Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters What powder does Weatherby use??

Does any one know what powder Weatherby uses in their .30-378 180gr Barnes X loads? They shoot good in my rifle and although I have not crono'd them, Weatherby advertises 3450 fps. None of my reloading books ie: Nosler #5 and Barnes #2 shows these velocities. Thanks.

Weatherby's ammo is loaded for them by Norma, and I would assume that they use a non-canister grade powder. Chances are that it is loaded pretty hot and even then the "advertised" velocity sometimes isn't reality.

You may be able to come close to duplicating the load using Norma MRP-2 powder, which is most likely the closest canister grade powder available. Data can be found here.

Norma powders are available through Grafs.

CAS gets the cigar. Norma does indeed load the brand of ammo in question on contract (or did, as of just a few years ago) -- and it's very hot. Read my three accounts and draw your own conclusion: are these three accounts related?



� Several years ago, I got a call from a fellow who wanted to know where to send the remains of his friend's rifle for forensic analysis. His friend was a hunter but not a handloader. He used only the brand of factory ammo in question in his rifle (same brand). Not long before the other fellow called me, the hunter had been out (prone) sighting-in his rifle to be ready for hunting season. The bolt had come out of the receiver and entered the shooter's face just below his eye -- it stopped in his lower neck.



� Later, I got a couple of calls from an American friend who was visiting Norma on business. In both calls, he told me that (a) the Norma guys liked my idea of loading a larger cartridge to lower pressures to get the desired velocities without unduly straining the rifle, and (b) that they were unhappy and uneasy with having to load to the pressures established by their contract with the company whose ammo we're discussing.



� A bit later still, I got a couple of calls from a friend in the US ammo industry whose lab job included pressure-testing all the factory ammo available in the US. In the first of these two calls, he mentioned his uneasiness with the tests of the brand of ammo in question and said he'd be especially happy to be done with that span of tests. In the next call, he expressed relief at having finished testing that brand of ammo.

"What was the problem?" I asked. "Bad recoil?"

"No," he said. "Very high pressures."

"What was the highest?"

"Seventy-five thousand [lb/sq in.]."

"Well, what was the lowest?"

"Seventy-four thousand."



In this country, SAAMI's highest maximum pressures are around 65,000 lb/sq in., and even those get pretty hot at times. I don't know how in the world any handloader could expect to match either the advertised performance or the de facto field performance of the ammo we're discussing at anything even remotely like safe maximum pressures.

Wow! That had to hurt <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Why, in this day of litigious society, would any company load ammo so hot?

Amazing....

Dr Howell
I've tried for years to duplicate Wby ammo and I cannot do it ! Seems when I get the velocity close , the pressure is off the scale . I plan to do some pressure testing of my own with Wby ammo soon, I'll post the results.
Charlie

Westman

Quote:
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The bolt had come out of the receiver and entered the shooter's face just below his eye -- it stopped in his lower neck.


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Wow! That had to hurt

Why, in this day of litigious society, would any company load ammo so hot?... Welcome to the wonderful world of RUM, SAUM, WSM, and WSSM...

Amazing....
Charlie

Mothertrucker...Did you have any presure signs, and I know you know what to look for, if not then don't worry......Do you have a speed-o-meter? If not the next time you're down find out what the velocities are...plenty of people you know have them...

Who is this? Do I know you????

Not really, but there's only so many people that would name theirselfs trucker in a public forum <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

I'll let you stew on it for a few days, then tell you...

The only two Wby calibres that I have chronographed a few times over a few years have been the 300 Wby 180 grain and 378 with 270 grain.

The 300 has been around the 3150 to 3170 mark and the 378 has been around the 3060 to 3080 mark. In both cases top loads with Re 22 have been about 100 f/s above these figures.

It would be about 5 years since I last chronographed such factory ammo.

