The powder situation.....

[fortyshooter]

Well now my Alliant favorites are in the Collector status and BE-86 is now the back up for most of my loads and glad I thought wisely and bought a bunch when it was in the 40 buck per pound range. My local shop still has it on the shelf but at 60 bucks per pound now! Took a look on Gun Broker and Unique, Red Dot and 2400 are 90 to over 100 bucks a pound plus the shipping and may get worse due to NONE being currently made by Alliant.

Still okay on those Alliant "gold" choices but use them wisely!

[BigAl52]

I don’t place a lot of merit in pricing from Gunbraker. Unique is still around and a friend of mine just bought a 8 lber for 380.00 plus tax. I’ve seen it for sale again on a couple online places. Its between 50 and 60 dollars a pound. Powder price is high and I havent bought any in a while. I will make do with my current stash until prices come down I hope

[JVogler]

Several online retailers are offering free hazmat today for a few days. The variety of powder is the best it's been since Covid-19 was all the rage. Although the prices aren't as good as pre pandemic levels ,what prices are ? The only consolation is most components are reasonably available for us to assemble our favorite loads.

[JVogler]

Several online retailers are offering free hazmat today for a few days. The variety of powder is the best it's been since Covid-19 was all the rage. Although the prices aren't as good as pre pandemic levels ,what prices are ? The only consolation is most components are reasonably available for us to assemble our favorite loads.

[Rifletom]

My local reloading store has a decent supply of Alliant powders, but, at $60 lb. Don't need and won't buy. I'm still pretty good on what I have.

[rickhem]

I just recently got in a pound of H4895 and a pound of H322. Both of those have been practically non-existent for quite a while, but now seem to be pretty widely available. Both were just shy of $60 per pound, but I got free hazmat and $8.99 shipping. I didn't have a pressing need for either one, but I figured it would be better to have them on my shelf than on theirs. This should get me set for some load development with a couple new projectiles.

As has been said, prices are high, but there really isn't much of an option, unless you take up archery or golf.

[Mags]

I just recently got in a pound of H4895 and a pound of H322. Both of those have been practically non-existent for quite a while, but now seem to be pretty widely available. Both were just shy of $60 per pound, but I got free hazmat and $8.99 shipping. I didn't have a pressing need for either one, but I figured it would be better to have them on my shelf than on theirs. This should get me set for some load development with a couple new projectiles.

As has been said, prices are high, but there really isn't much of an option, unless you take up archery or golf.

There is another option. Go black powder firearms and make your own.
Black powder is made from a mixture of potassium nitrate (saltpeter), charcoal, and sulfur. Traditionally, these are mixed in a specific ratio by weight: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10% sulfur. Modern versions may substitute bituminous coal for charcoal and sodium nitrate for potassium nitrate.

[rickhem]

I just recently got in a pound of H4895 and a pound of H322. Both of those have been practically non-existent for quite a while, but now seem to be pretty widely available. Both were just shy of $60 per pound, but I got free hazmat and $8.99 shipping. I didn't have a pressing need for either one, but I figured it would be better to have them on my shelf than on theirs. This should get me set for some load development with a couple new projectiles.

As has been said, prices are high, but there really isn't much of an option, unless you take up archery or golf.

There is another option. Go black powder firearms and make your own.
Black powder is made from a mixture of potassium nitrate (saltpeter), charcoal, and sulfur. Traditionally, these are mixed in a specific ratio by weight: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10% sulfur. Modern versions may substitute bituminous coal for charcoal and sodium nitrate for potassium nitrate.

