Hodgdon Powder – H-4350 1Lb.

hodgdon powder

posted my experience with this powder, but to summarize: I’ve tried Hodgdon’s listed loads for Lil-Gun in .22 K Hornet, .30 M1 Carbine, .357 Magnum and .357 Rem Maximum and in all four cases I’ve had extreme shot to shot variations in pressure and velocity. I emailed Hodgdon about this and got a phone call from Dave Campbell requesting I send him 20 rounds of my .357 mag load for testing. I also sent him 20 rounds of K Hornet since that had shown the most extreme velocity spread.
About a week later he called back to say he had found the problems exactly as I described, he fired five rounds of each in the pressure barrel. All five .357s had pierced primers but he said that was because I used W-W small pistol primers, not magnum primers.

H-4350 1Lb.

BS!!! The load was 17.0 gr. Lil-Gun under a W-W 158 JHP. Hodgon’s website lists a starting load of 16 grains at 24,100 CUP and a max load of 18 gr at 25,800 CUP so the 17 grain load should be running right around 25,000 CUP by Hodgdon’s data. He didn’t say what the pressure had been but there is surely no reason for pierced primers at 25,000.
In the .22 K Hornet I had loaded 12.0 grains Lil-Gun under a 50 grain bullet with CCI small rifle primers. That is Hodgdon’s listed starting load which is supposed to produce 34,300 CUP. He confirmed that in his pressure barrel five shots varied from 43,000 CUP to 56,800 CUP, but he blamed than on the Remington brass and on the fact that my ammo chambered very tightly in his barrel.

again

BS!!! I’ll concede I did make a mistake there, I used cases which had been fired in my rifle and only neck sized, so no surprise that they didn’t fit his chamber very well, but the fact that he was able to chamber it at all indicates my chamber is not all that different. He claimed Remington brass is heavier than other brands and so pressures for any given load is higher in Remington brass.

Hodgdon Powder – H-4350 1Lb.

BS!!! Perhaps the average pressure may indeed run a bit higher in heavier brass but how does that explain the variation from 43,000 to 56,800 CUP??? And I repeat, this was with their listed starting load for the K Hornet, many people run that in standard hornets!
The bottom line is that his testing confirmed every thing I had told him, he experienced exactly the same problems. But his explanation was that it was the brass, or the primers, or my chamber, or the phase of the moon, or the Doppler effect or absolutely anything but Hodgdon’s stinkin powder! Never mind the fact that using the same brass, same primers, same bullets in the same chambers, I’ve never experience any problems of any sort when using any powder but Lil-GUN!

finally

He did help me reach a decision. I had already made up my mind that I would never again mess with Lil-Gun but after getting that load of crap from Dave Campbell I’ve decided I will never again mess with ANY Hodgdon powder. True, I don’t know I’d have gotten a more honest answer from any other powder maker but I do know I got a load of crap from Hodgdon.