What's in a name?

P

polska

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As the TV commercial ' Inquiring minds want to know'. Does anyone have any idea how powder companies come up with the names of powders? I'll use just imr, where do they come up with 4895 or 4064 or 4350? I had heard ( don't know if it's true) that 3031 was named after the British changed from cordite to grain powder. Thus 303 plus 1 or 3031.
Is there any rhyme or reason for the names.
I can understand names like blue dot or red dot to tag a name to the powder. More modern powders are names like Varget or AR Comp which makes sense. But what with those old crazy number names? There's got to be a reason.
 
I imagine its the same as prescription drugs. Ten or so people sit in a room and try to come up with the best name, then throw a bunch of letters at the name trying to spell it and there after try to pronounce it.
 
There has to be some kind meaning to those numbers? Feet per second , burn rate, chemical formula something. Some body must know. I can't believe somebody just decided to call it 4350. Got to be a reason.
 
I had heard ( don't know if it's true) that 3031 was named after the British changed from cordite to grain powder. Thus 303 plus 1 or 3031.
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Nice story, but I doubt its true as the British were still using Cordite in the .303 during WWII and 3031 had been around for some time then.

I'm sure the numbers mean something, but you'll have to ask DuPont (or whoever made the powder).

There is a story about one of the Hodgdon powders,no idea if its true, that H380 was so named because 38gr was Bruce's favorite load in the .22-250...

stories abound. Sometimes the names have a meaning, sometimes they're just names for inventory control or marketing purposes.
 
44 AMP said:
... H380 was so named because 38gr was Bruce's favorite load in the .22-250...
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That one is true. I heard it (that is, read it) from the man himself. As for the other numbered powders, I don't have a clue.
 
It has to be traceable to some manufacturer agreement otherwise there would be no similarity to the numbers as we know them.
 
Define "simularity".

IMR 4350, H 4350 and Accurate 4350 all have different burn rates.

And why would IMR 4895 be a faster burn rate than IMR 4831? Or IMR 4155 for that matter?

I had heard & read about Bruce Hodgdon's naming of the H380 in the 22-250 also.

At least Alliant's Red, Green & Blue Dot makes sense.
They literally have the coresponding color in the powder.
 
I have been curious as to the answer to this question as well, so I reached out to Hodgdon and asked. I asked them the reason for powders like H4350, H4831, etc., the reason they were so named. Hodgdon's response was "Hi Joshua, those two powders have no rhyme or reason for their names. They were simply inventory designations."
 
Yeah, I don't buy that answer. It was probably answered by someone who was not even born when those powders came out.
Someone must know if they're not dead. The answer is out there, probably in the money pit on Oak Island.
 
polska said:
Yeah, I don't buy that answer. It was probably answered by someone who was not even born when those powders came out.
Someone must know if they're not dead. The answer is out there, probably in the money pit on Oak Island.
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If we are being fair, then a majority of the human race was born after those two powders were first distributed by Hodgdon. After world war two, he originally sold the surplus powder 4350, but it was slower burning than 4350 so it was renamed 4831. You could use the following link to have. A nice read about Hodgdon and the relationship they have with ADI in Australia. Sadly it does not answer this question but I found it to be interesting. Originally found this link on one forum or another about this topic but I don't recall where.. http://https://revivaler.com/hodgdon-powder-adi-australian-connection/
 
The same question can be applicable to cartridge designations. Why is a .270 Winchester not considered a 7mm cartridge? It is 0.277 inches which = 7.04mm while the widely recognized 7mm Remington Magnum is 0.284" = 7.21mm.

The new military interest is 6.8mm which has been called a .270, but 6.8mm =.268"

The 6.5mm Creedmoor is considered a .264" but the conversion is .257". The .264 diameter bullet for the 6.5mm Creedmoor is really 6.71mm. which is closer to the miitary designation of 6.8mm than the attribution it is a .270.
 
I would say that in the case of 7mm bullets would be because of the bore diameter before cutting or displacing the rifling into the barrel. This could be represented by the distance between the peaks of the lands from opposing sides of the bore. For 7mm Remington Magnum I believe the land diameter is .277". When you consider that the bore diameter of the 270 Win is .270", you can begin to deduce a pattern.
 
For IMR powders it's the initials of the inventors as numbers on a phone. Except for White Hots, because they are white and get really hot.
 
"I would say that in the case of 7mm bullets would be because of the bore diameter before cutting or displacing the rifling into the barrel. This could be represented by the distance between the peaks of the lands from opposing sides of the bore. For 7mm Remington Magnum I believe the land diameter is .277". When you consider that the bore diameter of the 270 Win is .270", you can begin to deduce a pattern."

That sounds reasonable. I would assume, then, in the 7mm example you gave, the distance between the grooves is .284 while that of the lands is .277 -?
 
cdoc42 said:
"I would say that in the case of 7mm bullets would be because of the bore diameter before cutting or displacing the rifling into the barrel. This could be represented by the distance between the peaks of the lands from opposing sides of the bore. For 7mm Remington Magnum I believe the land diameter is .277". When you consider that the bore diameter of the 270 Win is .270", you can begin to deduce a pattern."

That sounds reasonable. I would assume, then, in the 7mm example you gave, the distance between the grooves is .284 while that of the lands is .277 -?
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That is basically how I see it. Not all cartridges are that way, but in the case of the 6.5 bores, 270, 7mm, and .300 most seem to be that way. 300 win mag, 308, 30-06 all have a bore diameter of .300" nominally with a bullet diameter of .308".

Brux 7mm barrels have a bore diameter of .276", presumably to create a better deal on the bullets.
 
Some have opined that the Du Pont powder numbers were related to lab formulary or batching numbers.

I'm not so sure about that because Du Pont's early pistol powders generally had single digit numbers and their Military Rifle and Sporting Rifle powders had double digit numbers. Not sure what the differences were between the two -- but both used two digit numbers.

For example, SR 80 and MR 17...

In the 1930s Du Pont changed to IMR, Improved Military Rifle and around that time adopted the 4 digit numbering scheme for rifle powders... but I've seen cans labeled IMR 18, so the change apparently wasn't universal or immediate.
 
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