[Unclenick]

Bart,

That whole history gets fuzzy. Hatcher says he ran two powders one year between the wars that were similar to modern 4320. One had short grains and the other had long grains. The arsenal loading gear would meter the short grains to within a 0.6 grain span while the coarse grains were only held to within a 1.7 grain spread. Nonetheless, ammo loaded on that equipment with the coarse grain powder was consistently more accurate than that loaded with the short grain powder, and the coarse grain powder was used in that year's NM ammunition. He said they had a know-it-all competitor at the national matches who brought a scale with him, pulled some, discovered the wide charge weight variation and pronounced it no good, but several records were set with it anyway. So, I would hope they would have tested the 4064 loads for accuracy rather than just for throw weight variance, but I suppose that would depend on who's in charge at the time.

The Federal GMM I pulled had a 0.4 grain span for 4064. I don't know if their equipment is just better than the LC gear or slower or a combination of the two? For present day manufacture, I wouldn't think it should be an issue. The last couple of decades have seen great advances in robotic high speed weighing and dispensing, so they could all get around the dispensing precision issue with any powder they chose if they decided to take advantage of that technology.


Jimro,

Didn't Black Hills roll the Mk262 with both Nosler and Sierra 77 grain bullets at different times?