Thoughts on Alliant powders.

[dmoran]

@Laurie
Who's burn chart is that?
Wondering if there is a newer version out that would include all the newer Alliant powders as well.

 

[Prose]

This is from their 2019 Reloading Guide.



http://www.alliantpowder.com/resources/catalog/2019_Alliant_Powder_Catalog.pdf

 

[Laurie]

Hi Donovan. The guy who imported some Nitrochemie powder grades in bulk into the UK and packaged / distributed them, one Nigel Cole-Hawkins, sent me that chart back in around 2013/14 when the manufacturer had decided to enter the canister supply business directly.

Nigel (deservedly) won the import franchise for the now 'Reload Swiss' Range here and has been very successfully promoting / distributing these powders in the UK.

He has a comprehensive website:

http://www.propellants.co.uk/index.html

but I can't find any burning rate chart on it, new or old. I've messaged him about it. It's a useful one isn't it? (Or as useful as these things ever are - I do worry about the stress placed on these documents by many handloaders and the frequent misinterpretations / ignoring their limitations and downsides that you come across both speaking to people and in forum posts!)

 

[paulT]

Hi Donovan. The guy who imported some Nitrochemie powder grades in bulk into the UK and packaged / distributed them, one Nigel Cole-Hawkins, sent me that chart back in around 2013/14 when the manufacturer had decided to enter the canister supply business directly.

Nigel (deservedly) won the import franchise for the now 'Reload Swiss' Range here and has been very successfully promoting / distributing these powders in the UK.

He has a comprehensive website:

http://www.propellants.co.uk/index.html

but I can't find any burning rate chart on it, new or old. I've messaged him about it. It's a useful one isn't it? (Or as useful as these things ever are - I do worry about the stress placed on these documents by many handloaders and the frequent misinterpretations / ignoring their limitations and downsides that you come across both speaking to people and in forum posts!)

Thanks for info Laurie.

 

[Art Dirindin]

I have used best guess 8-9 lbs of RL10X in my 10ML-II smokeless ML and at least 6lbs of RL19 in my 338wm and I've enjoyed excellent success with both and yes I own and use a chronograph regularly. My friend has used about 8lbs of RL22 in his M77 300wm and he will not change powers if you gave him a different one for free, I jest you not.

For got to add I also used RL22 in my 338, and it gave me as good as accuracy as RL19 did but RL19 upped my MV by about IIRC 100 or so FPS with a 225 and 210 grn bullets.

 

[fyrewall]

My understanding of RL 17 is that the deterrent action is infused inside the powder vs. a coating just on the outside of the individual grain. The RL17 combustion action (hopefully) would be more sustained and produce higher velocities; in theory, increased throat erosion would occur. I welcome corrections & comments.

I have noticed that RL16 sells real quick at LGS'. I have started using it to replace H414 & H4350 in .22-.250 loads with 75 ELDM bullets. RL 16 is more cost effective than H4350 and gives me about 2% higher velocities. RL16 is more temp stable than H414, producing about equal velocities but costs about 20% more. H414 loads carefully worked up in April produced excessive pressures during a July rodent shoot @ 90* temps.

4000 MR is a domestic powder made in Florida. It is comparably cheap like H414 and works great in .243 Win with 87-105 bullets and .300 Win mag loads with 178's. I have successfully used 4000MR in my .243W with 87 Vmax bullets against rodents up to 400 yards on real hot days. The grains are sort of funny looking cylinders, round at one end and chopped off at the other and meter well through my powder measure.

 

[urbanrifleman]

The black stuff on your patch is not carbon. Its decoppering agent. And it works.

Ar comp and R16 burn so clean it's hard to tell fired brass from unfired brass.

 

[fyrewall]

I have problems with understanding where all the "carbon" comes from. Lots of heat, pressure, oxidation, any carbon in the nitrocellulose combustion process should be converted to NO, CO, CO2, and H2O. This leaves various powder additives like tin, deterrents and primer residues containing lead and other metals. AR Comp is sort of bulky for my .20 Practical loads.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

I have problems with understanding where all the "carbon" comes from. Lots of heat, pressure, oxidation, any carbon in the nitrocellulose combustion process should be converted to NO, CO, CO2, and H2O. This leaves various powder additives like tin, deterrents and primer residues containing lead and other metals. AR Comp is sort of bulky for my .20 Practical loads.

