Factory Load Question

[Dr Killdeer]

Has anybody ever determined what components ammo manufacturers use?
In particular, I’m curious about Speer Gold Dot ammo with a 185 grain JHP in 45 ACP caliber.
Does anybody know what powder and primers Speer uses? Or is that some kind of industry secret?
Out of idle curiosity, I want to try to duplicate a factory load and then test it against actual factory loads. I know some of you are probably thinking, this guy needs to get a life, but these little projects keep me out of gun shops and save me many thousands of dollars every year!

[ScottRiqui]

I'm pretty sure the powders the factories use is not identical to any particular powder that we can buy off the shelf. Don't know about the primers, though.

But the good news is that if you can find the same bullet that the factory uses (for example, the 185 gr. Speer Gold Dot Hollow Point mentioned in your post) and you can experiment with your favorite powder so that the muzzle velocity of your handload matches the muzzle velocity of the factory Speer ammo, then for all intents and purposes, you've duplicated the factory load, even if you're not using the same primer/powder/etcetera.

[Sevens]

The ammo makers use an ever changing powder to make their ammo. If you bought a box of a specific brand/style/type of ammo in 2006 and then went out and bought the same exact thing today, same name, markings, everything, there is a good chance it wouldn't have the same powder or charge weight in it.

As Scott said, get a chrono and try to replicate the velocity you see from your factory ammo. If you don't have the chrono and don't want to spend the money, then try to find out at what speed the factory ammo shoots (through someone else's chrono work or factory numbers) and then find published load data that approaches those numbers.

I tell you what I've been wanting to do...
I want to buy a box of factory ammo and disassemble every round and get an EXACT measurement of charge weight to find how much it varies. To make ammo as quickly as they do, they simply have to be using a volumetric measuring system and I'm curious what kind of tolerances they allow. And even more curious if the charge weight variation in Win White Box or Blazer Brass is the same or much more than what you see in the high-dollar premium defense rounds.

[rr2241tx]

Now and then you will see odd lots of "Commercial Pistol Powder" for sale. It generally has single point data for two or three common calibers on the label. Sometimes it will direct you to use load data from a specific commercial powder. The same thing happens with recovered powder from US military surplus ammo since we are no longer allowed to buy our own surplus ammo except as components.

[Dr Killdeer]

I firmly believe that commercial ammo is inferior to the rounds I produce, but I wasn’t aware that the big boys changed their powder from time to time. I guess a chronograph will be my next toy.

I used to shoot at West Point where I had access to all the surplus ammo I could ever use. Now, unfortunately the 45 ACP has been replaced by the 9mm as the caliber of choice.

[bobelk99]

Generally the OEM powders are not available for retail sale.

Be very cautious in developing a handload that gives velocity equal to factory loads. It is likely that you will exceed acceptable pressure levels in doing so.

My comments are based on tinkering with handloads for more years than I like to think about.

[zippy13]

Weighing factory powder charges is an exercise in futility unless you are certain a "retail" powder was used. When powder is manufactured there are variances from batch to batch, so it's tested to determine its characteristics. Only the batches closest to the standard may be packaged for the retail market. The arsenals and commercial loaders adjust their charge weight, batch by batch, to achieve the standard velocity for that specific cartridge.

While changes are not readily apparent in metallic cartridges, lot to lot variances in shot shells may be seen in the depth of the crimp. This is mostly caused by changes in the powder volume.

[Sevens]

I thought I tried to make this clear in my post...

Weighing factory powder charges is an exercise in futility unless you are certain a "retail" powder was used.

I simply wanted to see what the range of error was in one or two boxes from the same lot... not weighing a powder charge from two different rounds built many years apart.

I simply wondered about the tolerances that the factory sees as fit.

[TXGunNut]

Sevens has a valid point. Factory tolerances would be interesting since many of us weigh and sort cases and bullets in addition to weighing powder charges. I'm amazed that some factory rifle rounds do as well as they do considering the wide range of rifles they may be fired in. We can tailor our loads to one rifle if we chose, factory ammo must be suitable to all rifles chambered for that round in most cases.
Most of us agree that trying to determine the exact powder would be difficult and could be dangerous but that shouldn't really matter if your goal is to have a round that performs better than factory rounds.

[TXGunNut]

Oops.

[freakshow10mm]

Factories load to a volume to create a specific pressure. They do not use charge weight like handloaders do. They load for pressure and select a powder that will give them that, then use the volume required to get that pressure. The volume will have a deviation of weight but yield similar pressure giving uniform ballistics. Pretty neat stuff.

[Dr Killdeer]

After reviewing these posts, it’s clear to me that it would be virtually impossible to exactly duplicate a factory load with the same components used by the manufacturers. I’d need to know exact powder types, including powder lot numbers and they would have to be readily available, which they are not.
That reduces the process to a single criteria for comparison, which is speed. If I “chrono” theirs and then attempt to work up a load similar in speed, that’s as close as I can get. I don’t even know if that’s possible using components available to handloaders, but it’s a hell of a lot safer way to go about it.

Thanks for the info guys!

[ZeSpectre]

I simply wondered about the tolerances that the factory sees as fit.

It's pretty wide. I've had a few damaged rounds that I pulled apart and measured just out of curiosity and the variance was not extreme, but there was definitely a "range of error".

[mongoose33]

Try measuring OAL and see what kind of consistency you get.