For those of you in the east central Indiana region and those willing to travel a bit, I wanted to share a location that I went to yesterday, entirely because I had called them beforehand and found that they had multiple powders suitable for handguns.
I found out about them when I called Big Daddy's Guns & More in Hagerstown (just over twenty minutes away from me), asking if they might possibly have any smokeless powder.
The guy who answered the phone said they didn't, but that they referred people looking for reloading components to Matt's Custom Guns near Connersville.
I took down Matt's number, then called him, asking specifically about what handgun/shotgun powders he might have.
Here's the list he ran off to me:
Titegroup
CFE Pistol
HP38
HS6
W231
W296
Winchester Autocomp
Lil' Gun
H110
Anyone who knows about the current situation with the availability of powder, especially anything suitable for handguns, would be pretty excited about this, and I sure was.
So, off I went on a 45-minute road trip.
It turns out that Matt's is clearly a sole proprietorship, located on what looks like his farm out in the country, with a crushed limestone driveway leading around his house, over to a spiffy looking sheet metal sided building where his gun shop is.
I went in, and there was another older gent there talking to Matt about what he needed for his own reloading purposes, so I just greeted Matt and told him that I was the nut who had called earlier that day to ask about powder, then went straight to his shelf that was literally covered with canisters of powder.
Well, as it turns out, Matt had made a little mistake: He had every handgun powder that he mentioned, plus there was a canister of Ramshot True Blue and another of IMR 4227.
It's nice to be surprised in a good way.
I had come in especially interested in W231, HS6, Titegroup, and CFE Pistol, so after realizing that I didn't want to spend around $100 on powder alone, and having more data for HS6 than W231, I went with a pound each of the latter three choices.
The prices were good to about average, too: The HS6 and CFE Pistol were $24.55 each, and the Titegroup was $21.55.
The prices of the other powders were similar, with H110 marked $24.55 and W296 (yes, exact same powder under another brand) for $22.55, as an example.
He also had lots of eight-pound canisters that I hadn't bothered to check, but plenty of those were also handgun powders.
There was even more powder suitable for rifles, both in one-pound and eight pound canisters.
Examples off the top of my head: IMR 4831, IMR 4350, IMR 3031, IMR 4895, H380, LeveRevolution, and Superformance.
Just guesstimating here, but I would say that he has well north of 100 pounds of powder of various types on that shelf.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see a nice selection of other components, including about two dozen different die sets, various brass, primers, bullets, funnels, trimmers, presses, scales, and various other related items.
As an example of prices, he had at least one box of Barnes TTSX 168 grain .308 caliber bullets marked for about what I'd expect to pay online, as I recall $34.55.
He also had several boxes of factory ammo and about two dozen handguns and rifles, but I didn't bother spending time looking at those because I had other errands to take care of before going home to celebrate my fifth anniversary.
The only thing that I could kick myself for is failing to take photos of the powder shelf to post here so you could see all that he has.
Anyone interested can reach him at 765-825-3418.
His hours of operation are standard 9-5, Monday-Friday.
And the address:
3762 North County Road 450 East
Connersville, IN 47331
The one drawback is that it's a bit out in the boonies, but I can say that my Garmin led me right up to his driveway perfectly, so GPS users can rejoice.
Check it out.
I found out about them when I called Big Daddy's Guns & More in Hagerstown (just over twenty minutes away from me), asking if they might possibly have any smokeless powder.
The guy who answered the phone said they didn't, but that they referred people looking for reloading components to Matt's Custom Guns near Connersville.
I took down Matt's number, then called him, asking specifically about what handgun/shotgun powders he might have.
Here's the list he ran off to me:
Titegroup
CFE Pistol
HP38
HS6
W231
W296
Winchester Autocomp
Lil' Gun
H110
Anyone who knows about the current situation with the availability of powder, especially anything suitable for handguns, would be pretty excited about this, and I sure was.
So, off I went on a 45-minute road trip.
It turns out that Matt's is clearly a sole proprietorship, located on what looks like his farm out in the country, with a crushed limestone driveway leading around his house, over to a spiffy looking sheet metal sided building where his gun shop is.
I went in, and there was another older gent there talking to Matt about what he needed for his own reloading purposes, so I just greeted Matt and told him that I was the nut who had called earlier that day to ask about powder, then went straight to his shelf that was literally covered with canisters of powder.
Well, as it turns out, Matt had made a little mistake: He had every handgun powder that he mentioned, plus there was a canister of Ramshot True Blue and another of IMR 4227.
It's nice to be surprised in a good way.
I had come in especially interested in W231, HS6, Titegroup, and CFE Pistol, so after realizing that I didn't want to spend around $100 on powder alone, and having more data for HS6 than W231, I went with a pound each of the latter three choices.
The prices were good to about average, too: The HS6 and CFE Pistol were $24.55 each, and the Titegroup was $21.55.
The prices of the other powders were similar, with H110 marked $24.55 and W296 (yes, exact same powder under another brand) for $22.55, as an example.
He also had lots of eight-pound canisters that I hadn't bothered to check, but plenty of those were also handgun powders.
There was even more powder suitable for rifles, both in one-pound and eight pound canisters.
Examples off the top of my head: IMR 4831, IMR 4350, IMR 3031, IMR 4895, H380, LeveRevolution, and Superformance.
Just guesstimating here, but I would say that he has well north of 100 pounds of powder of various types on that shelf.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see a nice selection of other components, including about two dozen different die sets, various brass, primers, bullets, funnels, trimmers, presses, scales, and various other related items.
As an example of prices, he had at least one box of Barnes TTSX 168 grain .308 caliber bullets marked for about what I'd expect to pay online, as I recall $34.55.
He also had several boxes of factory ammo and about two dozen handguns and rifles, but I didn't bother spending time looking at those because I had other errands to take care of before going home to celebrate my fifth anniversary.
The only thing that I could kick myself for is failing to take photos of the powder shelf to post here so you could see all that he has.
Anyone interested can reach him at 765-825-3418.
His hours of operation are standard 9-5, Monday-Friday.
And the address:
3762 North County Road 450 East
Connersville, IN 47331
The one drawback is that it's a bit out in the boonies, but I can say that my Garmin led me right up to his driveway perfectly, so GPS users can rejoice.
Check it out.
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