New Hodgdon Powders for 2017
 

It seems Hodgdon has copied the formulas for many of the old time Alliant (used to be Hercules) Powders. A few quick glances show reloading data for IMR Red and Red Dot to be identical. I suspect you will find the same for the other powders. Target/Bullseye, Red/Red Dot, Green/Green Dot, Unequal/Unique, Blue/Blue Dot. I am not sure what is behind this incursion on other companies powder recipes and whether it will be good or bad for the consumer is yet to be seen.

PRESS RELEASE
November 13, 2016

IMR® Legendary Powders Releases New IMR Family of Powders
IMR Legendary Powders is excited to announce a new family of shotshell and pistol propellants.

We believe it takes a Legendary Powder brand like IMR to improve this series of legendary powders. This series of five popular burn-rate powders covers an extremely wide range of shotshell and pistol cartridges, utilizing new, green technology. Each powder was designed to match current shotshell bushing charts, so the handloader will already have the appropriate bushings available for each load. This new technology burns clean, providing accurate metering and top performance characteristics. All of these powders are REACH compliant, meaning these propellants are not harmful to the environment.

IMR Target™ The first powder in this new family is a fast-burning pistol powder. This fine-grained, small-flake pistol powder meters superbly, providing very precise loads in even the smallest pistol cartridges like the .25 ACP!

IMR Red™ The second powder in this new family was designed to be an efficient, clean-burning, 12-gauge target powder. IMR Red also performs nicely in various lead pistol target loads, such as match competition loads and Cowboy reduced loads.

IMR Green™ The third in this new family is slightly slower-burning than IMR Red, making it an ideal Trap Handicap powder and soon a favorite with Sporting Clays enthusiasts.

IMR Unequal™ IMR Unequal combines small-sized flakes for uniform metering in all pistol applications and its burn speed accommodates a wide range of shotshell and pistol cartridges.

IMR Blue™ The slowest burn speed of the five new propellants, IMR BLUE, has excellent application for heavy 12-gauge 2-¾-inch, 3-inch and 3-1/2-inch field loads.

These new powders will be available in January 2017 at quality reloading powder dealers everywhere. IMR Target and IMR Blue will be available in one-pound (1lb), four-pound (4lb) and eight-pound (8lb) containers and IMR Red, IMR Green and IMR Unequal in 14-ounce (14 oz), four-pound (4lb) and eight-pound (8lb) containers.

Complete load data for these versatile and useful propellants is accessible on the Hodgdon Reloading Data Center at www.HodgdonReloading.com.

About Hodgdon Powder Company, Inc.
Established in 1947 by Bruce and Amy Hodgdon, sons JB and Bob have grown Hodgdon Powder Company into the largest US supplier of smokeless, blackpowder and blackpowder substitute propellants. The company distributes gunpowder under the Hodgdon®, IMR®, Winchester®, Goex® and VihtaVuori® brands.

Learn more about the brands at these websites and connect with the Hodgdon brand on Facebook or YouTube.
Hodgdon Powder

After a very long hiatus Hodgdon Clays is again available. Now manufactured in Canada and packaged in the US. It looks very similar to the old Clays but the density is definitely not the same. I had to drop two bushings in size to get the same load by weight. The good news is that it appears to be as clean burning as the old stuff.

If the past 8 years have shown us anything, it's that more powder availability is something to applaud!

These new powders were discussed a few days ago on 16ga.com. FWIW, one of the posters contacted Hodgdon about them and received the following response.

Here's the Hodgdon Relative Burn Rate Chart that includes these new powders.

Here is just one example a comparison of IMR Green to Alliant Green Dot for 1 1/4 10ga load. Info is from their online reloading centers. Everything is identical, every comparison I have looked at between Red Dot and Red and Green Dot and Green is identical.

From the Hogdon site

10ga 3.5" Federal Hull

Lead Shot 1 1/4 oz.
Manufacturer
Powder
Primer
Wad
Grs.
Pressure
Vel. (ft/s)
IMR
IMR Green
CCI 209M
Rem. SP10+ 6-20 GA. .135 CARD
29.5
8,300 PSI
1,265
IMR
IMR Green
Win. 209
Rem. SP10+ 6-20 GA. .135 CARD
29.0
8,800 PSI
1,265



Alliant Powder Reloading Center

Recipe
Primers:

10 Gauge

3 1/2-in. Fed. Plastic with Paper Base Wad


--- 1 1/4 1,265 CCI 209M Green Dot Rem SP 10 29.5 8,300 (6) 0.135
--- 1 1/4 1,265 Win 209 Green Dot Rem SP 10 29 8,800 (6) 0.135

The real question is did Hodgdon expand their production capacity to accommodate the new offerings or will production of these Alliant clone powders reduce the production of previously existing Hodgdon and IMR powders like 700-X.

I heard that the Unequal powder does not use the common pronunciation.

You are supposed to say it, U-neek-qual. Like it equals Unique.

I just looked at the attached burn-rate chart. Looks like all references to IMR-SR powders are gone (sadly). Barring some report of a BIG benefit to these new powders, I will have to use up my current inventory of RED DOT, GREEN DOT, BLUE DOT, and UNIQUE before I get very much into the new Hodgon powders. Call it an old guy thing.

More or less unrelated, has anybody got an explanation of why Alliant Extra-lite has never appeared on any burn chart that I have seen? I own 8 pounds of it and use it in my 12's for light loads. I think it is very fast, but, never seen it charted.

rch

I'll just stick with my Alliant powders.