Imr4831 vs h-4831

[arakboss]

I am going to be picking up a bunch of 4831 powder tomorrow and it is believed to be IMR4831. It is in numerous non-factory containers. My plan is to mix them all together but I want to make sure I don't get any H-4831 mixed in with IMR4831. I have some IMR4831 in factory containers on hand but no H-4831. If anybody here has both can you compare them and see if they look obviously different?

Read More

 

[TTSX]

Yeah, IMR is your typical gray color and H4831, at least the short cut version, is just so slightly golden

In the picture, the larger pile closer to my fingers is H4831sc and the smaller pile closer to my wrist is IMR4831

don't know if you can make out a color difference on my picture but it's there. Hope this helps

 

[arakboss]

Yeah, IMR is your typical gray color and H4831, at least the short cut version, is just so slightly golden

In the picture, the larger pile closer to my fingers is H4831sc and the smaller pile closer to my wrist is IMR4831

don't know if you can make out a color difference on my picture but it's there. Hope this helps

View attachment 1900398

Thank you for showing that. After posting this I went out and took another look for H-4831 and I found this old jug. I do see the color difference, it is readily apparent in person.

 

[arakboss]

I will double check all the individual containers before mixing them to make sure they look like the same color, smell good, etc. I think there will be about 17ish pounds to combine if it is all salvageable.

 

[CLT65]

Sounds like possibly some old surplus 4831, if it's in random non-factory containers. This was very common way back in the day. They say that gun shops would sell it for 50c/lb out of a barrel, bring your own container. That was before my time, and the surplus 4831 that I used was really old even back in the 1980's.

If it is some old surplus, be very careful. Much of this was WWII 20mm cannon powder. It can go bad in a couple ways. If it smells acidic and/or has brown powder in it, it has deteriorated and is not usable. If it looks ok but has little or no smell at all, it could have dried out, and will burn differently.

I shot up a lot of surplus 4831 20-35 years ago, but I'd be very wary of it nowadays. Unless it's been stored in ideal conditions, it's getting really old.

 

[CLT65]

This was how Hodgdon got his start in the gunpowder business, buying rail cars full of WWII cannon powder and repackaging it for reloaders.

 

[arakboss]

This was how Hodgdon got his start in the gunpowder business, buying rail cars full of WWII cannon powder and repackaging it for reloaders.

View attachment 1900421 View attachment 1900422 View attachment 1900423

I have heard those stories and this powder may well be some of that very old stuff. I will give each container a good inspection. This is suppose to be IMR4831 which would be different than the 20mm powder, I think.

Edit: And I am wrong:

IMR # 4831 was used to load Oerlikon 20 mm cannon cartridges through World War II. Salvaged powder became available to civilians when the Oerlikon cannon was declared obsolete following the war.[6] Grains of 0.038-inch diameter are 0.083 inches long with 7% DNT coating. IMR # 4831 contains 1.1% diphenylamine (0.5% more than other IMR powders.)[2]

 

[arakboss]

It will be interesting to see how the old powder performs.

 

[arakboss]

I ended up buying all the 4831. It definitely looks like IMR4831. None of it looked like H-4831. The color was good and it all smelled fine.

The other powders all looked good as well. Powder seems to have an amazing shelf life, even when not factory sealed. Hopefully it shoots as good as it looks.

 

[CLT65]

I would still use caution working up a load. Looking at the photos in post #3, I can see that newer H4831 is lighter in color than IMR4831, but that was not always the case. I can say with certainty that the old H4831 that I used looked much more like the IMR4831 in your photo.

Powder companies will change their powders over the years, sometimes even change suppliers, but will carefully blend/formulate it to make sure it has the same burning rate. I remember the first time I opened a new can of 4895 and saw a greenish color; different look, same burning rate.

In short, I don't think there's any way to tell which flavor of 4831 you have by appearance alone. The color of the granules is meaningless when dealing with powder of unknown age. It will take a careful load workup with a chronograph. H4831 burns slightly slower than IMR4831.

 

[arakboss]

I would still use caution working up a load. Looking at the photos in post #3, I can see that newer H4831 is lighter in color than IMR4831, but that was not always the case. I can say with certainty that the old H4831 that I used looked much more like the IMR4831 in your photo.

Powder companies will change their powders over the years, sometimes even change suppliers, but will carefully blend/formulate it to make sure it has the same burning rate. I remember the first time I opened a new can of 4895 and saw a greenish color; different look, same burning rate.

In short, I don't think there's any way to tell which flavor of 4831 you have by appearance alone. The color of the granules is meaningless when dealing with powder of unknown age. It will take a careful load workup with a chronograph. H4831 burns slightly slower than IMR4831.

The good thing is that with IMR4831 being a little faster it likely uses less powder in than H-4831, in the same application. That should make using IMR4831 load data, safer than the other way around.

 

[arakboss]

Here is one way to burn up some IMR4381. It might work good for cinder pit plinking at the gongs under a 100 yards.





Source:

Got some IMR 4831 will it work for a .223 load? > Reloading > AR15.COM

Picked up a bunch of stuff at an estate sale.It had several full cans of IMR 4831 powder.I also got a few thousand .223 brass,bullets and primers.The previous owner had definitely been loading 22-250

www.ar15.com

 

[arakboss]

My next bolt rifle to bring out is going to be my Savage 308 heavy barrel, I picked up on clearance from Dick's. The rifle is barely broke in and it wasn't shooting well during break in. Now that I have some dollar store reading glasses, I may have better success this time around.

I want to try the 4831 in 308 cartridges. Nosler has some data I can use to start out.

 

[arakboss]

Doh!

 

[CLT65]

Here is one way to burn up some IMR4381. It might work good for cinder pit plinking at the gongs under a 100 yards.


View attachment 1901089


Source:

Got some IMR 4831 will it work for a .223 load? > Reloading > AR15.COM

Picked up a bunch of stuff at an estate sale.It had several full cans of IMR 4831 powder.I also got a few thousand .223 brass,bullets and primers.The previous owner had definitely been loading 22-250

www.ar15.com

Along the same lines, I used some surplus 4831 to load a few rounds of .44 Magnum once. Bear in mind, this is a story of something that I did, definitely not something you should do.
Back in the late 1980's my dad bought a Marlin .44 Magnum rifle. I picked up some dies and bullets, and had my basic reloading setup for 30-06, including an old boat-anchor Herter's press from the 1960's and a bunch of WWII surplus 4831. I didn't have any powder appropriate for the 44 magnum, so I loaded up a few with a compressed charge of 4831.

I would strongly recommend against using a powder so completely wrong for the application, but it did shoot fine. I have no idea what the velocity was, but I'm sure it was way slow. I was probably lucky that I didn't end up with a bullet stuck in the bore or something.