Selecting The Right Rifle Powder

BUT charges of the wrong powder can lessen the performance of your cartridge and rifle. Stocking several propellants each for use in a different calibre, however, has undoubtably provided a problem for some handloaders. Every now and then, a reader writes a letter to Ask The Gun Editor to see if I could possibly suggest just one or two powders which can be used to reload all of his rifle cartridges. It would be easy to nominate a couple of powders, but by limiting his choice of powders, the reloader could be sacrificing flexibility. How much flexibility would be lost largely depends on the calibres and the particular rifles.

A friend of mine who handloads, owns and shoots just one rifle a Howa .308 Win. which he reloads for. For years he’s used just two bullet weights, the Speer 130gn HP and Hornady 150gn SP and one of two powders for his hunting rifle - AR2208 or AR2206H. These are good choices for the .308, but I've never found them to be top performers and always preferred W-748 and W-760. Now that these Ball Powders are no longer available, it seems my mate’s choices are more sensible. But