Propellant Profiles

About six months ago, I was poking around in our local gun shop and noticed an eight-pound bottle of Ramshot propellant sitting on a lower shelf almost out of sight behind a bunch of Hodgdon-branded powders. I was honestly hoping it was TAC, one of my favorites in the 223 Remington. To my surprise, the familiar green label proclaimed that the bottle contained Ramshot Grand, a magnum rifle powder. I’d never heard of it.

I worked for Western Powders for the better part of a decade and was part of the product launch of Ramshot LRT, a very slow-burning spherical propellant for magnum rifles.

When I ended my employment with them in October 2020, the only new propellant on the deck was a slightly slower variant of TAC that was tentatively being called Palma. From my perspective, Ramshot Grand had come out of the blue. I was very curious about the powder and requested two pounds for testing.

When I sat down to look at a relative burn rate chart provided by Hodgdon, Ramshot Grand was listed in spot 162, the next step below Hodgdon H-1000. I compared Hodgdon’s reloading data for Grand to Western Powder’s data for Ramshot Magnum and was surprised at the result. The charge masses were very close. Suspiciously close. When I went back to Hodgdon’s newest burn rate chart, I looked specifically for Ramshot Magnum. It wasn’t listed. I don’t know if this means that Magnum has been discontinued or not, but Grand was basically occupying the spot that had once been reserved for Ramshot Magnum.

Like Magnum, Ramshot Grand is a double-base spherical propellant that uses both nitrocellulose and nitro-glycerin as energetic components. The bulk density is approximately 990g/cc. Physically, Grand is composed of two distinct powder grain shapes. Some are spherical, little balls that measure about .034 inch. The second shape is circular and flattened, measuring about .015-inch thick by about .045-inch wide. The two shapes combine to give the powder a largely flat black appearance, mixed with flecks of reflected light. Unlike the original Ramshot line of powders which were made in Belgium by PB Clermont, Grand is listed as an American propellant, making St. Marks Powder in Florida the likely manufacturer.

The fire season came late in my area of Idaho, not really beginning in earnest until early October. My first day of testing was done in terrible shooting conditions. Between the smoke and the sun’s angle, it was sometimes hard to see the target, much less shoot accurately. The lighting was miserable enough that I elected not to use my Oehler 35P chronograph. The new little Garmin Xero C1 Pro that uses Doppler radar instead of ambient light and sky screens seemed to be the better bet. Despite the miserable day of shooting, I was able to find one property inherent to Ramshot Grand. In the right cartridges, it can produce very good velocities without undue pressures.

The first rifle I tested was a Cooper Model 22 in 6.5-284 Winchester. This rifle uses the original chambering, not the newer 6.5-284 Lapua, which uses a longer throat to allow for more powder capacity. I’ve never tried to push the rifle hard and usually run it at around 2,800 feet per second (fps) using 140-grain bullets. When my first shot was recorded at 3,156 fps, I was surprised. The bolt lifted easily, and a quick look at the primer didn’t show any obvious pressure signs. The next eight shots showed that the first round wasn’t a fluke. I couldn’t tell you where the bullets were going other than the backstop, but the velocity was outstanding. When that round of testing was done, the average velocity was 3,158 fps with an extreme spread of 43.1 fps and a standard deviation of 16. I had never coaxed that much speed out of my Cooper Model 22. With that much potential, I knew I had to go back to the range with that combination for ladder and accuracy testing.

The other velocity surprise from that tough day of shooting came from my Savage Long Range Hunter in 338 Lapua. This is a newer rifle for me, and I have only used it with 250-grain Lapua Scenar bullets and massive charges of Hodgdon US-869. This combination produced reasonable accuracy, nothing stellar, but at a bit over 2,800 fps, it seemed slow. After testing, it was obvious that Ramshot Grand had the potential to make the Savage shine.

The first shot out of the Savage produced an outstanding 3,093.8 fps. The second shot clocked in at 3,092.6 fps and things began to look very good indeed. Seven more shots produced an extreme spread of 16 fps, which seems phenomenal to me with a spherical powder in a cartridge of that size.

The only real velocity disappointment was with my Remington Gamemaster in 270 Winchester. It produced a disappointing 2,771 fps using 62.8 grains of Grand and a 130-grain Sierra GameKing. Considering that Hodgdon’s data projected a velocity of above 3,100 fps, the actual velocity was unimpressive.

Several weeks later, after high mountain snows and rain in the valley had ended Salmon’s abbreviated fire season, I was able to go back to test the Cooper 6.5-284 Winchester for accuracy using Grand. With ladder testing, the rifle showed potential at 56.2 grains and a high node at a compressed 59.7 grains. This is my favorite rifle, not just because of its great accuracy and reliability. I’m sentimentally attached to it because it was my going away present from Dan Cooper when I left his company. It was a very nice gift from a great boss.

The next day, shooting groups off bags and in a light breeze, the higher accuracy node produced a series of nice groups. The average of four five-shot groups was .510-inch. Some of that was me, I opened one group up dramatically with one terrible squeeze of the trigger. Overall, I think this was a pretty fair showing for my Cooper. I suspected it would be. The powder I had been using in it exclusively for years was Ramshot Magnum.