When I started reloading rifle cartridges, one of the first powders I bought was a pound of IMR 4895. It's still on my bench, but these days I buy it in 8 pound jugs. IMR 4895 was originally a military powder made by DuPont and was loaded by the government arsenals in the .30-06 cartridge.
As a kid, my first job at age 12 was as a skeet boy at the McBride Rod and Gun Club, England AFB, LA. The gun club hired boys on Saturday to lug boxes of clay targets to the shooting houses and load the automatic machines for the intramural skeet shoots. Each squadron or activity on the base had a skeet team, so we worked from daylight to dark, prepping the range and supporting the shooting, picking up empty hulls, taking cases of shells to the firing lines, doing all the things required to make the day a success. For our labors, we got the princely sum of 50 cents per hour. A 12 hour day would gross you six bucks, paid in cash at the end of the day. I remember sitting on a 30 pound cardboard drum of IMR 4895 watching an old Master Sergeant load .38 Special ammo for the annual qualifications. (No, he wasn't using 4895, but the club had a stack of those 30 pound cardboard drums and they made great stools.). I digress.
When I'm working up loads for a new cartridge, one of the first powders I use is 4895. It may not be the best powder for every application, but it has an application in virtually every cartridge I've ever loaded. Sure, there are other powders, and I use my share of them, most particularly the Alliant powders, but I've yet to find anything as versatile as IMR 4895.
I was surfing around the Hodgdon website this morning. Hodgdon owns and markets IMR powder, along with his own brand and Winchester powders. I was using his Reloading Data Center and decided to count the cartridges that have IMR 4895 data. I started at the .17 Remington and scrolled down the list until I came to the .458 Winchester Magnum. I counted sixty-two (62) cartridges in the list.
Mr. Hodgdon markets his own flavor of 4895 and in the reloading hobby we call it H4895. Occasionally a supply of government surplus powder will come on the market, we call it S4895. Sometime last year I saw some British powder come on the market from the Radway powder company, it was also listed as Radway 4895. Each of these powders are different and loading data is not interchangeable. A prudent reloader will work up loads with each lot of powder he uses.
However, if I were limited to one rifle powder, I believe the one I'd choose is 4895. I'm convinced it's the most versatile rifle powder currently made.
4 comments:
H4895 was the first rifle powder I used. I was wondering which to get to load .30-06s for NRA Highpower matches and noticed that 4895 was the original powder used for the ammo for the M1 Garand. I was shooting a Garand at the time and it seemed a no-brainer.
I have gone on to use it in the .250 Savage and the .223. I haven't bought any other rifle powder for years.
When I began handloading in about '63 my powder of choice was 4895. I bought it at Seattle Sporting Good on Roosevelt Way. There was a fiber drum of it at the end of the gun counter, with a stack of penny candy bags and a scoop. A penny candy bag full was sold as a pound for 45 cents and a penny tax. When I got my first one I stopped at the drug store and had the druggist weigh it on his pharmaceutical scale. It weighed 20 1/2 ounces. Over the next several months as I accumulated the change, I stocked up on that powder, storing it in coffee cans in the bookshelf in my room. The cartridges I was loading were mainly .30-30 Win. and 6.5mm Swedish Mauser, later on .22-250. 4895 is a good choice for all three.
The first ammunition I ever reloaded was .30-06 for use in an M1 Garand. IMR 4895 is "the" powder for that application, and it served me quite well. I've tried several other powders with reasonable results, but like you, the 4895 is the first one tried with any other new component.
A man can't have too much '95.
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