Nomercy448

I’ve been thinking about how to answer this most of my evening, but largely cannot, because I don’t just look through a reloading manual to pick a powder which will/should give me the best accuracy. For most of my recent new cartridges acquired over the last handful of years, I know which powder I want to use before I even buy the rifle. I might check a few manuals, ask around to different reloaders, and look for proven loads - and can almost always trust that my leading fleet of powders will deliver sub-MOA precision, and my barrel quality will dictate whether that’s 3/4-1moa or 1/4-1/2moa… not the powder.

But flipping through a reloading manual, you’ll typically notice a trend - you’ll find one or often more than one of Varget, 8208, H4350, H4895, Retumbo, or H1000 listed for almost every rifle cartridge in the book. So I tend to stock a lot of Varget, 8208, H4350, and Retumbo - loading for a couple dozen cartridges each year. It just makes life simpler. After supper tonight, I sat with my wife and son for about 20min, and gave each a reloading manual, and asked them to pick rifle cartridges at random - I’d guess which of my preferred 4 and reserve 3-4 powders would be listed for each cartridge… the only one I missed was 218 Bee, as I’d forgotten it uses pistol powders instead of rifle.

I did largely give up on the idea several years ago that I need to test a lot of different powders to achieve fantastic precision with any cartridge. Again, it just makes life simpler. I used to spend a ton of money on different powders and spend a ton of barrel life and primers testing them, on a matrix with different bullets and then different primers. I shoot smaller groups today than I ever did before, and I so far, far less assessment and far less load development - and stock far fewer powders.