Norma Powders?

[xsskeet]

Checking out the reloading supplies at the Grenville SC Cabela's, to my surprise they had a moderately good selection of Hodgdons and IMR Powders. Even Varget! Have not seen that in months.

One thing they did have, was a pretty good selection of Norma Powders. Having never used any of these I did a little goggling and discovered this.

Bofor's in Europe made Norma powders, and Alliant re-badged them.

Norma MRP is = RL-22
N204 is = RL-19
N203B is = RL-15
N202 is = RL-12
N201 is = RL-7

Just wondering if anyone here on the forum has or or is using the Norma line of powder. If you have some favorite loads using RL-19 or RL-15, this could be a possible alternate solution. A good link explaining this is Accurate Shooters

Not to crazy about Cabela's prices, but it's a possible solution.

[darkker]

Nice info, few things for you to consider.

Groupe SNPE is a French State-owned defense conglomorate. They make all the "Bofors" powder(most of the Reloder line, and the Norma line) and Ramshot powders via their Eurenco layer.
ATK - American Defense contractor, owns the Alliant name. They USED to operate the Radford arsenal, and sell US made shotgun/pistol powder from that. USED to.... They lost that contract, and is now controlled by BAE. There was a J.V. called something like "New River Energetics" to product smokeless for the US public. That J.V. was with the OTHER US Defense Contractor(and only private US powder mfg) General Dynamics.
Since ATK got the boot, I don't know how that is going to work.
IF its ball powder made in 'Merica, it is from Florida, and is a GD powder. IF it's extruded and MADE IN CANADA, that is also GD, built in Quebec.

The problem with using QL for "Identifying" a powder, is the same as any book... WHO did, and WHEN was it tested. Because NO ONE actually builds powder for the waste market(the reloader) it is going to be from the surplus pile, probably blended; OR in a contract run. The reloading market, will ask for a burning rate, and perhaps a general property. SO, as an example:
BL-c(2) and H335 Originally were the same powder for all practical purposes. WC-846 had an original patent allowing a max of .5% CaCO(acid neutralizer). While very few lots ever got that high. As Frankford Arsenal finally found after hundreds of thousands of rounds, and several years; that COULD be problematic to M-16 gas tubes if there were no cleaning performed. So the mfg at the time(Olin) cut the max allowable to .25% of the otherwise identical powder. For inventory purposes they labeled that WC-844. But if you ask most folks they will spit at you if you tell them their "beloved" 335 & BL-c(2) are the same thing.

What does that have to do with anything? Well people change, who produces what and where changes. As a prime example, SMP-842 is where Hodgdon gets CFE223. That powder(SMP) has existed for over a decade. The surplus was around for a very long time. For those of us that shot it, the ORIGINAL lots of CFE were all but the same. Then(at least here) CFE dissapeared for a while, and had a sort of Re-launch with big publicity. This NEW CFE burns notably differently. So did it change on "purpose"? Well it well could be that GD tweeked the powder for a reason the military wanted. In the end the result was close enough that the newer iteration is acceptable to Hodgdon.

Does QL give a lot, or a test date? No. Other than the original A-Squared manual, I'm unaware of anyone giving that info. MOST folks simply re-print data for powders or cartridges they didn't themselves shoot. So QL isn't much better for identifying a powder, than any manual. I have personally noticed that QL really struggles with accurately predicting any ball powder from the GD plant.