My Three Powders

[Steve Koski]

As discussed before, I'm trying to ID some powders I extracted from some ammo I scrounged off of the ground at IDPA Nationals this year. I AM NOT GOING TO USE THIS POWDER.

These 3 pics show what I think is the same powder. A fine black ball powder.

It has got to be medium/slow:
In .40 S&W the load was 6.1 grains under a 180.
In 9mm a common load was 5.3 grains under a 147.
in 45 the load was 8.3 grains under a 200.

It is NOT WSF.

I'm thinking it is probably HS-6. Does anyone have some HS-6 around to compare to these pictures?

Thanks,

 

[Centaur 1]

It's late so I'm not going to check until tomorrow, but from memory it does look like hs-6. Something I noticed just this week when I bought my first bottle of Hodgdon Leverevolution powder. LE powder looks almost identical to HS-6. To prevent any chance of an accident, all my powder stays in the storage cabinet. I take out and use only one powder at a time, when I'm done I empty the powder measure back into the bottle, then put the bottle back in the cabinet. To keep from loading the wrong powder, I never bring out two powders at once.

 

[918v]

HS6 looks like WSF. This looks like AA#5.

 

[Steve Koski]

Thank you! And thanks for checking when you get home Centaur.

 

[poco loco]

Win 540/HS6 every grain very shiny, looks almost lacquered and seems to be more uniform in size No #5 to ck but looks similar to Win 571/HS7, AA#7 seems more uniform on the small side, less variation. At least in my lot, the Accurate powders seems to be very different lot to lot, at least the older stuff.

 

[poco loco]

and if you dont mind if I horn in on your powder thread to ask a question, anyone out there have any useable pistol data for Winchester Western AA20S ?

teh googles havent been much help, found some 20 gauge data, precious little but at least some, just nothing for pistol, so far at least. Any help appreciated.

 

[ATLDave]

If it has a slight goldish cast to it, it looks a good deal like my AA#5.

 

[Centaur 1]

At first glance they look similar, but yours is definately NOT HS-6. Under closer examination hs-6 is very uniform in size, it's a flattened ball shape that measures approximately .050" across. The graduations on your scale are .100", and looking at the picture more than two granules will fit between the graduation lines.

Look at the powder under magnification, are there two different sized granules or is it an optical illlusion? In the pictures it looks like a mix of two sizes. I know that it can't be because it came from handgun calibers, but it looks just like Leverevolution powder.

 

[gamestalker]

I use a lot of HS6 and it does look a lot like it. However, as already mentioned, there is a large number of powders that look just like HS6.

GS