currently weighing up R16 v R26 for my 6.5 Creed and this is likely to tip things in favour of R16 - I'll happily give up a bit of velocity for consistency.

From what I’ve seen, the only place you’re giving up velocity with 16 is with the heaviest bullets. Likewise, you’re not losing much stability with 26. Both are excellent choices.

Smoke....

I've been running it exclusively in a 6CM with 108 ELDMs @ 3158 and have found it to be very temp stable. I have not had a chance to run it in temps below about 70* here, but maybe we'll get some winter weather come Dec/Jan....grin...

Ran a match with it in August that was fast paced, very little time for the barrel/chamber to cool between 10 shot strings. Temps started in mid 70s and was 108 when we finished. Didn't see any weird vertical dispersion or pressure show up through the day, even with a few rounds getting baked in the chamber pretty good. Ran those same loads over a MagnetoSpeed on a different day with the same temp variance and the FPS change was negligible.

I've tried it in a few other chamberings and have always gotten good velocity out of it, but not always the ES/SDs I wanted. I'm sure some of that can be lent to brass, etc.

Are you guys getting accuracy that similar to Re25? Are the charges the same? I'm shooting a 7mm Rem Mag and am about out of Re25. Thanks.

No, the charges aren't similar to RL-25.

I've gotten good to very good accuracy with every RL-26 load I've tried so far.

Thanks, MD.

P

I've used RL-25 and liked it. I think RL-26 is better. It seems pretty dense allowing one to get enough in a case to do some good. QL seems to like it in a number of applications. From what I've read, '26 is probably more temp stable than '25.

I'm wondering if '26 is actually slower than '25, even though the number is larger. Seems to me '26 could be a tad faster in some applications.

Would like feed back on that.

DF

26 is indeed more temp-stable than 25.

One thing I've learned recently from conversations with various people in the powder industry that relative burn rate is becoming an really iffy term these days, with all the super-progressive burning powders appearing. An example would be, say, a new powder that from its listed powder charges in various cartridge/bullet combinations looks like it burns about like IMR4895. But it has a far different pressure curve, more like one of the 4350's. And in fact one of its characteristics is providing 4350 velocities with lower charges, because it's so progressive.

Which is yet another reason burn-rate charts aren't all that accurate.

I like in in my 7mags.I just increased my load two grains or so with what I load with Reloader-22.Bam,I'm there.With 69.0grs of Reloader-26 I got 3187fps with a 150gr Nosler Ballistic Tip,70.0grs with the Nosler Ballistic Tip gave me 3220fps.Certainly a powder to check out.

69.0grs


70.0grs