Hodgdon Powder Company

Anyway.

So one of the ways you can find your load data is Hodgdon's reloading data, which is fun.

Um, the nice thing about it is it will show you all of the options you have.

And so I wanna show everybody how that works.

You guys can talk amongst yourselves for a second.

[clears throat]

Yeah, you can have Hodgdon.

You can email them, and they will, uh, check a bullet load out for... [clears throat] Like, a lot of times they won't have, uh, some Berger, uh, bullets in there and ask, uh, uh, load with a Berger bullet or something weird.

I believe next to Mossberg as family ownership that we are the second oldest major US gun manufacturer.

And, you know, we were 45, you know, in the 40s, there was, you know, still owned would be like Hornady, Nosler, Hodgdon, you know, a few of those ones, primarily all ammo and, you know, powder and stuff like that.

But Bill Ruger started three years after my grandfather, you know, they're currently public.

You know, you have Remington and stuff they've gone through, obviously, you know, but they're 200 years old plus, but had stuff.

So residue can be compared against known samples.

And this residue is consistent with either a Winchester or a Hodgdon product.

Now that doesn't identify a gun.

It just narrows down the ammunition.

So...

And you've got to also understand that whenever you're dealing with Hodgdon's or whatever powder it is, all of those have different burn rates.

So a particular number like an H1000, that will be more suited for some calibers than for others.

So you're going to have to do a little studying here, people.

Yeah, I, I'm, [clears throat] I'm not trying to remember to ask him what, what powder.

I kind of assume it's one of the Hodgdon, um, big streams, H1000 or Retumbo.

So, yeah.

So we've, we typically talk about Varget for the 308, and Varget seems to be pretty forgiving across several calibers.

They've got some good stable powders, temperature stable powders.

CNN 565 and a lot of the magnums.

Vihtavuori did not screw their customers like Hodgdon did.

Now, Hodgdon can say whatever they want to say.

Like, I was, I didn't, I couldn't afford QuickLOAD at the time, um, and I was unwilling to, to spend that money on QuickLOAD to, to model stuff, and, and Gordon's reloading tool wasn't something I, I don't believe it existed at that point, or I wasn't privy to it.

So, like, everything that I had kinda dreamed up, I was just looking at load data, whether it was from Hodgdon or whether that was from RCBS or Hornady or Barnes or, or whoever was putting out published load data on various cartridges, just trying to kinda get a feel for what powder types and their volumes go into what cases and, and their volumes in order to generate X, Y, or Z velocities, and with what bullet weights.

And so what I essentially did was I took the relationship between 260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor, and then I applied it to 26 Nosler.

So I basically redacted the top, I'm gonna say, quarter of the 26 Nosler's case, changed some geometry, very subtle, um, between, um, neck and shoulder junction, shoulder-body junction, body taper.

Every, every plead, um, that we could, we could make for kindness from our friends in the industry was met by, "Yes, we hear you, but no, we don't have it." Like, "It's not coming into the country.

H1000 doesn't exist right now.

Um, there are some, some other powders that you can get." I was very particular about running a Hodgdon Extreme powder for temp stability.

That's just kind of a personal deal that I do, and we, we just couldn't get it.

He dropped it and was like, yeah, baby.

But he put like 150 grains of black powder in there, like the Hodgdon pellets, blew the trigger guard right off of his muzzleloader.

His muzzleloader's in like 20 pieces.

And there's this giant buck.

...

IMR powder, Hodgdon powder, primers.

Primers have been a [laughs] nightmare and a half.

Well, they have been f- in the past.