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Powder Guess in a .30/06 Military G I Load

centershot

Silver $$ Contributor
I pulled apart a Military round from an en block. It has 58.5 grains of a ball powder in it behind a 150 grain bullet. I thought the thinking behind this is not to use a slow burning powder for fear of bending the op rod.
With that much powder in the cartridge, it must be a slower burning powder. What are your thoughts?
 
A picture of the head stamp and powder would be good clues in solving this mystery. IMR-4350 would be a reasonable guess because it is an appropriate load for a 150, but the US never loaded 4350 into 30-06 as it was too slow for the Garand.
 
I use to load surplus 4831 {WWII 20mm cannon powder I think} back in the mid 60's that was really cheap at 50¢ a pound!!! Bring your own container... It was scooped out of a big square navy grey box that held about 150 lbs of the stuff and loaded everything I could get my hands on including cast bullets of about 178gr as I remember...
More or less scoop the case full and stuff a bullet in... {:~/
It operated my Garand {NRA special} just fine and I still have a small store of those cast bullet loads that I shoot in military matches to this day...
Goes BANG! every time but LOTS of smoke now and bit of a strange smell and not very accurate but it is now 60+ years old...
Long story is, even a powder as slow as 4831 will work in a Garand though as centershot mentioned, military ball ammo is loaded with Ball powder, Ball C, if I remember rightly and is faster and offers more recoil.
 
Ditto on the comment regarding WC852.
Assuming it is US LC M2 ball from late 60's to 1972.
See section 5 TM 43-0001-27 Army Ammunition Data Sheets for Small Caliber Ammunition

My understanding is that WC852 burn range varied greatly, with the slower lots used only for linked MG ammo (M1919 browning MGs).
Check the head stamp and date. A lot of the MG stuff got delinked and sold on the surplus ammo market.
If foreign, all bets are off.

Note: Back when it was available (Jeff Bartlett, Pats, Talon, etc), there seemed to be 3 distinct lots of surplus/pull down WC852 being sold. The fast lots were in the H-380 range, with the slow lots in the H-450 range, and lord knows what was in the middle. I had some of the fast lot pull down many years ago and used H-380 load data. But you never exactly know what is floating around in surplus ammo/pull down powder as most of this stuff got dumped back in the late 80's-early 90's.

Correspondence from Jeff Bartlett regarding WC852 (not mine, swiped from other reload forum):

Depending on the burning rates, some lots of WC852 were loaded as light as 44.8gr, and as heavy as
61.5gr. If a particular powder lot required more than 54gr to make velocity,
this ammo was designated "for MG use only", due to excessive port pressures if
shot in the M1 Garand. In other words, ammo loaded with WC852 powder was
approved for all weapons (rifle and MG) if the charge weight was 54gr or less.
Ammo which required more than 54gr to meet spec, was approved, but for MG use
only.

Note: I do use slow burning powder in the M1 w/standard gas plug...but only in limited cast bullet applications, specifically the "Bob-S load" with 200 gr cast bullets. But that is a disscusion for another day.
 
centershot said:
I pulled apart a Military round from an en block. It has 58.5 grains of a ball powder in it behind a 150 grain bullet. I thought the thinking behind this is not to use a slow burning powder for fear of bending the op rod.
With that much powder in the cartridge, it must be a slower burning powder. What are your thoughts?
Click to expand...
I used to reload military 30-06 back in the early 70s while in the USCG with a gunner's mate. Cannot remember the powder as it came in green metal cans. I do remember were loaded them with 47 grains of powder. He had a book that provided the military loads.
​
 
Last edited:
Follow up. The cartridge is stamped "L C 69". The only reason that I am bringing this up is that I loaded L C brass with 47 grains of a powder known as 2395 BR and the Hornady book for Garand loading says that 45.5 of an Accurate 2495 powder is max with a 165 grain bullet. Not sure if they are the same powders or where I obtained that loading data 30 years ago, but I decided that that was too much powder. So I pulled 300 rounds apart to drop the charge to 44.0.
May be over cautious, but better safe than sorry.
 
centershot said:
Follow up. The cartridge is stamped "L C 69". The only reason that I am bringing this up is that I loaded L C brass with 47 grains of a powder known as 2395 BR and the Hornady book for Garand loading says that 45.5 of an Accurate 2495 powder is max with a 165 grain bullet. Not sure if they are the same powders or where I obtained that loading data 30 years ago, but I decided that that was too much powder. So I pulled 300 rounds apart to drop the charge to 44.0.
May be over cautious, but better safe than sorry.
Click to expand...
Unfamiliar with 2395 BR.
Is this a Accurate data powder? They used to release a lot of bulk data powder (2230-C, DP-series, etc) back in the day.
Ball or stick?

AA2495 is fine for M1. Shot up a couple of jugs that way in 30 cal's and also 223 SR loads.

Regarding Ball-C, I use the the surplus/data powder equivalent - WC846. In fact, that's about all I use for 30 call wood guns nowadays (308 and 30-06 M1's). Relatively light loads and 125's make recoil manageable and do the trick for 200 yard CMP matches.

Last - good record keeping is a must in our hobby. Especially when dabbling with odd surplus powders and the like. Human memory fades, the written word endures.

I just wish my handwriting was better. Starting to look like Chinese chicken scratch.
 
Most ball powders do have a lot of flash, don't think they use much flash suppressant in them? But my guess would be a mil spec pull down off of 760? I know ww760 got used by a lot of high power shooters 40 or 50 years ago.
 
centershot said:
The 2395 BR powder is a small stick powder, like IMR 4895.
Click to expand...
Possibly CMR-100 or equivalent.
Canadian Military Rifle 100
Small stick
Canadian military ammo (IVI), also substitute standard for 556, also M2 ball US ammo. Supposedly early lots of LC69 were loaded with CMR100. They were churning this stuff out during that time period for friends, allies, and the unpleasantness in SE Asia.

Jeff Bartlett used to sell it. But I haven't seen it anywhere for a very, very long time.
Supposedly good stuff - I never used it, but going from memory, I believe that the lots Jeff sold were close to slightly faster than IMR4895.
According to NJ Hi-Power "reloading stuph" technical collection (7/20/2016), 23.0 grs was popular with 69-75-80's in 223 SR loads.
But based on what I have read, burn rate varied from lot to lot - from 3031 for fast lots to maybe a bit slower than 4895.
Such is nature of surplus and data powders.

Addition information on M2 Ball - Cartridges of the World (3rd edition):
Cartridge, Caliber .30, Ball M2
Velocity: 2740 +/- 30 ft/sec at 78 feet
Pressure: 50,000psi max avg
Propellant: IMR 4895, 50 gr
WC 852, 50 grs
CMR-100, 45gr

Note: above charge weights are nominal. LC and others just adjust powder up/down a few grains to get desired velocity/pressure as needed. Remember, they are getting powder by the hopper car.
 
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