Bluesteel

Admittedly I am fairly new to reloading. I have only used Universal and Unique powders when reloading, and after noticing the load levels are very similar, I looked at the powder burn rate chart and they are very close. What I have noticed with these two powders is the recoil levels are similar as well. My question is this, if I go to something with a faster burn rate such as Bullseye or Titegroup, how will it affect recoil and or accuracy?

Thanks in advance for helping a newbie understand a little more.

GP100man

A faster powder has a qwiker or sharper recoil , thus precieved as more .

I hate shootin 44mag with a 310 gr boolit with 2400 under it , but find it much more tolerable with IMR 4227 Both loaded to the same FPS.

RugerGP100

This may help a little:

Powder Burn Rates

bigjim

I hate it when they give you the powder burn rates and don't give any numbers with it. How do you tell how much faster one powder burns than another. 2%, 5%, 50% it's all up in the air without the numbers.

Now that I have vented back to the question. I can only talk to the 357 mag and Win 231 and AA 2400 powders as to differences. The difference in speed is slight but actual maybe a blink of the eye difference. That blink of the eye gives the slower powder (AA 2400) time to build to full burn and higher (slightly) pressure which means the bullet will start moving under a more consistant gas release. The faster powder (Win 231) will start moving the bullet sooner and burn through the firing cycle till the bullet exits the from the front (hopefully). What does this mean for recoil? It is my opinion, that recoil is greater with the slower burning powder (AA 2400), but is much more accurate. I feel that there is less recoil with the faster burning powder (win 231) but less chance hitting the same spot over and over.

Now if heavy recoiling mag loads make you flinch, then all bets are off as to accuracy. You will need to try both to see what YOU are comfortable using.

Good Luck and stay safe.
Jim

GP100man

bigjim

if ya look on alliants site it compares there powders to BE & then ya can take the chart & get a general idea of the other name brand powders.

Iowegan

bigjim, Powder burn rate charts are great for getting a generic idea; however, powder can behave totally different in different cartridges and different bullet weights so the actual burn rate order may not even be close to what's on the chart.

If you have a good reloading manual (Hornady is my favorite for this process) you can find a common velocity with the bullet you plan to load then look at each powder available. The powder that uses the lowest powder charge will be the fastest burning and of course, the powder that uses the most grains at the same velocity will be the slowest burning. If you look at a different bullet weight or different cartridge, the rank order that you saw with the first cartridge may be totally different. Here's an example from page 817 in the Hornady 7th Ed for powders charge weights producing a velocity of 850 fps in a 38 Special with a 140 gr HP-XTP.

700X 4.5 gr
Bullseye 4.7 gr
Win 231 5.1 gr
Clays Univ 5.1 gr
Unique 5.2 gr
VHT N-340 5.3 gr
800X 5.8 gr
Power Pist 5.8 gr
VHT 3N37 6.2 gr
HS-6 6.8 gr
AA#5 6.9 gr

Of the listed powders, 700X will be the fastest burning and AA#5 will be the slowest. Hornady lists their powders in rank order by burn rate from fastest on top to slowest on the bottom. Pretty easy to use. If you want to do the math, you can compare two powder ie Win 231 and HS-6. [5.1/6.8=.75] or you can say W-231 burns about 25% faster than HS-6.

As for recoil with different powders ... here's the scoop. Recoil is based on the muzzle energy and the amount of time it take for the powder to burn versus the weight of the gun. In other words, time vs energy vs weight. If you use the same gun, same bullet weight, and two different powders loaded where the muzzle velocity is exactly the same with both, the total applied recoil would be exactly the same for both loads. When you figure time into the equation, "felt recoil" will be sharper with the faster burning powder. Using QuickLOAD, I plotted a W-296 (very slow burning) vs W-231 (fairly fast burning) using a 45 Colt with a 255 gr bullet. in a 7.5" barrel where the exit velocity is 1000 fps for both powders.

The time ratio is .000448:.00112 or 1:4 (W-231 takes .000448 seconds to burn up and W-296 takes .00112 seconds to burn up) That means it takes 4 time longer for W-296 to burn up so recoil is felt for a longer period of time but is less intense. With W-231, recoil will be sharper but won't last as long. You will feel a very notable difference between the two powders, even though they both produce the same energy.

GP100man

Iowegan

That as good an explination as possible in lamens terms as I`ve ever read !!

lexjj

The knowledge on gun boards never ceases to amaze me. Thanks Iowegan.

Bluesteel

Thanks Iowegan for the explanation, that makes more sense than anything else I have found on the web.

Thanks again to everyone for the responses.