[BoilerUP]

Anybody know what type of powder OEMs use for their factory loaded 30-06 ammunition?

I'm curious about the Remington Core-Lokt and Winchester Super-X 150-180gr loads...thanks!

[Griz44]

I load the Remington 165G PSPCL for target ammo. It is also a very good hunting round. I load it over a WIN LR primer and 56-57 g of H4350 powder. Very good round....

[45ACPUSER]

You will never know! And, anyone that thinks they know is full of it! They use non-canister grades of powder, and they use special blends of powder that we can not access!

Best advice is look at a few reloading manuals and look what they say is the accuracy load for a particular cart. and go with load development based on their data!

[BoilerUP]

I had a half-box of old 180gr factory loads, and I was hoping to pull the bullets, clean the case and reuse the powder topped with a 150gr NBT.

Just wanted to make sure I had a good safe load by referencing my load manuals before doing so...

[nambu1]

Winchester loaded their factory loads with 760 or 748 ball powder.

[NCsmitty]

I would guess that it would be safe to use the 180 gr. powder charge with a 150 gr. bullet. Usually the heavier bullets uses a smaller powder charge of the same powder, due to the pressure curve required to move it down the barrel. Look at any reloading manual to see this. But you probably knew that.

NCsmitty

[Jim Watson]

What they do is take bids for powder. It might be a bulk lot differing from the cannister lot you can buy, or it might not; depends on what is on hand at the time. What they load this month may not be what they loaded last month. I remember from several years ago the gunzine writer who was amazed to find 7mm-08 Remington factory loaded with Winchester 748.

I also recall the Guns & Ammo article of even earlier that headlined "This may be the powder that Winchester loads 180 grain .30-06 with." Referring to the then-new (to retail sales) H414 which comes off the W760 production line.

[BoilerUP]

Hmm...very interesting info here.

I pulled six older Winchester Super-X 180 grainers and the powder was of the extruded type; it looked similar to Varget (the only extruded powder I've used). Seemed to be about 48-48.5 grains in each case.

[Jim Watson]

Well it could be non-canister grades in a special blend of powder that we can not access. Maybe with a little sprinkle of pixie dust added.

Or it could be IMR 4320 or IMR 4064. The results would be about the same.
Winchester would not have balked at buying IMR powder.

[smitty_bs]

Many years ago, Remington loaded the 110, 150, and 180 bullets using IMR 4064 (both owned by DuPont at the time). I pulled a 180gr RN once and in the 1990s and it appeared to be loaded with H414 or W760.

I often hear that the factories use special blends now, and as 45acpuser says, we'll never know....

And as Nambu1 said, Winchester used 760.

[langenc]

165 gr Rem PSPCLs with RL 22-59 grains. Not the hottest load but accurate.

[steve4102]

http://accurateshooter.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/hodgdon-releases-two-new-powders-hybrid-100v-and-supreme-780/

[janobles14]

Advice from the hornady rep at my local store:

If you want to try to clone a factory round you can come close by doing the following:

1. pull 5 bullets and weigh each charge.

2. take the average weight and consult 3 major reloading guides printed around the time the bullet lot was loaded.

3. find out the average velocity of 5 more of those factory rounds.

4. match the velocity to the powder charge in a manual or two and you should have the base powder. you may have to do some math!

most factory ammo is loaded with large lots of various powder types (sometime mixtures) but they almost always have a majority base of some exact or variant of a common powder.

hope this helps!

[jim147]

The lighter bullet will give you a light load for the round. But some powders are not made to be loaded light. In the end it's your eye and your hands just make sure no one else is around in case.

I'm tight but I don't load unknown powder.

[Jim Watson]

I don't buy the idea of wunderpowder specially formulated and blended for factory loads.

If you think about it, the powder factory runs off a large batch of powder with the same supply of raw materials and operating conditions, then tests the final product. If it meets the standards it is classified as a cannister powder to be sold at retail by the pound.

If it does not, then it is sold to ammunition plants which have the pressure and velocity test equipment to give the desired ballistics from any powder reasonably suitable for the case volume and caliber.

The powder mill probably sells off the cannister grade powder that they do not have orders for to ammo plants, too.

So we get the good stuff and the factory loads are made with rejects.


As far as the new, newer, newest Winchester 780, they have been trying to get out a powder in that burn rate for years, without much success. W785 was a flop, for example.