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VV Powder lineup gaps?

It seems to me that there are a couple places in the VV 100 series powder lineup where the burn rate jumps pretty far and a another rate in between them would be most useful.

For example, the gap from N150 to N160 seems pretty significiant, and the gap between N160 and N165 is pretty large also. It seems like there are plenty of situations where you hit pressure before case capacity with N160 and stepping up to N165 will cause a loss of MV. Likewise for N150-to-N160.

VV seems to have no interesting the single base line vs proliferating all kinds of new N500 series powders.

I personally would love to see an N155 or N163. Or better yet, both!
 
The old metaphor of "he who has the gold... makes the rules..." is really more like a law of physics.

Many potentially good ideas stay on the back of a napkin due to a lack of gold. By the same token, I had the honor of presenting folks with their patent award plaques with those napkins permanently preserved, the difference being the gold.

If there is a demand for a propellant by way of a government cartridge that needs it, or at least a viable commercial one, you might see a new powder to fill that demand.

Don't get me wrong, but burn rate charts can be very misleading. As often as not, a propellant that "fills the gap" already exists due to other historical needs that put it in the catalogs. It is very easy to invent a new case volume and bullet weight design, but not as fast to produce new propellants.

For weapon systems where new or vastly different designs were required, with enough cash we were able to commission "custom" experimental propellants. There were different methods for making parametric changes to single or double base bulk grades, but it takes money that most folks don't want to consider.

If those projects got traction, those experimental propellants got more money to refine them and standardize them to the point where they made it onto a ammo specification for production. You don't really want to know how much that costs.
 
Don't get me wrong, but burn rate charts can be very misleading. As often as not, a propellant that "fills the gap" already exists due to other historical needs that put it in the catalogs. It is very easy to invent a new case volume and bullet weight design, but not as fast to produce new propellants

Burn rate charts are indeed very misleading for Viht powders and there are very few (if any) true 'gaps'.

VV seems to have no interesting the single base line vs proliferating all kinds of new N500 series powders.

I suggest you go to the trouble of accessing the relevant data for the N100 series powders and also N555. As a shooting friend pithily described N555 when it was introduced: 'the N100 grade that pretends it's a 500!'

Being designated as an N500 series grade, it presumably contains some nitroglycerine, but it has to be very little on the evidence of its nominal specific density and energy values, where on both counts it has little in common with older N500 grades and is right in with the N100s. In fact two N100 grades have higher energy values. Burn speed wise it is just a hair 'quicker' than N160 as seen in max loads for most applications, but is better suited to medium capacity 6.5s.

I'd dispute there is a large gap between N160 and N165. Look at the list of actual applications in Viht's loads tables (shown at the end of each grade's description on the website) and then at actual loads / MVs in some of those tables. I'd assert that the gap between the pair is no larger than those in other companies' grades such as IMR4831 to 7828 and Hodgdon H4831 to H1000. I happily use N165 in a 243 based wildcat, 6.5X55, and 284 Win with 175/180s all at normal match level MVs. Other people I know prefer N160 in these applications obtaining similar MVs, certainly no higher. Again, these powder tend to be 'quicker' in real life applications than burn rate charts show. N160 is not slower than IMR-4831 and next to the H version as many charts show - in practice it falls between the 4350s and 4831 and in many applications is closer to the former.

If you take a quite different type of chart, that used by Norma, and based on actual pressures generated in 308 Winchester with a fixed powder charge weight

https://www.blaserbuds.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14866

you get a completely different set of results. N160 is shown as 'quicker' than the benchmark IMR-4350 whose pressure is indexed at 100, the Viht grade producing 107.5.

How many grades do you expect / want? Excluding N110 which although nominally a 'rifle powder' is really a magnum handgun grade, and excluding 50 BMG propellants, there are 16 rifle grades. The handloading market in isolation cannot support any grade without other markets - there have to be wider bulk powder markets for commercial and military cartridge applications. Recent Viht N500 product introductions that you complain about are geared to wider user demands whose sales volumes will outstrip those from leisure shooters. Fairly new N565 for instance is primarily geared to .338 Lapua Magnum military applications, and we get it as a benefit on the side.

If you don't like the idea of the N500s and nitroglycerine, well then, stick to Hodgdon's ADI manufactured single-based products of which there are nine from H322 to Retumbo, same as Viht from N120 to 170 (arguably 10 in practice given N555's low energy levels). Almost every powder introduced by any propellants company in recent years contains nitroglycerine, including IMR breaking tradition with the five -ill-fated Enduron grades, all of which were double-based.
 
Me “wonders” if VV leaning more to 500 series as its double based powder I believe and possibly less expensive to get produced??

I know the other manufacturers seem to be pushing ball powders more which I know is double based AND less expensive to produce …

Like all things it’s about the money/profits!
 
Me “wonders” if VV leaning more to 500 series as its double based powder I believe and possibly less expensive to get produced??

Eh! They're more expensive to produce which is why their retail prices are higher. Nitroglycerine is also very, very nasty stuff indeed to store and handle - toxic and explosive - and adds an extra dimension to required plant health and safety precautions and costs.

I'd say that the reason we haven't had a new single-based powder introduced for 20 or so years comes purely from what the customers are demanding, and the biggest customers are the West's militaries. Just like recreational shooters, they want more performance and greater stability especially temperature stability. It seems that double-based or hi-energy types (as per the N500s, single-based powders infused with nitroglycerine) are the way to go to meet these needs. (Strange as I always believed like many that single-based types were more stable.)
 
It seems to me that there are a couple places in the VV 100 series powder lineup where the burn rate jumps pretty far and a another rate in between them would be most useful.

For example, the gap from N150 to N160 seems pretty significiant, and the gap between N160 and N165 is pretty large also. It seems like there are plenty of situations where you hit pressure before case capacity with N160 and stepping up to N165 will cause a loss of MV. Likewise for N150-to-N160.

VV seems to have no interesting the single base line vs proliferating all kinds of new N500 series powders.

I personally would love to see an N155 or N163. Or better yet, both!
If the only thing required to produce a new product was the idea for that great new product, a lot of the folks at Kel Tec would still be working for Knight Armament.
 

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