Best All Around Rifle Powders For Newer Reloaders

well shooters and reloaders out there it's fortune cookie 45 lc coming to you from the hot lead zone and today we're going to discuss some must-have rifle powders for new shooters and reloaders because even though we've got a powder shortage there might be some supplies that will surface either on the new market or the used market for a new shooter reloader and if they run into a powder would that be a good powder for them to really try hard to get well we're going to talk about powders that they can really use and would be a high priority to acquire well first of all we have to talk about strategy and that is you don't know when you're going to run into some deal where you might be able to get some powder or primers so the only way you can pounce is if you got something to pounce with so i recommend that all of us have some fun set aside that's been earmarked for acquisition of powder or primers or reloading equipment that kind of thing so you'll need anywhere from fifty dollars to two hundred dollars in your account that's budgeted just for this kind of thing and when you know you've got that then you're ready to pounce at a moment's notice well also a big hello to all the free circles passengers and members out there we're gonna start this video by getting warmed up with these reloading trays just like the video we did on handgun powders so have a look at this well as you know we made this tray the 14 cookie 45 lc design for 30 odd 6308 45 acp 38 special 357 magnum but it also includes dies that'll go in these holes in a 75 round block but we've already discussed this one let me show you my latest one and that's this one right here this one is a more simplified model of the last one it just has the holes for 308 30 odd six the 38 special 357 magnum all the two four threes the 260 remington seven millimeter oh wait all that kind of thing and it's simple because it makes use of an oak board and another oak board for a base where the cases go down and hit the bottom base because these holes are drilled all the way through and you see there we go so we'll do a more in depth on this at any rate let's go ahead and now that we're all warmed up let's go to our video on the powders for rifles that we really need to get well first of all all these containers are empty as you see but let's begin with this one here and this is imr or hodgdon 48.95 now the history on this is that back in the 1930s around 1936 when the m1 garand rifle was being accepted by the us army the powder was also being developed at that time for the u.s 30 caliber 30 odd six round of which the m1 garand was going to be firing and that's where 48.95 came in it was developed in the 1930s now it was important that this powder have a medium burn rate compared to all the powders we have today we consider this a medium burn rate because if the powder created pressure too quickly or too slowly it wouldn't function the m1 garand on one end if it had too much pressure too early it would cause damage to the action especially the long operating rod as you know the m16 or ar-15 doesn't have an operating rod it just goes ahead direct impingement so it's a lot less sensitive to powder pressure but the garand with a long operating rod had problems if the the powder speed wasn't right this was the right speed if it was too slow a powder the action wouldn't function so this powder turned out to be because of the medium speed it became one of the most versatile powders ever to be used by reloaders even to this day and what happened was bruce hodgdon who's the founder of hodgdon powder company he remembered what happened in world war one where the war ended when they had a pandemic at that time and the war ended and what the u.s government did was they had all this surplus powder corrosive powder in those days but they had all that powdered on their hands that they were built that they were manufacturing for the war effort and when the war ended so abruptly instead of storing that and spending money to inventory and logistically handle all that powder they had they just burned it and bruce hodgin knew that when world war ii ended they were going to do the same thing i'm burning up huge supplies of smokeless gunpowder and he knew that all those boys that were coming back from the front they've been used to operating all their weaponry and all the great equipment they had and they were going to be wanting to do a lot of shooting and so he went to the government and said well don't burn it all i'll buy a bunch of it from you and that way you can get some revenue for it that's a great idea isn't it so he bought box cards of 48.95 powder and he wound up distributing it in big lots big containers cartons and it would go to various distributors and reloaders would go buy it and what they would do is they would scoop out and sell the powder by the scoop put it into a paper bag and that's how they sold 48.95 and that gave the start to bruce hodgdon for a powder empire at any rate what happened is that the supplies of 48.95 whether they call hodgin 4895 what happened was the supplies that were surplus from world war ii ran out so around 1962 was when hodgdon and the dupont imr company wound up actually producing new lots of 48.95 because it was a good powder in demand so they actually started manufacturing this powder for reloaders under the hodgeon 4895 and imr improved military rifle 48.95 and that's the powders that we have all the way to this day and being a medium burning powder that was very well behaved it can be used to load anything from 17 remington all the way to 460 weatherby no you can't load 50 bmg with this so if you get a chance to get some imr or hodgdon 4895 jump at it because this is a very versatile powder anything you load in the way of rifle you can find load data for 48.95 for that caliber that you're trying to load so this is a good one to get now on the same thing this container actually has some 4064 in it and what i did was i had gotten a bigger container of it and i wanted to put some into a smaller container so what i went ahead and did was took a accurate empty container and i went ahead and wiped out the identification of what the powder was and substituted 4064 imr in this container and it's got about oh maybe a third left in here so when it gets empty i'll take the bigger container which is also half empty go ahead and fill with another pound of this powder but imr 4064 is another powder that's very similar to 48.95 it's a medium medium fast burning powder very useful for a lot of our rifle calibers this powder was also developed in the 1930s and it might have been a competition for 48.95 at any rate the contract went to 48.95 and 4064 was never used in military it won't be a very popular powder for reloaders because again you can load anything from 17 remington all the way to 458 winchester magnum 460 weatherby this powder is known for its consistency and accuracy so we like 4064 imr you get a chance to get any 4064 you can't go wrong latching onto some of this now one thing about 48.95 powder is the grain sizes are on the