Believe it or not Mags, I worked for a number of months on a project to formulate a black powder replacement. This was back in the late 80s, early 90s timeframe. I worked for a global pharmaceutical company that basically owned the Vitamin C market back then. Along came a company from Japan that decided they could outlast our price reductions, and eventually secure a piece of that market, which they did. Part of our response was to come up with new and different uses and applications for Vit C (along with some other products), develop them to a reliable and cost effective process, then GIVE that process to a third party with the provision that they only buy the Vit C from us.
I was an engineering tech in the development group, and since I was an active shooter, everyone pointed to me when our senior VP came down to the labs with this as our project. His reasoning was that the possible military and government applications were huge, so we were going to take this on. In a nutshell, our acquisitions people bought the patent from someone in Colorado of Montana or someplace out west. He'd take Vit C, thermally degrade it, blend it with potassium nitrate and carbon, and it worked just like traditional Black Powder.
Through the development process, we found that you didn't need to thermally degrade the Vit C, and you didn't need the carbon. It was NOT pressure sensitive, so not a Class A explosive, and burned at over 90% efficiency. Black powder was at only around 55% to 60% efficiency. We sent samples down to the HP White ballistic labs in Aberdeen, and the product did eventually make it to market.
One fault was that it was hydroscopic, and was more difficult to segregate into specific particle sizes, since it would just clump back into larger particles. That didn't affect burn rate like it would with traditional Black Powder, but for sporting use, people expected different particle sizes. It generated much less smoke, and cleaned up much, much easier, and without the sulfur smell.
A company out of Las Vegas, called it Black Canyon Powder, and they went back to adding carbon to make it look gray in color, they said it was what people wanted to see. They said that the pure white color put people off.
That VP had the company send me a case of one pound bottles, which I gave out to friends that were way more into Black Powder than me, and it got mixed results. The NSSA requires use of Black Powder, as did the NMLRA, so it couldn't be used there. I shot it quite a bit through my muzzleloader, and I'd get over 10 shots before having to clean, which was great, but as I only hunted with it, that really didn't matter.

Anyway, it was a really fun project that was way outside of the normal pharma development stuff. I think we even got some patents on it. I see that now there are white pellets available now, and wonder how close to our process those are, and if they still fall under those patents.

[CT_Shooter]

... I worked for a number of months on a project to formulate a black powder replacement. This was back in the late 80s, early 90s timeframe. I worked for a global pharmaceutical company that basically owned the Vitamin C market back then. Along came a company from Japan that decided they could outlast our price reductions, and eventually secure a piece of that market, which they did. Part of our response was to come up with new and different uses and applications for Vit C (along with some other products), develop them to a reliable and cost effective process, then GIVE that process to a third party with the provision that they only buy the Vit C from us.
I was an engineering tech in the development group, and since I was an active shooter, everyone pointed to me when our senior VP came down to the labs with this as our project. His reasoning was that the possible military and government applications were huge, so we were going to take this on. In a nutshell, our acquisitions people bought the patent from someone in Colorado of Montana or someplace out west. He'd take Vit C, thermally degrade it, blend it with potassium nitrate and carbon, and it worked just like traditional Black Powder.
Through the development process, we found that you didn't need to thermally degrade the Vit C, and you didn't need the carbon. It was NOT pressure sensitive, so not a Class A explosive, and burned at over 90% efficiency. Black powder was at only around 55% to 60% efficiency. We sent samples down to the HP White ballistic labs in Aberdeen, and the product did eventually make it to market.
One fault was that it was hydroscopic, and was more difficult to segregate into specific particle sizes, since it would just clump back into larger particles. That didn't affect burn rate like it would with traditional Black Powder, but for sporting use, people expected different particle sizes. It generated much less smoke, and cleaned up much, much easier, and without the sulfur smell.
A company out of Las Vegas, called it Black Canyon Powder, and they went back to adding carbon to make it look gray in color, they said it was what people wanted to see. They said that the pure white color put people off.
That VP had the company send me a case of one pound bottles, which I gave out to friends that were way more into Black Powder than me, and it got mixed results. The NSSA requires use of Black Powder, as did the NMLRA, so it couldn't be used there. I shot it quite a bit through my muzzleloader, and I'd get over 10 shots before having to clean, which was great, but as I only hunted with it, that really didn't matter.

Anyway, it was a really fun project that was way outside of the normal pharma development stuff. I think we even got some patents on it. I see that now there are white pellets available now, and wonder how close to our process those are, and if they still fall under those patents.

