Gunpowder (Hodgdon)

[durand mortenson]

Yup, I live about 30 miles from there. when they were tearing the old plant down me and my dad went out there a salvaged a bunch of the bricks from the original plant. I talked to the guy in charge and I was able to get some pieces of the huge Redwood timbers from the roof, clear redwood and way over 100 years old. The plant was built in 1881. If I remember correctly they were 12"x 36" and some of them were over 30' long. I ripped them down for different projects. I still have some and always wanted to send it to Terry Leonard to make me a stock out of it but unfortunately I wanted to long. I thought that would have been kinda cool to have a stock made from timbers from the Original Hercules Powder Plant in Ca.

Redwood is a little on the soft side . I bet what you got was all or mostly heart wood and it is really pricey now.

Mort

 

[muleystalker]

Redwood is a little on the soft side . I bet what you got was all or mostly heart wood and it is really pricey now.

Mort

Defiantly all Heart! Beautiful too. Redwood is a great wood for the BR stocks that Terry Leonard was making with carbon fiber stringers. It is soft but its light weight and with the finish they put on them they are fairly durable for a BR rig. Defiantly not as durable as hard wood.He did a beautiful job too. They also use Cedar.

Here a few photos of one of his stock that I am lucky enough to own, the photos arent great but if you zoom in you can see the great figure in this redwood stock.

 

[Laurie]

We have powder production here but it's all spherical and flake powder. So there must be an issue with manufacturing the extruded powders?

Yes there is. Manufacturing ball-technology propellants is quicker, cheaper and safer than extruded as many processes are carried out in water solutions and part made products pumped between processes as slurries.

I’m pretty sure that EPA regulations would make extruded tube powders too expensive to manufacture here. That’s why only spherical and flake powders are made here…

One of the Hodgdon family told me 30 odd years ago that US manufacturers could manufacture extruded powders within your EPA regulations, but it would be so expensive that nobody would buy it.

And think of all the rural places in America that would love to have this economic boom, and the land it would be setting on is just only good for holding the world together anyway.

Really? Health & Safety / environmental bureaucrats and their regulations aside, even rural folks want chemical, never mind explosives plants on their doorsteps about as much these days as they'd want leper colonies or plague centres.

A little Trivia......During WW2, Dupont companies produced one million
pounds of powder "per day" for the war effort. After the war, 1.6 million
tons of powder were dumped at sea for disposal.....

Until well into WW2, capital ships with guns of up to 16-inch calibre were the 'strategic weapons' of the era and used huge nitrocellulose propellant charges in bags, not to mention the many destroyers, cruisers and other smaller vessels. All governments with major navies kept large stocks of same in onshore ordnance storage depots in case of unexpected hostilities. As the propellants had a set shelf life, they were then dumped at sea or burned when life-expired. In the 1930s a former US ordnance chemist Dr. Fred Olsen moved to the Winchester-Western explosives plant at East Alton and there developed a revolutionary new powder manufacturing process that re-used any such surplus nitrocellulose propellants, whether rifle artillery or naval, as a feedstock to make new powders. That is ball powders.

 

[Kracken McGraw]

Really? Health & Safety / environmental bureaucrats and their regulations aside, even rural folks want chemical, never mind explosives plants on their doorsteps about as much these days as they'd want leper colonies or plague centres.

Getting the Bureaucrats out of the way would be the one hurdle. Lots of vast big country over here, so no doorsteps to disturb.

 

[LCazador]

Yes there is. Manufacturing ball-technology propellants is quicker, cheaper and safer than extruded as many processes are carried out in water solutions and part made products pumped between processes as slurries.





One of the Hodgdon family told me 30 odd years ago that US manufacturers could manufacture extruded powders within your EPA regulations, but it would be so expensive that nobody would buy it.





Really? Health & Safety / environmental bureaucrats and their regulations aside, even rural folks want chemical, never mind explosives plants on their doorsteps about as much these days as they'd want leper colonies or plague centres.






Until well into WW2, capital ships with guns of up to 16-inch calibre were the 'strategic weapons' of the era and used huge nitrocellulose propellant charges in bags, not to mention the many destroyers, cruisers and other smaller vessels. All governments with major navies kept large stocks of same in onshore ordnance storage depots in case of unexpected hostilities. As the propellants had a set shelf life, they were then dumped at sea or burned when life-expired. In the 1930s a former US ordnance chemist Dr. Fred Olsen moved to the Winchester-Western explosives plant at East Alton and there developed a revolutionary new powder manufacturing process that re-used any such surplus nitrocellulose propellants, whether rifle artillery or naval, as a feedstock to make new powders. That is ball powders.

