I had heard the PPU was better than the Greek HSP so decided to do a little test.

1982 HXP loose from CMP at 50 yards.


New PRVI at 50 yards.  The two larger white holes were from when someone else shot at the target.


I had my daughter shoot these as she was more consistent than me that day.  We shot several other groups and the HXP was much more consistent  This surprised me.  Anyone else have similar findings?

What makes the PPU stuff "better" isn't so much that it's more accurate, or consistent, or whatever... it's that the PPU is anywhere from 30 to 50+ years newer than the HXP.

How exactly is 'newer' better?  If I get crap new ammo that's got terrible accuracy and compare it to WWI precision ammo, the WWI stuff will still win in consistency and accuracy every time.  
Young people have got to stop drinking the Kool-Aid that claims new is always better than old; it ain't!



 

For a lot of uses, there isn't much real world difference in those two targets. HXP and Prvi are both general purpose 'blasting' ammo in my eyes. Unless it's the issued round, I would think few people are shooting competitions with either.
Some of the HXP is in rough shape, with corrosion and funk that leads people to cull some rounds.The main supplier of HXP, the CMP, has steadily increased the price to a point many don't consider it worth it compared to the bright, shiny, new Prvi. A quick look at the CMP site shows the spam can sealed / boxed HXP to be more expensive per round than the usual Prvi Garand load price.
Shiny, new production general purpose ammo for roughly the same price as grungy, funky, 30-50 year old general purpose ammo? That's what makes it 'better' to a lot of people now.
I can't say I blame them. After buying HXP for the past couple years, I'm seriously looking at making the Prvi Garand load my next '06 purchase.

Do you have any experience with any better ammo?

It is surprising to me that the new ammo with matching lot #s is not as good as old floor scrapings with mixed lot #s (I did separate by year my CMP mixed cans of loose ammo).

Not in the Garands. My M1s generally get put on paper once, to zero, and then spend the rest of their leisurely life plinking.

Is the HXP still available in clips?  That could be an advantage right there, especially to a new M1 shooter.

You should test the two before you buy either.

Shiny =/= better

Cheaper =/= better


Smaller groups = better

Q

Never said it did, as far as shiny and newer. On the other hand, for some uses, smaller groups is just one of the factors I would use to qualify 'better.'
If the old Pakistani hangfire- special ammo was MOA, I still wouldn't use it. If corrosive ammo shot slightly better than non corrosive in one of my guns, I'd use the non corrosive. Etc, etc. YMMV.

Considering the vertical stringing, that looks more like a Garand starting to heat up, than an ammo issue to me.  The horizontal spread is about the same, with one flier from the HXP throwing it wide.  Which is about right for HXP.  Alternate 3 strings of 8 of each at 100 yards, without stopping so each string is a hotter Garand than the last, and I'd be curious what that looks like.



As to commentary that old ammo doesn't degrade with age.  When properly handled you bet it can last 60 years or even longer.  But that assumes proper handling.  What is the progeny of the Greek ammo?  Are we sure that gunpowder has not had opportunity to age in every round?  

The older the ammo is, the more time it's had for the powder degradation productions to overwhelm the stabilizers in it, and snowball into making nitrates/nitric acid, which does this (not my photo - AYR ammo actually, posted for reference):


Does this mean HXP all does this and is unsafe?  Not at all, lots of people are shooting lots of HXP just fine.  But no way would I buy 40 year old ammo (with steel jacketed bullets by the way), when I can buy new manufactured stuff that is just as good if not better, for the same price or cheaper (with a copper jacket).

Should you discard HXP?  not at all, but I sure wouldn't save it, in its sealed can, like it's anything special.  It's not.  burn it up, and don't waste your time with current CMP prices restocking.

I haven't  tried  the New stuff yet but it has a couple of things  going for it. It has a use by date that is 40 years later than the Greek. I wouldn't  have to sit in front of the TV cleaning and polishing my "new" ammo like I do with a lot of the Greek. Some of the stuff from CMP  has pits and marks where the links were. I wasn't complaining when it was $99 for 200 in a can. but when the new stuff is just as cheap or cheaper it makes you think.

WTF?

You need to go do some reading on ammo shelf life and government storage practices.  "WW1 precision ammo", whatever that is exactly, ain't worth squat if the powder's degraded due to 100 years of >completely unknown< storage conditions.

Beyond that, we were discussing HXP vs. PPU.  Old people should stop drinking the cool-aid that claims... aww hell, nevermind.

For what its worth.. the PPU  out of my '55 H&R was shooting groups like your first target, at 100 yards. Thats not proof of anything, granted.. but I would consider it quite accurate for what it is... i.e. an inexpensive round for the M1. I was impressed.

If it was the ammo's fault it woud be a random group. Your PPU target is stringing , its either shooter error or as already said rifle is heating up stringing shot

You left out the most important part of my post - test them both before you buy lots of either.

I'm convinced that surplus ammo's 'quality' is affected as much by how it was stored than just who made it.

How so?  I mean, short of pulling bullets and finding degraded powder, how can you tell how it was stored and whether or not that storage environment (which is unknown and unknowable to you) adversely affected performance?

Have you seen some strange performance?

If you can believe it, this is the only accuracy performance data on PPU M2 Ball I've seen posted on the internet, anywhere.  I've seen and heard and talked to lots of people who claim they are happy, but no actual data.

Has anyone ever shot this Garand spec ammo through a deer rifle or something else with a scope (not an M1D), to better quantify its inherent accuracy potential?  Any pictures or data?

