ORIGINAL: Gundigest
I posted this in the guns forum but no one has replied so I thought this might be a better area.
My Ruger 77 mk II .223 will shoot the cheapwinchester varmint factory loads (45gr hollow point, 3600 fps, 40 rounds per box) into a group less than 1/2" at 100 yards. I want to duplicate these loads with my handloads and I was wondering if they use the Win 748 powder for these factoryloads? Does Winchester only use their own powder in their factory loads?
Thanks
Tom
Factories don't necessarily use only their own brands of powders in the ammo they load. In addition, the powders they
DO use may or may not be identical to any canistered powders, and they won't tell you which powder they use in any given lot of factory ammunition.
What they do is use a large lot of some kind of powder that has a burning rate in the ballpark of what they want to accomplish ballistically with any given load, and then load whatever amount of the selected powder it takes to produce the PRESSURE AND VELOCITY LEVELS they have established for that batch of ammo.
So, in other words, you can't disassemble a couple of rounds of factory ammo, and look at the powder and see that it LOOKS LIKE WW748, for example, weigh it, then load up the same kind of bullet with that charge of WW 748 from a can you bought and expect the ammo you loaded to be the same as the factory load! It MIGHT be, but it is more likely that it will be different.