OT - Surplus Military Powders?

[L_Kilkenny]

At the last gun show I was at a dealer had 8lbs jugs of surplus powder. I don't recall the numbers. Cost was $80/each. Does anyone have a list of surplus powders and their civilian twins? Does anyone have a surplus powder they like?

LK

[Les Staley]

I use WC846, the earlier lot (8# jug) was close to BLC2, (work up your loads).. the last jug I bought was closer to IMR 4064. Also the 4895 works well for 30-06, and family cartridges..Usualy the seller will have data for loading.. I bought mine from Jeff Bartlet's GI Brass.. He will give you advice.. Les

[awp101]

Bump since I'm kind of curious myself about an interchangeability list...

[Charles]

gibrass.com sells, or used to sell allot of surplus powders and had a list of which civilian powder was close to the various civilian counterparts. Like everything else, surplus powders have gone way up in price.

I shoot allot of WC872 which is a very slow ball machine gun powder developed for the 20mm Vulcan round.

I use it as a cast bullet powder. You can't get enough of it in most cases to get into pressure trouble, and the slow shove is very gentle on alloy bullets. A couple of years ago, I bought four 8 pound jugs for less than $100.00 for the case.

[Ranch Dog]

A couple of years ago I bought a jug of WC846 from Bartlett Powders in KY. I finally finished up a jug of BL-C(2) and my dad needed ammo for his 30-30.

The last jug of BL-C(2) had a specific gravity of .998, one cc weighed 15.400 grains giving it a VDM of .0649. My jug of WC846 has a specific gravity of 1.020, one cc weighed 15.748 grains giving it a VDM of .0635. I did work up to the same max load I was using of BL-C(2), 36.0-grains. The BL-C(2) filled the case with a 99% density, the WC846 is 97%.

The WC846 shot very well. The max load of BL-C(2) delivered 2223 FPS and the WC846 2236 FPS.

[Thunder50]

I googled burn rate chart and came up with a chart that had surplus powders. Google surplus powders burn rate and the home.hiwaay.net site had the chart. wc844 was one slot above bl-c(2), in speed,with wc846 one slot slower than bl-c(2), wc852(slow) was a couple faster than 4831 and the fast lots of wc852 is one slot slower than vv-150 or two faster than w-760. wc860 one slot slower than AA8700 and wc872 one slot slower than H-retumbo.
I understand 7383 is like 4831, but has some quirks
Go to castboolits.gunloads.com and there is a surplus powder section.

Hope this helps


Check out gibrass.com or patsreloading.com for surplus powders

[mikld]

There's a little info here on equivalents and sources;

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=7584