Let me introduce myself....

S

sherwoods12

Inactive
Hi all,
My name is Doug, I am a bit of a science nerd who works for the federal government, training military personnel in the fine art of staying alive.
I love firearms and the science behind them.
That said, you will find me in the reloading forums or down range watching the Abrams lob rounds at old trucks.

Does anyone (besides me) mix different powders together?

Thanks for looking.
 
I have the data for duplex charges, but so far haven't had any single application where a single powder wouldn't do the job.

I also bought a couple 8lb kegs of WC872 which is so slow you could almost use it as "filler" but most folks use it on top of a booster charge of pistol powder for cast bullet loads.

I know that duplexing is different than mixing. The closest I ever got to mixing is when I accidently poured some milsurp rifle flake powder into my 4064 can. All I did was dilute the contaminated stuff with more 4064 and then load up the 8x57 with a starting load. The flake powder didn't have any bad effects on pressure as it was not really present in sufficient quantities. Didn't do it on purpose, but was too cheap at the time to throw that powder out when I could use it for plinking loads. I'd make a different choice now.

Jimro
 
Are talking about duplex loads where the powder is kept separate in the case or actually blending powders?

I have used blended powders but only powders that were accidently dumped together and only when they were of close to the same burn rate.

I only used it at min to mid range loadings.

It's not my favorite thing to do.

As far as duplex loads, I've never tried them.
 
I do not blend powders, for the simple reason that I've never seen any published data on loads using blended powders, and the single-powder loads I'm making now seem to be perfectly good. No need to experiment with risky blends.
 
I do, sorta. I've never mixed modern smokeless with smokeless.

I do shoot a lot of black powder cartridge guns, and will load a little bit of fast burning smokeless rifle powder (usually IMR 4759) next to the primer. Just a few grains is enough to very significantly reduce the bore fowling in black powder guns. It makes a cleaner burn. If you do this, reduce the black-powder charge accordingly. Contrary to popular belief, duplexing was done in the old days. (Ned Roberts 1880's wrote about it. )

Unrelated but,
Another little trick that I do with large case revolvers (45 LC, 44-40 win), in which the smokeless powder no where near fills the case: I take a tiny peice of dacron stuffing behind the bullet to help hold the powder even against the primer. I get much more uniform velocities that way, and better accuracy.

Howdy, from a fellow Idahoan.
 
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