Thread: ADI Benchmark 8208 and Hodgdon CFE223

Hi, I'm looking where to start with a standard powder for a bolt action 6.5 Grendel with 16" barrel, bullet 120 or 123 gr.

ADI says 8208 is designed for consistency from batch to batch which sounds good to me. It looks as if IMR also market it.

CFE is said to reduce copper fouling and is flavour of the month on the American Grendel forum, presumably for semi users who want to shoot a lot between laborious copper cleans. Do other powders have this too ?

I've used a bit of Hornady factory ammo in 123 SST and after 6 rounds of break in there has been zero (zero) blue marks on my boretech patches. It's weird. Do people think Hornady are using a copper eraser powder or what ?

I'm asking for any advice about :
how reliable they will be to get hold of several years from now,
ease of finding a good load
no steep pressure spikes on that last half a grain.
Density so you can fit in a good load without going compressed
Good velocity available from ordinary loads.
anything else you think might be interesting (about med-small case powders) ...

I'm using CFE223 in my Grendel as it was the most available when I started loading for it. Gives good velocity and meters easily through powder thrower.
I went up in .2gr increments when at the top end.


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CFE223 and Leverevolution give the best velocities in this cartridge. Many modern powders have additives to prevent copper build up.

I use 8208 in my 6.5 Grendel upper.

https://www.nzhuntingandshooting.co....-barrel-37192/

I tried CFE223 but I didn't think it offered enough to change & wasn't as accurate as 8208

Cfe233 for me
Pretty hard to find data with the cfe it’s not listed for Grendel in alot of manuals but it really is one of the most popular Grendel powders with 100gn bullets I started with 31gn and have been all the way to 34gn with no issues in my rifle... (howa mini) always work slowly with Grendel as pressure spikes can happen quick I worked up in .3gn increments
(Lapua brass)

Hornady manual lists 31.2gr as max with 123gr

A good friend of mine uses 8208 in his grendal. Seems to shot ok.

Originally Posted by mikee

A good friend of mine uses 8208 in his grendal. Seems to shot ok.

LOL I would love to see great

I'm using CFE and 123gn SSTs, at a much milder 27.5gn compared to Beavis.

Hi thanks guys for the good advice.
It sounds as if they are both just fine.
I'll post up how I get on once I've done some testing.

Post up velocity if you can. I probably won't have my grendel online for another couple of weeks

I went for BM8208 mainly due to hoping I can get ongoing supplies of it and the promise it will be the same from batch to batch.

Its a cylinder powder similar to AR2208 but a bit smaller grains. It runs well through my chargemaster with all loads being the exact 0.1 gr I wanted.

I tried out preliminary loads for fireforming today, using 26.0 gr and Nosler 120gr Ballistic tip.
Sorry I don't have velocities yet and will wait til I've shot all 200 new brass before I ramp it up and test for accuracy. At this load it dropped 22cm between 100m and 200m (for what that's worth).

After 26 shots and cleaning for carbon with KG1, there seemed to be no copper at all. Here is the patch after leaving boretech eliminator down the barrel for an hour:

Just playing around with the information you put up… 20cm at 200 meters is about 2280ft/s as per table bellow…