Powder Burn Rate Table

The following table, ranked from fastest to slowest, was generated by averaging the results of five manufacturer's data. Details on how the data was processed are at the bottom of this page.

How The List Was Created

• Only manufacturer's burn rate tables were used

  • Hodgdon / Winchester)

  • Accurate Arms

  • Vihtavuori

  • IMR

  • ADI

• Data was collected from the websites in August 2014. The lists on the Hodgdon & Winchester websites were the same.

• Each list has a different number of powders listed, so the relative position was converted to a percentage, with 0% being the fastest powder and 100% being the slowest powder.

• The percentages were averaged for each powder

• Only powders that appear in at least 3 lists are included. 

• Norma R1 is the fastest powder in 4 of the 5 lists and is 3rd fastest in the Vihtavuori list.

• The IMR list does not include Vihtavuori 20N29, Hodgdon 50BMG. It appears that the other 4 list include several slower powders. As a result, I am using Vihtavuori N170 as "100%". Therefore some powders have values greater than 100%.

• The data was spot checked, but it is likely there are errors in the data.

  • Vihtavuori and IMR information was manually transcribed, so it is likely there are data entry errors

  • Hodgdon, ADI and Accurate data was copied from the website to Excel. A few errors occurred when pasting data to Excel, some of the entries were lost or mixed up. It is likely there are more undiscovered errors in the data.