Ball Powder

Vern

Vern

Morethan1waytoskinacat
Last year at a match I posed the question to several select people.
I only remember on of them answering.
The question was back in the old days a lot of ball powders like BLC1 were all the rage and shot well.
Why dont we see any one listing any ball powder loads anywhere for short range BR.
The only answer I can remember was that because they are double based they burn the barrel out tooooo fast.

Does anyone else have another answer.
Has anyone done any realistic testing of the 6PPC with ball powders?
BLC2 specifically?

Just a curiosity.
 
Vern - I just spent 45 minutes or more writing you a technical, detailed response and the wonderful BR site had logged me out when I sent the reply and when I logged back in the page came up blank and I couldn't access the address; I lost the entire post. I have had a number of poor experiences at this site. Maybe I'll write it up again sometime, sorry.

Chris
 
type it up on word, then cut and paste your post.....not unusual for a site to time out when it looks like ur are just sitting...
mike in co

Fouranone said:
Vern - I just spent 45 minutes or more writing you a technical, detailed response and the wonderful BR site had logged me out when I sent the reply and when I logged back in the page came up blank and I couldn't access the address; I lost the entire post. I have had a number of poor experiences at this site. Maybe I'll write it up again sometime, sorry.

Chris
Click to expand...
 
vern i dont know much about powders, but i have shot H335 in a 14 twist 6BR for a few years, Varmit hunting load
and my findings were this. when the temp's sored into the 90's and it seemed nothing in any rifle or caliber would shoot well
H 335 would just pile them into a hole..after two summers, ground hog hunting. in are ground hog hunting you may get to shoot 20 rounds in a good day.
my guess would be around 1,000 rounds (and that is a guess) i had the throat blowed out so far i could not touch it. i think i was jumping like .100 to the rifleing.
I feel that was excessive. so i never shot it in my new barrel. and i have over 1,300 rounds through this one and i dont think the throat as moved out very much at all.
so i just dont know if that means its hard on throats but sure seemed it was.
it was a good top of the line SSM barrel.
 
Vern said:
Why dont we see any one listing any ball powder loads anywhere for short range BR.
The only answer I can remember was that because they are double based they burn the barrel out tooooo fast.
Click to expand...
There are a number of double-base powders that are not ball powders, one or two of which are used in the short range game. Rel-7 and Rel-10 comes to mind. More double-based powders are used in long range BR, of course.

Sort of another old wives tale with burning out a barrel. The heat is dependent on how much nitroglycerin there is. As a very general rule of thumb, double-base powders have a wider sweet spot versus pressure change, but do burn hotter. I believe the old HiVel No. 2 ws close to 50% nitro. Correct me if I'm wrong. Modern DB powders are about half that, or less

I've heard it mentioned that with ball powders, the entire burn rate is determined by the coating, rather than size. I've also heard that ball powders respond well to sifting, so all the "balls" are equal size. Hmmm. Can it be that the "size" of the ball is determined by how much coating there is? I dunno.

People tried sifting stick powder, but didn't get the same results, either because it is just harder to do, or perhaps because plain stick powders have two factors in burn rate, size and coating.

Wilbur Harris used "X-Terminator" [Edit: that should be Tac] for a couple of seasons, then abandoned it. I believe he remarked that no one ever got ball powders to work well consistently. Maybe you could be the first on the block!
 
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Mike - thanks!! I thought of that approach AFTER the fact. Thanks.
 
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