goodgrouper
Well-Known Member
I guess I will have to be the stick in the mud and be the "one guy" who warns against this practice of mixing. Well, not so much a warning for safety (the safety points are obvious and self-evident) as for a warning about statistics. Two lots of the same powder might be fine for safety sake, but the math involved concerning statistics shows that is is physically impossible to mix two powders or two lots of powder in a 50-50 mix utilizing regular mixing methods. Only by individually taking one kernal from one and one kernal from the other and putting together would yeild a perfect 50-50 mix.
Now, with some powders (like Varget possibly) you have pretty good lot to lot consistency and the burn rate would probably be close enough that it would wash out fairly well with no considerable loss (or gain) in "quickness" of rate. But I have seen lots of RL22 and IMR7828 among others that were far enough off in burn rate to give disastrous results. If not disastrous, then highly unpredictable and inconsistent. Mostly because of the aforementioned problem of statistical mixing.
Buy 200 green beads and 200 red beads and mix them up any way you like and then pour half of the mix into another bottle and then count the resulting red and green beads. You would have to mix them several hundred million (possibly billion) to get one time that they actually came out a perfect 50-50. It's basically impossible unless you count out x green beads and equal amount of red beads and put them in together.
While I would feel safe mixing two lots of Varget together, I would find it too inconsistent to get good standard deviations in every string of shooting on a load that otherwise always has uniform combustion.
A few guys I know mix H322 and Benchmark together in a bottle and shake it up and then load it in 6ppc's. It works well for them, but I and others have noticed these fellas occasionally have those bad unexplained fliers from the rest of the group and they NEVER blame the powder mix. It is usually blamed on that puff of wind that mysteriously came across the field of wind flags without any of the flags registering it!
Bottom line: I won't do it. But to each his own. If you guys find an easy way to mix them in a perfect 50-50, you could retire the next day in the Bahamas!
Now, with some powders (like Varget possibly) you have pretty good lot to lot consistency and the burn rate would probably be close enough that it would wash out fairly well with no considerable loss (or gain) in "quickness" of rate. But I have seen lots of RL22 and IMR7828 among others that were far enough off in burn rate to give disastrous results. If not disastrous, then highly unpredictable and inconsistent. Mostly because of the aforementioned problem of statistical mixing.
Buy 200 green beads and 200 red beads and mix them up any way you like and then pour half of the mix into another bottle and then count the resulting red and green beads. You would have to mix them several hundred million (possibly billion) to get one time that they actually came out a perfect 50-50. It's basically impossible unless you count out x green beads and equal amount of red beads and put them in together.
While I would feel safe mixing two lots of Varget together, I would find it too inconsistent to get good standard deviations in every string of shooting on a load that otherwise always has uniform combustion.
A few guys I know mix H322 and Benchmark together in a bottle and shake it up and then load it in 6ppc's. It works well for them, but I and others have noticed these fellas occasionally have those bad unexplained fliers from the rest of the group and they NEVER blame the powder mix. It is usually blamed on that puff of wind that mysteriously came across the field of wind flags without any of the flags registering it!
Bottom line: I won't do it. But to each his own. If you guys find an easy way to mix them in a perfect 50-50, you could retire the next day in the Bahamas!
