Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters 1960's Nosler Partitions?

Picked up a vintage box of .277 Partitions in the 130 grain flavor the 50 count box is yellow & white with black lettering. Anyone know what time frame these were produced?

Interesting thing to me is the matte or frosted appearance of the bullet shank above and below the machine cut crimp groove, anyone know the reason for this? The upper part of the bullet towards the tip is polished.

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Probably early 1960's, I have 4 boxes of .30 200 grain partitions with the same color/lettering.

Those Partitions were produced up until the late 1970s. The jackets were made with an automatic screw-machine, a type of lathe, the reason they appear "matte," unlike the impact-extrusion Partitions made since then.

If I recall correctly, they started using the yellow-and-white boxes after the move to Bend from Ashland. The Ashland bullets were in red boxes. I have several boxes of the yellow-and-white bullets in my collection, but have seen only one of the Ashland boxes, which I bought at a gun show many years ago. It had all 50 150-grain .270s still inside--but somebody else eventually wanted it more than I did....

I’ve got a red box out in my ammo box collection somewhere. I think mine is 175gr 7mm.

MD, these are marked Bend Oregon "deep penetration _ positive expansion. Are they OK for hunting? By all appearances they seem good to go, the tips are perfect

I have a hundred or so 25cal NPs if I remember right that are 120gr. Not much left of the box's. I met John Nosler as a kid. Very nice gentlemen. He and my grandfather belonged to the same Model A Club in Bend. Went to School with his Grandson a few years ahead of me. That was back when Bend was still a small town. Have heard that the old Lathe turned Bullets are tougher then the new ones. I have necer loaded or used mine and don't know if thats true or not. Grew up using the Factory seconds in mostly 270win & wby 150gr.

Yeah, they'll work fine for hunting.

Some hunters claim the lathe-turned Partitions weren't as accurate as the present extruded ones (and in fact some claim they've never gotten Partitions of any kind to shoot well--which has not been my experience). But I first started using Partitions during the last couple years of the lathe-turned bullets, 130s in a .270 Winchester and 200s in a .30-06. Got 1-inch groups easily at 100 yards, and both worked great on game.

Got the same box, unopened. Always wanted to open it up and send one or two down range deer hunting. Bet they work just fine.

Well let’s do er! I’ll have to build a classic load to go with the vintage Noslers. I have some old 1x fired Winchester Super Speed brass....

270 Winchester, 130 grain bullets

Put them on top of 55 grains of IMR4350.

Would they have the external groove around them?
I have some old 308's that do.

MD, I have two boxes of .30 cal, one each of 150g and 180g. Both are marked Ashland, OR. One is a solid red box and the other is a white box with a red wraparound label.

I have a few hundred .224" Zipedo bullets in those yellow boxes. I'm guessing they are of similar vintage. They seem to shoot well too. One of these days I intend to give them a run on deer, but I haven't got around to doing so yet as I have altogether too many other options.

That has been my go to load for the last hundred years or so. Now my 270’s seem to prefer 58.0-58.5 grains of 4831sc. Go figure. One of mine adores RL-16 for some reason.

I like Partitions. Newer production seems more consistent than old, but they all kill stuff dead.

Have a box of 7mm partitions, red box from Ashland. Box is marked 1958. Only three left. My father used them in his 7x61 S&H. I reckon the other 47 probably made some meat. 😎

I have a thousand or so of those in 243, 100 grain. They shoot less than 1/2" in a very early vintage Savage 110. Amazing gun and bullet combo but I don't hunt with a 243 so there it sits.

I would use the JOC load of 60 grains of H4831 but since that was based on brown bag surplus powder would work up from 58 grains carefully. If anything the screw machine partitions are a little less likely to shed the entire front core and may be a little tougher than the current ones. But still a very good bullet. Some like the 85 6mm, 175 7mm and 200 gr 30 caliber were of a semi spitzer design, this didn't make too much of a difference inside of 300 yards.

If anything the wide relief groove generates lower pressures than the current ones. Not sure it is significant or not.

Some handloaders keep warning other handloaders that today's H4831 is "hotter" than the WWII-surplus powder so many of us used for a long time. (Some still do use it, since a surprising amount is still around.)

There are problems with this warning, the biggest being that it probably isn't true. I say "probably" because all powders can vary somewhat in burn-rate from batch to batch, and the original H4831 was no different, especially since it's highly unlikely that DuPont blended different batches to make burn-rate more consistent during the war.

From my own testing and today's published, pressure-tested data for the present version of H4831 made in Australia, the old powder is HOTTER than the new powder. A couple years ago I did an article on how much different lots and versions of powders differ. During my testing I opened my very last can of mil-surp H4831, (which was still nicely sealed and apparently in fine shape), and used the same 60.0-grain powder charge of both powders with the same 130-grain Hornady Interlocks, in the same rifle. The old powder got almost 100 fps more than the supposedly hotter new powder.

Plus, Hornady's data shows a maximum charge of 62.0 grains of the new H4831 with all their 130-grain bullets (which are designed to result in very close to the same pressure). I've loaded 62.0 grains with the 130 Interlock in several .270's, with no problem.

I suspect the warning about the "new" H4831 being hotter than the mil-surp comes not from Australian-made H4831, but the FIRST replacement Hodgdon had made in Scotland. This was back in the late 1970s, if I recall correctly, and the Scotland H4831 was indeed a little hotter than most of the mil-surp powder. Warnings about this appeared in many gun magazines.

But that was obviously a while ago. I don't know exactly when the transition occurred from the Scotland version to the Australian H4831, but I know it was before the mid-to-late 1990s, because that's when I started using the present Extreme version of H4831.

I bought an 8 lbs. jug of H4831 a few years ago and found it was 300 fps slower with 150g ABLR than the couple 1 pounders I bought in the early 2000s.

Also, the accuracy was poor. 3" average.