Hodgdon Extreme
Hodgdon H4350
A very widely used medium-slow rifle powder, standard in the WSM family and in many classic standard-capacity hunting cartridges, and a common choice for light to moderate bullets in magnums.
Specifications
| Manufacturer | Hodgdon |
|---|---|
| Product family | Hodgdon Extreme |
| Status | Currently produced |
| Application | rifle |
| Grain form | extruded |
| Composition | single-base |
| Temperature stable | Yes — claimed by the manufacturer |
| Burn-rate position | 151 of 198 (fastest = 1) — what this means |
| Typical cartridges | 243 Winchester, 6mm Remington, 270 Winchester, 270 WSM, 7mm WSM, 300 WSM, 325 WSM, 338 Winchester Magnum |
Hodgdon shortened the kernels over the years to improve metering. Extreme-series, so temperature insensitive and consistent lot to lot.
Burn rate
Medium-slow rifle, between Alliant Reloder 16 and Reloder 17, near IMR 4350 and IMR 4451.
Chart agreement: consistent across charts - listed in the same relative neighbourhood by every publisher that carries it Ranked by: Hodgdon, Vihtavuori, Shooters World, Wolfe/LoadData.
Powders charted near it — neighbours on the chart are not substitutes, and adjacency tells you nothing about what charge either one takes:
- IMR 4350 (position 148)
- IMR Enduron 4451 (position 149)
- Alliant Reloder 16 (position 150)
- Alliant Reloder 17 (position 152)
- Accurate 4350 (position 153)
- Shooters World SW4350 (position 154)
What reloaders say about it
Unverified community anecdote. The following is a summary of what handloaders report in public forums. It is not manufacturer information, it has not been tested, it may be wrong, and it contains no load data by design. Treat it as colour, not guidance.
H4350 is spoken of in the same breath as Varget — a temperature-stable extruded powder with a strong following in 6.5 Creedmoor and similar cartridges. Where it comes up in head-to-head range testing against ball alternatives, experienced posters tend to conclude the difference is smaller than people expect once group sizes are averaged over enough shots.
- long-standing following in 6.5 Creedmoor and precision bolt guns
- reported temperature stability
- chronic scarcity is part of its reputation
- head-to-head tests often show less separation from alternatives than expected
Availability: Widely described as a chronically scarce, high-demand powder that people buy on sight rather than plan around. Several posters report treating alternatives as the practical default and H4350 as an opportunistic buy.
Reported cautions:
- Extruded/stick — same metering caveats as Varget apply.
Consensus level: widely held. Drawn from thread 1, thread 2, thread 3.
Sources
Other Hodgdon powders
Verify the charge, not just the recipe
Good data gets you a safe starting point. It does not tell you what actually went into the case on stroke 340 — a bridged measure, a double charge, a squib. That is what an RCM Laser Powder Check is for.