Anyone using IMR 4895?

[1Shot]

I see some using H-4895 but is anyone using IMR 4895. I have a BUNCH I bought a number of years ago that was pulled down from military ammo. It is still as good as the day it was made and shoots within just a few feet per second one way or the other of different lots of newer powder. I did try it with one load when I was trying to get the Hornady 123 SST bullet to shoot in my 20" BCA rifle. The load was Hornady case, CCI 450, 123 SST, COAL 2.250 and I used a medium Lee Factory Crimp. Velocity was average for 5 shots 2416 fps, ES 19, SD 8 and outside to outside group was .831 which was by far the best group EVER with this bullet. But these were the last 5 of these bullets I had and had just bought 120 Speer Gold Dots to test and I found them to be very accurate and never bought any more of the Hornady 123 SST.

I went through 100 rounds of factory Hornady 123 SST ammo which shot awful in two rifles and I went through 200 bullets with numerous different loads and powders combos and could not get this bullet to do much better than 1 1/2".

How I came up with the charge of IMR 4895 that I used was from the Grendel #2 manual. In there was a load with the 123 SST that listed 29 grs so I backed off a grain to see what it looked like.

[LRRPF52]

Hornady has IMR 4895 data for 129gr cup & core bullets, but it seems to be the most sensitive to case volume/pressure ratio of all the powders they tested.

Max is 26.1gr under a Hornady 129gr lead core, copper jacket bullet set at 2.245", with the slowest velocities of all 11 powders they tested in the 129gr weight class.

[Rosecrans1]

Speer Handloading Manual Number #15 lists 120gr Gold Dot with IMR4895 at 24gr min to 26.6 max. MV from 2191 to 2413fps. COAL of 2.260.

[tdbru]

1Shot,
i think, i haven't run the series, that with fine granulated ball powders, you'll likely have the potential of higher MV than with 4895. Alliant Pro Power Varmint show near max velocity with most bullets when i look in the Sierra manual. however based upon my use of stick powders over the years, and a LOT of 4895, you'll likely, as you showed, get some of the lowest SDs on MV with these kinds of powders. my hypothesis is that even with a bit of compression, there's enough airgaps in the stick powder column that the primer flame has an opportunity to ignite more of the powder at once. with the tightly packed ball powders, i hypothesize that only the back half or so of the powder charged gets ignited initially, as the primer flames can't reach the front half. of course the burning powder near the primer will get the powder near the front burning too. so i hypothesize that you get more uniform powder ignition from round to round with compressed stick powders than with compressed ball powders. and uniform muzzle velocities helps to enhance accuracy.
-tdbru
-tdbru

[Daveycrockett]

I'm glad to hear someone else had this thought. I have 4 # of it I bought a while back. Keep us posted if you test it out with the gold dots!