By Joe Cota
The rain stopped so I decided to take a buggy ride to my good friend Rew’s place to pick up a couple of jugs of unopened 28 year-old Alliant 2400 smokeless gunpowder. Rew has been saving this for me for a while now. Oh man, this stuff is hard to find!
2400 smokeless gunpowder was introduced by the Hercules Gunpowder Company in 1932 as a rifle powder. Soon after it became available, legendary six-gunner Elmer Keith used it to “wake up” the old .44 S&W Special round that was first released in 1907.
In no time at all, and a couple of blown-up Colt Peacemakers later, Old Elmer’s “hot” .44 Special rounds using his custom 250 grain home cast semi wad cutter bullet backed with a healthy charge of Hercules 2400 became the infamous .44 Remington Magnum of Dirty Harry fame.
Some of my local city dwellin’ buddies know well the history of the Bermite Corp. collaboration with Hercules Gunpowder in the 1940s to turn their Santa Clarita gunpowder and fireworks manufacturing plant into a leading US Government-contracted defense munitions facility.
My mom worked at the Bermite plant in the 1960’s Vietnam era building the fuses for 40mm guns, flares to light up the night, and solid rocket boosters for the early AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles which reached speeds of Mach 2.5 and a range of 22 miles! But that’s another story. I miss you, Mom, and love you forever.
Eventually, Alliant Techsystems bought the smokeless gunpowder part of Hercules around 1995. Today, Alliant/Hercules is still the best damn gunpowder there is for handloading hot .44 magnum ammo and is by far my favorite of them all. Sure there are many other modern powders but nothing tops 2400 in my book.
Pero bueno, this stuff is hard to come by today, so these two unopened one-pound canisters from 1998 that Rew found for me are pretty darn special! This supply of new old stock gunpowder will load about 670 rounds of premium .44 Remington magnum ammo. Should last me a month or two
Thanks Rew! Got home in time for tonight’s beautiful sunset.
There’s nothing quite like an open air buggy ride in the cool mountain air after a good storm. That smell of damp pines and moist earth.
When I got home I found on the right seat a bag of pomegranates from my tree and some genuine Bartlett pears from the remaining 2 acres of groves in Pearblossom, California that I forgot to leave for you! I’ll drop them off in the morning, brother.
Editor’s Note: I dropped a note to Jose and in it I mentioned that I, too, reload handgun ammo with the Lee four turret press.
Here’s Jose’s response to me:
I’ve been using my Lee Classic Turret press for over 18 years now. The only thing I’ve worn out in loading tens of thousands of all types of rifle and pistol ammo from .380 ACP to .45-70 Gov and .405 Winchester are two of the plastic bushings that the twisted indexing rod rides on. This press came as a complete kit from Cabelas for around $189 on sale if memory serves me. I really like Lee’s handloading book and the auto disk powder measure. I’ve upgraded only one thing, the scale. I use the Frankford Arsenal DS 750 electronic scale.
I’ll put my handloads against any ammo done on RCBS rocksucker (I’m not a fan), Hornady, and Dillon any day. The Lee carbide pistol dies and factory crimp die are awesome, best in the business and their customer service is No. 1.