For those of you interested in powder degradation.... I suggest you pick up a copy of the Norma reloading manual.

There are numerous charts showing how powder ( in loaded ammo ) will degrade over time, resulting in a increase in burn rate and pressure.

Including charts on the other factors... Temperature, moisture content etc.

Including a graph on a exponential curve for powder deterioration graduated in years and powder change.

Quite honestly if the older surplus ammo wasn't going through a form of breakdown... it probably won't be surplus at all. It would still be in "ready stock".

Which is better ? .... There are so many variables involved that one would truly have to know the COMPLETE history of the specific ammo.

While I am no expert on powder......the Norma manual spells it out quite well.

Which would I shoot vs store ? ... Shoot the HXP, store the PPU.... powders need a fair amount of time to start to degrade. In other words you can be pretty sure that the HXP's powder has undergone some form of deterioration... where as the PPU is not even started yet.

BTW, Norma also claims that Stick powders last longer then Ball powder before the powder changes measurably.... If memory serves me right, the difference is by quite a bit. ( decades ? ) I will check later today.

I shot some through a Garand and came up with groups in the neighborhood of 3" at 100 yards.  I think I have the targets at home, and can measure them and get pictures after the weekend.

Is the PPU steel free?  If it is there's a reason to buy it for us in areas that steel jacketed ammo can't be used due to forest fire risks

Yes

This.

That's been my experience firing just under 500-rds of PPU's M1-safe '06 ammo down range. No issues.  

Among my M1s, my Winchester  SG seems to really like the PPU.  The HXP I have is fine for practice, but for a local match I'd use the PPU.

Update, but I didn't take pictures.
Two trips:
First trip was a month or two ago, two 8-shot groups at 4" circles each.
Second trip went downhill for some reason, 8 shot group about 6" wide and 10" tall.
I also tried Hornady's Garand ammo the second trip, the group came out about 2" wide and 6 or 7" tall
Also on the second trip I shot the PPU with a skinny barrel Remington 700, about a 3" 7 round circle group.

Hey thanks!  That's good intel.  I'm actually working on a project to do that same testing with the PPU, along with a bunch of other M2 Balls.

http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=165191

But the basic personal goal of all that is really what you just posted - finding out what the PPU 30-06 really can do, out of a bolt action deer rifle.   3" is actually kind of disappointing.  I was hopeing closer to 2.

Made it to the range today to do some test work.  


As posted here: http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=165191&page=2



Made it to the range today.  Heavy thunderstorms in the area, and flooding prevented proper 200 yard testing, and any chrony testing today.  

We'll call today an initial testing day.

Two deer rifles: A Savage 30-06 and a Remington 7600 (slide action).
Also 1 1917 Enfield with a brand new Criterion BBL.

Fired at 100 yards from a sandbag rest, with 16X scopes.  Data summary shown in the attached graphic:



Test set 1:  Performance of deer rifles.
Fired hand-loads using match 168 gr NOSLER, and IMR 4895.  These should be highly accurate rounds.  Not enough ammo this run for 3 groups of 5 for each rifle.  1.6 and 2.1 average extreme spreads for each rifle.  I was hoping for better performance.  Average to center for these two rifles was the same.  Pretty close performance, so I used the Savage bolt action for most of the rest of the tests.

Not the level of benchmark accuracy I was really hoping for.  I was hoping for sub-MOA capable test rifles.    

Test set 2: HXP (both deer rifles tested):
Mixed HXP through each of the two deer rifles.  3 groups of 5 in each.
Results show an average 1.1 MOA average to center with the HXP for both rifles, with average extreme spread around 2.8 - 3.3 MOA.  The bolt action Savage had the better groups.  

This somewhat surprised me, I was expecting to see a larger group size, and more fliers.  There were some fliers, with 3 of the six deer rifle groups, greater than 3.5", and the largest was 3.75".   The worst group was still less than 4", better than expected.

Test 3: PPU (Savage bolt action)
This was really no better than the HXP.  Three groups were fired, and the average avg-to-center was 1.13 MOA, and the average extreme spread was 2.8 MOA.    

Discussion of results:

Well this was an interesting day.  I expected these rifles to group less than 1 MOA with good ammo, but they didn't.  

I expected the HXP to be throwing larger groups.  It did sometimes do that, grouping 3 shots really close, and then throwing 1 or 2 opening the up the group.  But not as bad as I was expected.

I expected the PPU to be throwing smaller groups.  And to greatly outperform the HXP.  It didn't.  It didn't tend to throw fliers as bad, but in the end, the average to center, and extreme spread was about the same.

I also expected the 1917 with a brand new unbroken-in barrel and iron sights to be schooled by the modern scoped deer rifles with their free float barrels.  It wasn't.  It shot almost as well.

I still intend to test more at 200 yards, but so far results are showing PPU to be no worse than HXP, and both are good for about 3 MOA 5 shot groups.  Considering the test rifles didn't demonstrate better than 1.5 MOA, it's likely inherently better than that.

Here's what a group can look like with HXP and with PPU

I have not seen a lot of ammo degrade over time as some claim on the site.  If it is stored properly it should not be an issue.

I have some 303 ammo made in WW1 and it is the best ammo I have ever fired.   Very accurate and reliable.   It is better than modern PRVI and other modern ammo I have
fired in my Lee Enfields.  

I have fired hundreds of HXP in both 30-06 in M-1 Garands and 303 HXP in Lee Enfields with no issues.  No malfunctions yet.