Mike

Ken Howell's comments pose an interesting question. All of the flack alot of people gave Chuck Hawks on his commentary comparing the 243 WSSM to the 240 Weatherby magnum are ringing true to me. The key point Chuck was making, and I remember so many wanting to bash him, was that Winchester was comparing apples to oranges to mis-lead you into believing the 243WSSM was more powerful (read , had more velosity), than the 240 wby mag. Chuck's point was that Winchester choose to compare Olin's (Winchester ammo) 243 WSSM factory loads to reload book data on the 240 Weatherby. As Ken Howell stated, Weatherby factory ammo, which is made by Norma, is already "hot", and frankly, Chuck's argument of Calling BS on Winchester I believe hit the nail rigft on the head. I also remember a bunch of people bashing Chuck when he came down on the feed mechanism for the WSSM mags. It does seem now, that he was onto something as is demonstrated by some of the problems we now hear Browning and Winchester are having with feeding mechanisms. Just some food for thought. The short mags I believe are clearly hear to stay, but let's make sure they are promoted for what they are, not what they arent. An example is the 25WSSM, I looked at the data recently, and it looks like a glorified 257 Roberts, but is being touted as equal to the 25-06. Well Winchester...........prove it, because so far, I dont buy your BS.

I have a problem with the facts presented so far that suggest
Weatherby factory ammo is unsafe.

A bolt being blown through a guy's head is certainly an eye catching
anecdote but I would like to know a lot more about the rifle
itself -- a Weatherby or a knock-off or custom job with no freebore;
its condition -- plugged barrel, head space problems?; and
what the post mortem on the rifle and the incident concluded.

The high pressures alluded to would break down any rifle in fairly
quick time if they were not designed to cope. Is the Weatherby
"free-bore" the reason why they don't? We are talking over sixty years
of market exposure here.

Not only would Weatherby and Norma be at risk of cripppling law suits
but what about the otehr major rifle makers who now chamber
Weatherby cartridges in their rifles? Even Ruger, among the
most lawyer-ridden in the industry, makes its rifles in
several WBY cartridges.

I have no dog in this fight as I own only a .257 WBY and am
not in the "bidness". But my BS sniffer is twitching overtime
on this one.

1B
-

IMO, anybody who can't acknowledge that lab-tested pressures of 74,000 to 75,000 lb/sq in. are unsafe in any rifle is foolish beyond hope or logic.
It was a Weatherby-- Mark V, IIRC -- a veteran of long use with Weatherby factory ammo and no other. No other problem reported to me. (Isn't a bolt blown into one's face enough sign of a problem to suggest that something went badly wrong?)

That's the point. Congratulations for "getting it." But "fairly quick time" is somewhat stretchy, IMO. I know of no rifle that's "designed to cope" with long-term use with ammo loaded to the pressures that these lab-tested rounds were loaded to.

In the Powley-Howell book Inside the Rifle (to be published soon), the senior author points-out that over a broad number of rounds loaded to a specified nominal maximum pressure, the actual pressures form a classic bell-shaped curve. IOW, they range from a few much lower to a few much higher than the nominal maximum pressure, with the vast majority clustered tightly around the nominal maximum pressure.

This would mean that some rounds loaded to a nominal maximum of 75,000 lb/sq in. could develop pressures much closer to 100,000 lb/sq in. and possibly even higher. This is one reason that the SAAMI companies' ammo is supposed to be factory-loaded to SAAMI's official maximums of 60,000 to 65,000 lb/sq in. for rifles that have withstood proof-test firings at pressures substantially higher than 60,000-65,000 lb/sq in.

... and you assume no other trouble?

I'd call that very much having a dog in this fight.

What's that on your upper lip? <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> (Couldn't resist such an obvious and inviting opening!)

Exactly whom do you suspect of conscious misrepresentation here? Your suspicion strongly suggests to me that you're so ready to misrepresent clear facts (to best fit your preferred opinons and to best suit your own purposes) that you readily assume that others are equally prone to misrepresent clear facts when they present clear facts that you don't like. That's what the world at large, through the ages, has found to be generally true of those who stand ever ready to suspect others of misrepresentation.

