Seems Ramshot and Accurate are one and the same.
Same PO Box and address. Perhaps duplicate products like HP38 and W231 etc.
One of these days I need to drive across the State to the St Marks plant.
Both companies are owned by Western Powders so yes, they are the same company now...
There is a long convaluted story here, but the bottom line is that Accurate started in TN as an importer and re-labeller of foreign powders. Originally, they sourced them from Isreal (whose powder plant was set up by Olin way back when; the same Olin which set up the St. Mark's Powder plant -- before it was sold to General Dynamics -- so hence why AA#2 is so similar to W231), but Accurate would shop around to other places to get the bulk powders cheaper. Sometimes they got them direct from St. Marks, and before they sold out to Western Powders, they were getting a bunch of their powders from Czech Republic.
One of my biggest disappointments when Western bought out Accurate and took over their product line is that they ended the big reloading manual, and worse yet, ended the on-line edition of the big manual. Now, all there is on line or from Western is an 8-page flyer. Now, some of the best powder companies (including Accurate) started out with flyers for their load data, but I see what Western did as a backwards step. I understand the liability situation, but Western has a great ballistics lab, and they could have ran the loads in the manual in a year or so and put out a third edition with their own name on it, IMO...
Anyway, to clarify a couple things:
W231/HP38/SMP231 are the same powder made by St. Marks in Florida.
Titegroup's qualities of both density and burn rate make it no where near a one-for-one replacement for 231. It may be a "cousin" in that it's formulation, constituent parts, etc. are very similar, but it behaves differently than 231. I find it much more spikey in pressure, that it's not that accurate (ironic considering it's name), and it's max performance falls short of 231 (in terms of velocity). It's definitely a low-velocity target powder that reaches it's goals of insensitivity to positioning of low-doses of powder, but it's other (poor) qualities don't work for me. If I was a Bullseye powder fan, I might replace Bullseye with it, but I find them to much more similar in applications to each other, than Titegroup to 231.
AA#2 and Ramshot ZIP do not appear to be the same powder, but that is still open to debate, as I'm not 100% informed of the sourcing of both of them, now that Western owns both Ramshot and Accurate. They are very similar, as noted, and they are also very similar to 231. In fact, AA#2 is more of a cousin to 231 than Titegroup, as their application spectrum and performance are nearly identical.
HTH
I like it over on that coast anyway.
