Blending

VikingsGuy

VikingsGuy

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New to hand loading. Reading a lot, being careful, belt&suspenders, using published loads, using several sources, taking my time (no martinis while loading ;) ). I get that I can kill/injure myself, or worse someone else, if I mess up. That being said, while I have stayed well within the lines, there is one thing that I have been wondering about, if the manufacturers' advice is too conservative.

The other day, I wanted to buy 8 lbs of H3831sc for my 25-06 'lope load. Unfortunately my local reloading shop only had 4 - 1lbs. I bought them assuming (wrongly) that they would be from the same lot. Nope, they were 3 different lots. Brand new, never opened, same powder and to the extent I decoded the lot info correctly, all made late '17. The problem I see is that I am going to waste a bunch of this powder by re-working up from the beginning new loads each lot change. Logic suggests I could mix/blend the 4 containers into a new "lot" and work up my load from scratch then.

The rub, Hodgdon's web page says not to mix lots. I get why you wouldn't mix different kinds of powder to make your own "special" blend, but if all three lots are recent and in spec, if anything, blending would actually bring the burn rate towards the center, not cause it to spike one way or the other. In fact, as I read it, the manufacturers do just that, blend various primary batches to make individual lots in the first place (not saying I have the same competence or capabilities as manufacturer, just pointing out that these are not pristine lots to begin with).

I have poked around the web and seems like 65% of the folks who post say the do blend like powders when they have small batches, and about 35% tells them they are idiots and sure to kill themselves or others. I trust the collective wisdom of HT over random web postings I find with google, so what say you HT -- to blend or not to blend?

To be clear - if this isn't safe I won't do it, simple as that. But if this is just lawyer warnings and many do it safely I probably will.
 
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There's no way to guarantee the blend would be distributed evenly. In my book that's a recipe for disaster...that being said I've thought about it myself especially when I have an 8lb jug and a couple ounces left in a smaller tub.
 
I wouldn't blend them. I would just work up a load that you like and shoot that until that lot # is gone. After that you wouldn't have to do a full load workup, just load 3-5 rounds at each charge within a 1.5-2.0 grain range of your previous load (don't go over max load) and see what they shoot like. I have found that 1 pound of powder lasts a very long time for a rifle that only gets used for hunting, but I buy 8 pound jugs for the ones that shoot a lot.
 
I just as new as you are to reloading, so my opinion is based on my personal thought and not experience.

Major powder manufacturing has set parameters for labeling a product. Each lot has to meet those parameters +/- the acceptable deviation. If you have 3 different lots they are all with in that tolerance to be labeled h3831. Given a big enough sterile non conductive container I would blend them throughly. I will be understanding that my load may change slightly and after the 4 lbs are used up that I will need to verify my load again. But again that’s just me thinking thru the problem and taking a calculated risk that doesn’t involve corporate lawyers who won’t allow any risk.
 
I can’t tell you what to do, but I can tell you this.. I have done it many times, and have yet to notice anything dramatic. In fact just recently I mixed 4 seperate lots of h1000. I fired 5 shots of my load with one lot and 5 shots with the mixed lot over a chrono.. a net change of -.3 FPS was what I came up with with the mixed lot. That’s my experience to date on the subject.
 
I've done it for pistol loads, but not for rifles.

The idea, at least for me, is to have consistency from shot to shot. Like Grant said, the distribution may not be even, resulting in a slight change of POI or FPS (like Quackillr noted) but I think that gets to the pedantic nature of reloading as well.

4 pounds for a 25-06 should get you 400 -500 rounds easily. Unless you're throwing a lot of lead down the tube, that should last you years.
 
Ben Lamb said:
4 pounds for a 25-06 should get you 400 -500 rounds easily. Unless you're throwing a lot of lead down the tube, that should last you years.
Click to expand...

Thats the hope behind bigger lot, but will also be using for .270 and winmag at some point.
 
Ben Lamb said:
I've done it for pistol loads, but not for rifles.

The idea, at least for me, is to have consistency from shot to shot. Like Grant said, the distribution may not be even, resulting in a slight change of POI or FPS (like Quackillr noted) but I think that gets to the pedantic nature of reloading as well.

4 pounds for a 25-06 should get you 400 -500 rounds easily. Unless you're throwing a lot of lead down the tube, that should last you years.
Click to expand...

Did you steal Harley's thesaurus?
 
I have mixed different powder lots to create my own “lot” more than once. It seems to have become more popular by benchrest and PRS guys during the most recent powder shortage. Having powder that is consistent is very important to those guys and having enough of it was troublesome so they made their own “lot” by mixing factory lots.

Double, triple, and quadruple check that you are mixing the same powders together and there shouldn’t be an issue. Most handloaders never reduce loads and work back up when changing lots anyway so I fail to see how blending different lots of the same powder could be more dangerous than that.
 
I'm no expert, but it seems to me there are two issues: Safety and accuracy. It's easy to imagine that there could be small differences in accuracy between lots and that might matter to you if you shoot at longer ranges. As for safety, it makes sense to me that much would depend on the load you're using. I'd be a lot less apt to take the (small) risk if my load were really hot. If my load is a grain or two under max, I find it very hard to believe that having 300 grains of an older can mixed into a pound of new powder, could make the load unsafe.
 
I've done it before and would do so again. In your shoes, I'd be sure to mix them in a container/bottle big enough to ensure a good mixing.

On the other hand, I've personally never seen enough difference between lots to matter. But I also recognize that it can.
 
1_pointer said:
I've done it before and would do so again. In your shoes, I'd be sure to mix them in a container/bottle big enough to ensure a good mixing.

On the other hand, I've personally never seen enough difference between lots to matter. But I also recognize that it can.
Click to expand...

I've done it, and with H4831SC, and I loaded to max loads, had no issues. I'm not saying its okay and you should do it but that's my experience.
 
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