small side so that it functions very nicely through powder measures now imr 4064 does have the problem in that it's an extruded powder with a kind of a loggy look to it so that sometimes if you try and use it through a powder measure it may not meter as well as you would like now both of these powders are very well known for their accuracy but 4064 has a problem in that it doesn't meter as well through powder measures now that's not a problem if you go ahead and drop the charge into a scale pan and then go ahead and trickle up with 48.95 the thing about this powder is that the the granule sizes are small so that it meters very well through a powder measure if you like easy metering 48.95 is the one for you but you can't go wrong with either one of these powders they're great for any rifle shooter reloader to have now back in 1968 winchester came out with one of their ball powders and this is little spherical powders that are flattened a little bit so this powder winchester 748 was very easy to to meter in a powder measure but it also exhibited all the characteristics of ball powders that you've heard about that is that it's got a high loading density so that it all packs down into the case and there's a lot of powder for the space and that's in there low barrel erosion which is part of the reason for the ball powders clean burning low flash so it was intended to be a very good military powder in 1968 but this powder turned out to be a very good powder for reloaders still in the medium burn characteristics that places it so that it can load everything down to 17 caliber all the way to 458 winchester magnum and this powder is a very good one for you to use if you are a reloader that runs into some of this it wouldn't be a bad idea to go ahead and get this powder now the last rifle powder we're going to entertain here is hodgdon vargas and it's a hard powder to get even during times when powder availability is there because this is so popular a powder and it's made for precision accuracy it has low temperature sensitivity it was actually one of the powders that hydrogen back in 1996 introduced vargat as the first one of all of their extreme powders that were coming out after that and this one was very successful is made in australia it's a great powder for 223 which again all these powders are good for 223 that's one of the criteria for a powder that we have to have but it'll load everything all the way to 458 winchester magnum i know that because i have one of those and i like to use vargas one of the reasons why this can is empty and i got another can but you know what if i had a chance to get more vargas i would jump at it so this uh powder is great for shooting accuracy precision long range all that kind of thing the temperature sensitivity being so low makes this powder even more coveted by reloaders now vargate is a kind of an extruded powder but it's got small short grains so it's one of the first shortcut powders as such it meters very well through powder measures although we would like to go ahead and weigh the charges for maximum precision well shooters and reloaders out there in order to be complete we've got a considered discussion of black powder substitutes now if you get a chance to get some black powder and that's hard to get a hold of and you happen to shoot black powder already well of course get some black powder but for all of you new shooters and reloaders out there who haven't considered black powder consider the black powder substitutes i'm not talking about pyrodex pyrodex was developed in 1975 by a hydrogen power company and what they did was they took black powder and added stuff to it like chemicals potassium perchlorate and other chemicals graphite and by adding all that in there they changed it so that it was a black powder substitute that could be used instead of black powder but essentially it was it was black powder and you still had all the problems with fouling and all that kind of thing but it was more stable and safer to use and that's why pyrodex came in but about 20 years ago hodgdon came out with another black powder substitute and it's called triple seven and the beauty of this is that they got rid of the sulfur that's in black powder so you don't get the sulfur odors and you don't get the sulfur fouling this kind of thing and they got rid of the charcoal the charcoal is the fuel the oxidizer is the oxidizer is potassium nitrate so that's still in there but they got rid of the charcoal and instead the fuel that they use is sugar based so it's carbon that's in sugar used to burn with the oxidizer being potassium nitrate and no sulfur and this created a black powder substitute that's actually a fairly clean shooting formula and i've used this in cartridge cases especially good for straight wall cases like the 4570 3855 all of your pistol calibers that revolver calibers are straight wall probably not good for automatic pistols but triple seven is a good powder substitute if you get a chance to get some triple seven whether it's a three fg or the two fg either one you can use it in cartridges now however i would be remiss to not let all of you out there know that with triple seven the excellent powder but you cannot quite use it like smokeless powder it's not a straight transference in techniques because if you have any air space in your cartridge between the powder and the bullet that is a no-no just like black powder and black powder substitutes triple seven needs to be loaded so the bullet will touch the powder charge or very slight five percent compression you don't want to compress it heavily like you know you see all those old civil war movies where they're ramming that ball down on top of the powder in their muskets is ramming it down there you don't do that kind of compression with triple seven a little bit's okay but if you do that and no air space between the bullet and powder charge you're gonna be on real good ground with triple seven i found that it shoots with great satisfaction when you do it that way and that limits you on the power factors that are in your load but the power factors that you get with triple seven are very useful but if you're able to score some of this and you've never used it before there's some good videos out there i've done a couple of myself that involved the reloading with hodge and triple seven you might want to refer to those and you'll get some good performance enough that you can actually shoot and have credible performance out of your ammunition so if you get a chance to stumble on the supplies of triple seven by all means y'all consider going ahead and getting it so shooters and reloaders and three circles passengers and members here's a good stable of powders for all of you new shooters and reloaders out there looking for good versatile powders that can be used to reload a wide range of rifle cartridges take care good reload india good hunting for powder we'll see you next video bye for now

Channel: FortuneCookie45LC

Views: 62,354

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Id: U76s9u_vW80

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 16 2021