Graphite

 

[rardoin]

I have problems with understanding where all the "carbon" comes from. Lots of heat, pressure, oxidation, any carbon in the nitrocellulose combustion process should be converted to NO, CO, CO2, and H2O.

Perhaps in a perfect chemical reaction, however, combustion in the case/chamber/barrel is far from perfect laboratory conditions. Even then no reaction will be perfectly complete.

 

[fyrewall]

I gotta admit I am way over my head on this subject.

I would guess that smokeless powder that is primarily nitrocellulose is designed to act as a propellent for ammunition use and the combustion of which would be a chemically sustained reaction that should provide similar results in laboratory testing and inside a rifle cartridge. A caveat could be the degree of saturation where every thing is converted to a nitrate. The attachment gets into "small amounts of partially or and/or non-nitrated units". Would this occur during the manufacturing of the powder and give rise to claims that some powders are "dirtier" than others?

My thoughts are that at super high pressures and temperatures most "carbon" would be converted into various gasses.

I would also guess that any lab testing would be appropriate for the application intended - like no use of H414 in a .38 Special round so expected pressures would be had.

https://chemistry.stackexchange.com...f-nitrocellulose-nitroglycerinencng-solid-pro

Another attachment giving some idea of what powder contains that could make for black stuff in a barrel,

https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/a...ience-communications/fsc/april2002/mccord.htm

 

[riflewoman]

A random thought...

If we fire cartridges with de-competing agents long enough, will the decoppering agents attack the copper in our brass?

 

[Ned Ludd]

For one thing, powder combustion is never complete, even with a perfectly optimized load, meaning the chemical reaction doesn't proceed completely to gaseous products. Incomplete powder combustion may be part of the reason for carbon accumulation. In a recent thread here about primers [I don't recall exactly which thread it was], it was also suggested that the priming compound itself represents a sizable fraction of the soot we have to remove from a barrel during the cleaning process. I have never tested it myself, but the evidence for that claim seemed pretty solid. All together, what we have to clean out of our barrels represents any incompletely combusted powder residue, combusted and/or non-combusted contaminants from the powder (i.e. the powder is not 100.0000% pure nitrocellulose) and spent priming compound. I can imagine that even the same powder might leave behind a different amount of residue depending on how efficient the burn was in a given load, which might explain why different individuals obtain different results as to how "clean" a given powder burns.

The idea of de-coppering agents in rifle powder has been around quite some time, on the order of a century or more. The chances are small that the more commonly used de-coppering agents will attack the brass in any substantial manner. Their effectiveness in minimizing deposition of copper the barrel not only requires heat, it is also potentiated by the fact that copper is initially almost molten/plasma/aerosol, or at the very least has an extremely high surface area, to enhance the reaction. The copper within the the brass alloy of a cartridge case is not so readily available to be attacked by such de-coppering reagents. A case made of pure copper would likely suffer more noticeable erosion on exposed surfaces from those compounds over time.

 

[Dusty Stevens]

Decoppering agents

 

[longtrapshootn]

RL-15 for 75 and 77's in the .223 and RL-15 for 168 / 175 in .308. Charge wt. in both is within tenths of Varget charge wts.

 

[Larryh128]

Good, bad, clean,dirty? What are your experiences? Ok in big temp swings? Why the huge diffrences in load data from siffrent books? I saw one datas starting load 2grs over anothers max. Ive been running reloder 15 and it seems pretty consistent lot to lot. Good speed to in my 22-250. Seems about all i can find all year round around here.

I and a couple of my friends have made this statement, "If I had found these 1st, I never would have used anything else". I use AR Comp, RL-16, 17, 26, 33. I do use a few Hodgen powders as well but these serve most of my applications.