That's very interesting. So the current product is really just a mixture of vitamin c and saltpeter with gray coloring? Amazing. How would someone make it at home?

[rickhem]

I don't know where you'd get quantities of Vitamin C that you'd need. We got small fiberpak drums of it from the production facility, very high purity, but I don't know if that was a necessity. It's what we used though. And our Potassium Nitrate was purchased from Fisher or Aldrich, also highest grade materials. It had to be blended, and we had lab and pilot scale blenders for that. We also compacted it in a pellet press that our machine shop built for out purpose. Pelletized material was then seived to isolate specific particle size product to do burn rate testing on. First though, was a complete evaluation of the process by the Safety and Industrial Hygiene group, with those engineers taking part in our determinations of whether it was pressure sensitive or not, what the flash point was of the components and the finished product, and how stable the product was, including long term degradation during storage. It's not as simple as it sounds, and there were more than a few Rube Goldberg looking set-ups to help with determining these things. That part was actually the fun part. We had blast cells at the back end of the building, with 24" thick poured concrete walls, where we would run hydrogenations and other potentially violent reactions, at least until we got a good handle on reaction kinetics. Those were some fun times. While we never had anything really take off, with this process or anything else we ran in those blast cells, it was comforting to know the bad stuff was on the other side of those thick walls when we started everything.

[CT_Shooter]

[Mags]

I don't know where you'd get quantities of Vitamin C that you'd need. We got small fiberpak drums of it from the production facility, very high purity, but I don't know if that was a necessity. It's what we used though. And our Potassium Nitrate was purchased from Fisher or Aldrich, also highest grade materials. It had to be blended, and we had lab and pilot scale blenders for that. We also compacted it in a pellet press that our machine shop built for out purpose. Pelletized material was then seived to isolate specific particle size product to do burn rate testing on. First though, was a complete evaluation of the process by the Safety and Industrial Hygiene group, with those engineers taking part in our determinations of whether it was pressure sensitive or not, what the flash point was of the components and the finished product, and how stable the product was, including long term degradation during storage. It's not as simple as it sounds, and there were more than a few Rube Goldberg looking set-ups to help with determining these things. That part was actually the fun part. We had blast cells at the back end of the building, with 24" thick poured concrete walls, where we would run hydrogenations and other potentially violent reactions, at least until we got a good handle on reaction kinetics. Those were some fun times. While we never had anything really take off, with this process or anything else we ran in those blast cells, it was comforting to know the bad stuff was on the other side of those thick walls when we started everything.

That sounds like really fun and interesting project/product. Thank you for sharing your story!

[BigAl52]

Ive made it to the Gulf one more time for the winter. Yesterday it was cool and windy but we still went to the local Corpus Christi gun club and shot some skeet. They sell powder there. I saw 1lb and 8lbers of Unique. Price was 58.00 on the 1lb and 363.00 for the 8lb. There was also some Green Dot and quit a few of the Reloader series of powders. I dont need anything that they have I did see some others there for pitol loading but Im good for now. Nice to know though that Unique is still around at least down here it is.

[fortyshooter]

58 bucks a pound??? And it must what is left in inventory since Alliant has cranked up production again!

[BigAl52]

Last year at this time the gun club had Unique. It was the same price and they were out of 8lbers. I have no clue if this is current or older production but the 8 lb price is current.

[Vaquero]

+++

RP

[Vaquero]

Glad I found the 8 pounder that I did a couple months back. $320 plus a little gas.
With the 4+ lbs. I already had, I should be set for a good while.

RP

[RanchRoper]

Not to be a party pooper but does this forum have any liability issues sharing powder recipes? Just asking.

[JEBar]

Powder Valley is having a sale on reloading powder ---- https://www.powdervalley.com/product-ca ... ss-powder/

[Rifletom]

Not to be a party pooper but does this forum have any liability issues sharing powder recipes? Just asking.

Don't think so.I believe I shared a .45 Colt/ Universal powder load for you some years back. Also made mention of a load here for .357 and 180gr bullets and 2400. Thinking we're all good here.