Range Report

waco

Springfield, Oregon
Just bought a pound of H414
This is a new to me powder. A ball powder at that. I didn't know that.
Any pointers using this powder with cast in the .308?......
 

USSR

Finger Lakes Region of NY
Is anyone seeing (this thread and another one dealing with pistol powders) that many Hodgdon and Winchester powders are the same? ;) That's because Hodgdon has never made a powder. All their powders are manufactured by someone else who puts the Hodgdon label on it.

Don
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
They do have a bunch of copy cat powders. Many with Win since they are made in same plant, just the bottle is different.
 

Will

Well-Known Member
Can anyone confirm the AM 31-160G mold is the copy of the XCB with Toms nose limitations?

Been thinking of getting a mold but really want to go with accurate.
 

Brad

Benevolent Overlord and site owner
Staff member
Sure looks right. I know the first mould was from Tom.
 

Ian

Notorious member
Tim had Tom cut the first one, that's the one you see at AM. It got re-done by NOE on account of the nose.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
the first one was from Tom.
I rejected the design because of the nose shape, and Tim called AL who agreed to cut the mold.
the 160 would make a great hunting design at around 2200 fps if you need the extra distance.
but so does the 165-A.
 

Will

Well-Known Member
I won’t derail the thread any more after this but I’m having a hard time understanding why this bullet is only good to 2200 FPS. The biggest disadvantage I see is a much lower BC.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
it's good to a lot higher velocity than that.
the flat nose just takes it to another place as far as ballistics.
since the XCB was all about speed and paper it only makes sense to have the bullet designed for speed and paper.
I'm sure the flat nose version will shoot well it is just limited versus the other nose shape.

the 2200 fps comment was geared towards maintaining bullet integrity when used for hunting.
the faster you go, the smaller the meplat you want to use there too, otherwise you start turning the cast bullets into big versions of V-max bullets.
even at 2200 fps it is hard to put together an alloy package that will hold up if your only shooting at 50 yds.
now if you get shots closer to 200 yds on a regular basis, or need to drop the animal right at the fence line at 75 then you'd do well with a higher speed and a bit bigger meplat.
 

Ian

Notorious member
I just shot some spire-point 150-grainers into some crumb rubber mulch last night at about 6' distance. Alloy was straight clip-on WW, air cooled, powder coated and gas checked, chrono'd a titch under 2200 fps at the muzzle. Over half the bullet mushroomed and it went about 18" into medium-packed mulch. I used a 1" piece of packing foam to cover the hole so the bullet didn't hit cardboard initially and give false expansion. If the bullet had a flat point it would have turned into a coin.

Once you get over about 2k fps, you really need to think carefully and do some testing of alloy vs. bullet nose shape if you intend to hunt medium-sized game. I'm a big proponent of pointy bullets above 2200 fps, and using an alloy to match. Fortunately, most of the alloys which shoot well at HV also expand well at HV regardless of nose point; often you run into the problem of too much expansion rather than too little.
 

pokute

Active Member
Is anyone seeing (this thread and another one dealing with pistol powders) that many Hodgdon and Winchester powders are the same? ;) That's because Hodgdon has never made a powder. All their powders are manufactured by someone else who puts the Hodgdon label on it.

Don

Bruce Hodgdon started as the retailer of a single surplus powder that was, I think, recovered from salvaged from 20mm shells.

And these days, Winchester is just a brand name - In fact, Hodgdon licenses the Winchester brand! Currently (and for some time past) ALL ball powder is made by St. Marks Powder. There's no rule that says all ball powders with identical grain size and appearance are identical, however. Alliant 300MP (Also made by St. Marks) is VERY similar in appearance to H110/W296, but is noticeably flashier. It seems to be very slightly slower as well.

I spoke to a St. Marks chemist once, and he said that testing and liability issues favored fewer actual manufacturers and products, and that when they provide handbook load data, they intentionally do not report identical data for similar powders to avoid complacency. More recent load data seems to indicate that they no longer make that effort. He also told me that the reason nobody publishes pressure/time curves is because no two testing companies produce data that agrees, and that explaining the way that the test results are interpreted would be difficult at best, and grounds for litigation at worst.

Sorry, I'm feeling wordy today.
 

Tomme boy

Well-Known Member
I need to try my new batch of Starline brass.

Waco. Make sure to do a volume check on the Starline brass before you use it. I have seen some reports of some of their rifle brass having reduced capacity and popping primers. I know you are not running max loads but it may shift your load a bit.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
I hope it's the whole batch that's heavy and not just a random case here and there.
and hopefully it's not one batch heavy and one batch normal either.
if it's just heavier like a lot of the Hornady rifle brass is I could deal with that.
 

fiver

Well-Known Member
well I got some more loads put together, I just need a little less wind and snow flurries to get out and put them down range.
H-414, CFE-223, AA-4064, AA-2230, and IMR-4198 [with a grain of dacron] will all get a run this next outing.
I have to swirl and tap the 414 in the fire-formed cases now but another grain or two should be do-able.
I also set the oal a bit deeper for the 308, it's not a hard jam now I'm just setting them .005 deeper than where they were being set by the closing bolt before, this just gives me a nice pressed engraving of the rifling on the nose with minimal scuffing in the ball seat area.
to make up some of the difference I added .001 more neck tension.

I changed nothing on the XCB cases/rounds other than to square up the case mouths, and set the tension to .002 from .0015.