Powder Cross over equivalent chart

In today's hard times to find powder, this chart gives you equivalents to many powders used in our sport. Just posted as reference, use at your own risk.

http://www.adi-powders.com.au/handloaders-guide/equivalents.asp

Hodgdon had this awesome burn rate chart:
https://www.hodgdon.com/burn-rate.html

problem with the hodgon chart is it lists in a column and makes it look like powders are faster or slower according to where they are on the chart and the truth is many powders have the same burn rate, this is a better chart to use if looking for comparative powders, the clays international is the same rate as 700x and wst both excellent bullseye powders. Also some say wst is the same powder as international, being Winchester does not produce powder and is just a licensed name hodgon uses, just like hp-38 is w-231 just packaged different.

http://www.adi-powders.com.au/handloaders/equivalents.asp

The problem with burn rate charts is that they are speculative, or in other words, educated guesses. None of these charts are arrived at by testing each powder in the same application to determine how they line up in terms of burn rate.  A characteristic of smokeless powder is that as the pressure goes up, the burn rate increases disproportionately faster. This is why you can get to a point where the pressures spike with small charge wt increases. The chemical makeup of a powder can determine how fast the burn speed increases as the pressure goes up. Some powders increase faster or slower than others. This simply means that you can make some general assumptions by looking at burn rate charts.  However, just because a powder is located at the same level as another on the chart does not mean that these two powders are indeed the same, nor does it indicate these powders will react the same in different pressure ranges.

Rob Kovach wrote:Hodgdon had this awesome burn rate chart:
https://www.hodgdon.com/burn-rate.html

chart moved - new [url=https://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Burn Rates - 2015-2016.pdf]https://www.hodgdon.com/PDF/Burn%20Rates%20-%202015-2016.pdf[/url]

I recall an article from the 60s/70s in one of the big name magazines (Guns & Ammo?) that was titled "Blowing Up With 2.7".
It was a look into the phenomena of detonations purported to occur in the 38 SPECIAL when loaded with 2.7 gr bullseye under a 148 gr WC.
The results were inconclusive. They were unable to duplicate the effect, nor rule out the possibility that recorded instances weren't simply the result of a double charge.
But, there were some nagging concerns that they couldn't entirely rule it out.

Jim

IIRC, the article stated that the vast majority of shooters used Star or Phelps loaders for their loading.  Neither auto index to the next case.  Dillon copied and beefed up a Star to create his first progressive, the model 1000.  He even copied the cam actuated powder measure.  It, like the Star, was capable of dumping a second charge if you short stroke in either direction.  Dillon corrected this phenomenon in the design of the 1050 by adding a ratcheting one-way safety to prevent short stroking when lowering the die head.

In short, the vast majority of these blowups are from double charges.  Otherwise powder companies would no longer recommend using bullseye in 38 Special just like Vihtavouri no longer recommends N310 for wadcutter ammunition.

Thanks for that clarification.  I forgot about that part of the article.
Also, I was unaware of the recommendation concerning VV N310.
I have often wondered why the main subject of the article seems to have disappeared from general discussion after being a big concern for so long, all those years ago!

A few years ago I combined several powder burn rate charts. The Excel spreadsheet ranks the powders within each list from 0% (fastest) to 100% (slowest). When the same powder is found in at least 3 lists, it averages the ranking to produce an aggregate list. In general there wasn't much difference, but some powders moved up or down a little. The calculations are normalized relative to Hodgdon TiteWad and 50BMG since they appear in all the lists, to account for the different number of entries in each table and possible differences in test method.

https://sites.google.com/site/sdturner/shooting/powder-burn-rate-table

SAFETY WARNING - Just because two powders have the same burn rate DOES NOT mean that they are interchangeable. You still need to refer to the manufacturers recommendations and especially the max load for that powder and bullet. In general two powders with similar burn rates and loaded to produce the same velocity will usually produce similar accuracy results in a given gun, but the charge weight or volume will not necessarily be the same.

The burn rate charts are educated guesses, speculative.  They are not arrived at by actual testing.  To be the result of actual testing, this means that each powder would have to be tested in exactly the same application.  This is impossible to do in cartridge/test barrel applications.  There is only one way that I know of to do this and that is by what is known as a closed bomb test.  I doubt very seriously if anyone is going to the expense and trouble to conduct such a test for all the powders on the market.  Anyone who comes up with a burn rate chart is likely consulting existing charts and then adding more powders or changing theirs a little bit just so it won't look exactly the same.

Here is another cross over chart  Brownell's
Looks like it was created by Vitavouri which may have some testing behind it.

DavidR wrote:In today's hard times to find powder, this chart gives you equivalents to many powders used in our sport. Just posted as reference, use at your own risk.

http://www.adi-powders.com.au/handloaders-guide/equivalents.asp

The ADI (Australian Defence Industries) chart is now at:

http://www.adiworldclass.com.au/powder-equivalents/

When loading rifle ammo working up a new load I get a friend who has the Quick Load program to run a burn rate prediction for the cartridge and bullet weight I plan to use so I can find the most efficient powder for that cartridge and then load a test ladder till I find a node where the velocity peaks and then starts to levels off and starts to loose velocity.

Though I have never used it for pistol cartridges I think it would work to find a powder with a similar burn rate.

I have had some helpful buddies use Quickload to analyze some data for 700X and Red Dot in pistols.  In pistols, these two powders are actually quicker and give higher pressure than Bullseye at the same powder charges.  So Quickload is helpful in that.