Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Artillery shells and powder supply

The Army is planning a 500% increase in artillery shell production, from 15,000 a month to 70,000, according to Army acquisition chief Doug Bush. CNN, Feb. '23.

Does anybody know what type of powder these shells use, and where it is produced today? Does it compete with the handloaders' market?

I had a handloading buddy who swore the H4350 he used for years came from kegs of it surplused after WWII when the USN demand dropped for their big guns.

Belted magnums?

JK

A little levity.

All NC propellant is produced at St Mark's.

It does indirectly compete with the civilian supply.

Slower burning than the avg hand loader uses. Will interfere more with loaders of 50 BMG. But will hurt all of us if they pay more attention to it and less to commercial market which is likely.

Nope, you're thinking of the old 4831 that was surplused after WWII use in 20mm guns. Bruce Hodgdon started his business by buying and selling many tons of it. When the supply ran out 20+ years later he was forced into having it made fresh, and here we are 50+ years later still using it.

Yep,I still have the steel canister with label on it that was 50 pounds. I think it was 42 cents a pound

Years ago I bought in in paper bags for $3.00 per pound.

I got my start in reloading at the LGS when I was 15 years old, circa 1968. The old curmudgeon put me to work a couple evenings a week at his side line loading bench. SOP was to dip the sized/primed .30-06 case in a big drum of surplus 4831, strike the powder off level at the case mouth with a butter knife, and crunch a cheap 150 grain bullet on top of it. We sold them for around $3/box as I recall. The idea was that you couldn't get enough of that 4831 into an '06 case to get in trouble. Word got around amongst the local hunters that our loads were "powerful and accurate" so there was a steady stream of guys dropping off their empties. (Seems like everybody had at least one .30-06 back then.) The months before deer season kept me pretty busy. Of course I rarely took a paycheck, as it was, because I was constantly in debt to the shop for my own primers, powder, .22 ammo, and gun layaways....

I think we got $1/pound retail for the powder. I weighed out many a pound into paper bags. I can still see those kegs stacked up in the store room, with old Red chain smoking Lucky Strikes a few feet away. It was a different world.

Great story!

Radford Army Ammunition Plant manufactures ammunition and artillery propellants and solid fuel rocket grains. Currently operated by BAE Systems.

Artillery propellants are not just nitrocellulose, they can be double and triple based.

I had a friend whose whole family hunted together, and loaded together. There was granddad, his two sons, and four grandsons. That is how they loaded their 270's, dip a case full of 4831 and seat a 150. Just like gnoahhh and his 30-06 loading. They always filled their tags.

As to the point of the OP, what I would wonder if the increased military demand would impact commercial powder availability through increased demand for the base starting powder recipe ingredients, like cellulose, etc.

I've heard that more than once from similar old timers.


Okie John

In another life. I was checking lot numbers on 20mm TP. I noticed that some of the lot numbers ended with BLC(2) and another time ended with H335. I never thought to check the API or other types.

War is going to impact everything arms related.

Stuff some 220 gr bullets in one and that doesn't hold true. OK for 150, 165, and 172gr though.

I was shooting competition back in the 60's and early 70's. The dip and seat is what I used with 3 cent bullets from DCM. 600 yards I used Sierra 172 GR Match King, but weighed the powder.

I am still using 4831 that I purchased in in 1968 for $1.50 a pound. I bought 3 gallons of it and still have a gallon left. It still smells sweet and shoots good. It was originally used in 20mm ammunition for the WWII Oerlikon antiaircraft gun which was used on hundreds of US Navy ships and small craft.

Interesting responses from all of you. I'd have to give my buddy some schidt for his original story, if he wasn't pushing up daisies already.

Here's another. I grew up in Kansas City and was fortunate to be around Bruce Hodgdon where we shot. He was still getting a lot of demilled powder from .gov at the time. There was a new powder that he was trying to get noticed by the reloading community, so he made it available to some of the local BR shooters. I bought 100 pounds of H 335 from him. At that time they distributed out of their building in Shawnee Mission Kansas so I went across town to pick it up. I pulled up and there sat my powder in 2 cardboard boxes with black trash bags inside. 50 pounds of powder in each, at the earth shattering price of $1 per pound. I shot 25 or 30 pounds of it through the BR rifles and the rest of it at P-dogs. That was the good old days.

I have H-4831 I bought in the early ‘60’s. And it was surplus back then, so I don’t know how old it is. It came in paper bags in a divided cardboard box. Those bags eventually deteriorated; I had to transfer the powder into empty powder bottles, remarked with a magic marker. It smells good, has no brown dust and shoots great.

Google Jeff Bartlett. He sells surplus powders and describes them. I use his 872 in my 26 Nosler. It’s pull down 20 mm cannon powder and performs like H-869, but much cheaper.

So, the notion that 4350 has any relationship with artillery ammo production, probably not feasible, ‘06 ammo, maybe.

DF

Geez, these threads go on and on....

There wasn't any Hodgdon "H4350" until the 1990s, and the original 4350, developed by what was then DuPont as IMR (Improved Military Rifle) was officially introduced for public sale in 1940--though according to Phil Sharpe's classic book Complete Guide to Handloading could be purchased in 1939 by personally appearing at the DuPont factory in Delaware. (Imagine that happening today!) It wasn't developed for anything other than sporting cartridges, but probably led to the original H4831, the somewhat slower-burning 20mm cannon powder Bruce Hodgdon started selling after the war.

I still have some of the original H4831 mil-surp powder, both in paper bags and in a waxed-cardboard canister, and it still works about like it supposedly did when Hodgdon first started selling it. Burned a BUNCH of it over the years, partly because it was widely available when I started handloading a long time ago, and partly because an older gun-writer friend (even older than I am now!) still had about 10 pounds left when he quit handloading in the 1980s--and gave it to me.

But the original mil-surp powder varied somewhat from lot to lot--and unlike today's powders for handloaders, was NOT blended with other lots so the burn-rate would be more consistent. Know this from testing various batches over the decades.

Seems to me that old vintage H-4831 may be slightly slower burning than current H-4831.

DF