Ken--You are corect on this issue.When one rifle company marketing it's ammo, but is hiring someone else to load it real
hot, you have a recipe for problems.And with repeated firings
on a multilug bolt, all small lugs, that is very hard to get to bear on all those
lugs and seats, with hot loads, fatigue can occur.Said rifle company had to misrepresent there loads to SAAMI if they belonged.The SAAMI specs are designed to allow for the occasional load that goes to pressure above the curve .IE
act like a blue pill high test round.I have studied internal ballistics like Ken and Homer
and there is no good reason for anyone to operate this way.
Lately it seems folks chronoing their loads have noticed
a reduction in velocity..Ed.

Ken, maybe I am not reading all of this correct, but isnt it true that the short mags factory loads would be very difficult for a reloader to exceed factory velocity, due to the fact that Winchester, Browning ,Olin, etc all know that the rifles out there now in the market are all new. So, over time, would we expect the factory ammo for the short mags to get loaded alittle softer, or am I reading this wrong? Also, I would assume at that point a handloader would perhaps have the upper hand in developing higher velocity rounds? Or am I out to lunch.....

Dr. Howell,

I also heard a story similar to the one you related. Except I heard that the guy survived, and received a huge settlement.

From details I was told, I am not sure that it was worth any amount of money he received.

Tony.

When asked, I referred the injured shooter's lawyer to the H P White Laboratory for forensic examination and analysis and did not examine the subject rifle myself. With several others, nevertheless, I've given the matter a lot of thought from what little I was told of the incident and what good bit we've all long known about the locking lugs in bolt actions -- and all the other experts have seconded my tentative explanation as "most logical" to "the only explanation that makes any sense at all."

We've known for a long time that
(a) with even a two-lug bolt, only one locking lug usually takes the brunt of the back-thrust, if not all of it -- at least at first, until repeated firings seat the second lug, and
(b) that the more locking lugs there are on the bolt, the more of them that are just hanging there, disengaged, until repeated firing seats one or more of the others.

So our (my) theory was (is) that one by one under repeated firings with ultra-high-pressure ammo, all those nine tiny locking lugs set back -- only one or maybe two taking the load at any one time -- until the last one (just like all the other eight before it) finally cracked -- and none was left strong enough to take the pressure of that one "last straw" and let that last round propel the bolt out of the receiver and into the shooter's face and neck. But of course without examining the remains of the rifle, none of us could confirm or correct this educated conjecture. I'd be surprised -- however -- if this were to prove wrong in any detail.

Sure wish I'd been engaged to examine that rifle -- and not just for the "expert witness" fee and expenses!

Probably the same fellow. The friend who called me, soon after the incident, told me that the shooter's 13-year-old grandson had been able to get him into the car and drive it to where the shooter could be air-lifted to a Salt Lake City hospital, where the doctors kept him from dying. (The incident occurred somewhere near our old county seat of Tooele, Utah.)

I would expect him to receive a huge settlement -- from one of the gun accidents that I would consider the manufacturer and not the shooter probably culpable for. (I've testified in both kinds of cases -- some where the manufacturer was obviously at fault and others where the handloader was to blame for the problem. Both kinds occur all too frequently.)

I know my Ruger M77 tang safety model my gunsmith left the same amount of freebore in it as a standard 240 weatherby so the rifle could shoot factory ammunition. When I broke the barrel in, I used 4 boxes of older Weatherby ammo I purchased , and then I shot 1 box of new factory 100 grain partitions in it. Now I am reloading it, and have a 100 grain partition load worked up, a 90 grain XFB, and the 95 grain TSX. I'm not going to put in print what I am currently thinking, only maybe to comment that I am glad I am now shooting my handloads. We might forget the apples and oranges argument also, or do you guys allow retractions?

Ken--There was another similiar incident in Scandinavia
also, that I have heard about ..Over on AR it was discussed
last spring..Ed.