Laurie, thanks for this enlightening post! I understand the Federal ammo plant in Anoka, MN (rural MN) is undergoing several law suits on lead poisoning from former employees. The lawyers are busy in rural or suburban America trying to edge out gun related manufacturing. May be why the Czech companies are doing well? Like many of our other things that can be made cheaper, better, and quicker outside the US.

 

[divingin]

Redwood is a little on the soft side . I bet what you got was all or mostly heart wood and it is really pricey now.

Mort

I've heard from some Alameda guys with 100-year old houses; all old-growth redwood framing - they have to drill holes before nailing to it, as nails will bend before they drive in.

Of course building a stock now to use in a hundred years doesn't make a lot of sense, either.

 

[durand mortenson]

Defiantly all Heart! Beautiful too. Redwood is a great wood for the BR stocks that Terry Leonard was making with carbon fiber stringers. It is soft but its light weight and with the finish they put on them they are fairly durable for a BR rig. Defiantly not as durable as hard wood.He did a beautiful job too. They also use Cedar.

Here a few photos of one of his stock that I am lucky enough to own, the photos arent great but if you zoom in you can see the great figure in this redwood stock. View attachment 1521723

Well I learned something new and that is really beautiful wood!
The Cedar is a real surprise. I split a lot of 6-7 ft rails for fencing when I was younger. It is really light weight when dry.

Mort

 

[muleystalker]

I've heard from some Alameda guys with 100-year old houses; all old-growth redwood framing - they have to drill holes before nailing to it, as nails will bend before they drive in.

Of course building a stock now to use in a hundred years doesn't make a lot of sense, either.

Yes I have worked on homes in the Bay Area with the old Redwood, and everything was true dimensional lumber, a 2x4 measured a true 2"x4". All the old homes in this area were redwood, my uncle had several. My other uncle moved several of the old officers houses to Antioch when they closed the Oakland Army Base years ago and my cousin still lives in one and owns the other. Redwood was the prevalent wood on the west coast at one time, All the fences here are all made with Redwood.

 

[durand mortenson]

A friend of mine had a portable mill and we would cut full dimensional lumber. People would look at the rafters in my shop/garage and ask if they were 2x6. It would fool you.

Mort

 

[ronsatspokane]

I have a friend who has a company dealing with shooting products. He has some very nice CNC machines he uses for product development. They source their products from China because they can't find a source in the US who can hold the tolerances the Chinese can.....
That is sad and alarming.

Actually when it comes to holding tight tolerances, it is the capability of the machines that determine what is possible. The pecking order in that regard on the basis of the countries who produce the machines seems to be: Japan, Germany, US and Taiwan. China comes in at the bottom. Your friend needs to broaden his supplier horizons a bit.

I have a friend who has machines from each country. He runs multi million dollar machining centers that produce everything from precision medical instruments to rocket components. When they say that the US can't compete anymore he proves them wrong. And he became quite successful in the process of proving them wrong.

 

[jxb]

Oh and they updated their burn rate chart this month.

https://hodgdonpowderco.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024-Smokeless-Relative-Burn-Rate-Chart-WEBSITE.pdf

 

[Paul's Black Rifles]

China comes in at the bottom.

In my opinion India is the worst for quality and precision.
Paul

 

[CJ6]

Oh and they updated their burn rate chart this month.

https://hodgdonpowderco.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/2024-Smokeless-Relative-Burn-Rate-Chart-WEBSITE.pdf

No mention of Varget?

 

[jxb]

lol, yeah I noticed that right off. Would be nice if they would keep it to one page and just let the user view >100% as needed. Or better yet, divide it into pistol/shotgon vs rifle sheets but provided together so the reader can see both and not wonder where their overlap powder went.

 

[ronsatspokane]

In my opinion India is the worst for quality and precision.
Paul

Yeah, they can produce pretty sloppy product but they don't make any of the machines that I'm aware of.

Pakistan is the same in that regard. What cracks me up are the custom knives in the pages of NRA produced mags and marketing materials where the knives they offer are Pakistani made Damascus bladed knives that you can buy for 10 bucks or less all day long. The Damascus blades are not the same as the Japanese blades.

 

[Hit_n_miss]

A little Trivia......During WW2, Dupont companies produced one million
pounds of powder "per day" for the war effort. After the war, 1.6 million
tons of powder were dumped at sea for disposal.....

I live about 5 miles from one of the Dupont powder manufacturing sites. I'm not certain when, though I believe in the war years, but there was an explosion that killed several people employed there.

The land is still fenced off and owned at one point by folks who attempted to make it into a game farm. I believe it's exchanged hands many times.