What, Exactly, is a Grain?

If you hand load ammunition, then you deal with “grain” as a weight all the time. We measure our bullets in grains, and we measure our powder in grains. If you’re into archery, it’s also the standard form of measurement for weighing arrows.

But… do you actually know what a grain is? First, be aware that a granule of powder is not the same as a “grain.”

As you might guess from its name, the grain is one of the oldest forms of standardized weight measurement. We can find references to it in the 8^th century, but it’s likely older than that.

Back in those days, there weren’t many “standard” objects that anyone in the world could be assured existed exactly the same as anywhere else in the world. One exception was grains of barley. Folks who needed measurements of weight expressed in a universal form, then, assigneda standardized weight to an object by balancing it against a known number of barley grains. 

Later, wheat grains replaced barley grains… though I’m not sure that anybody knows why….

Of course, both barley and wheat grains don’t all weigh exactly the same, so the British Parliament standardized the definition of a grain with the Weights and Measurements Act of 1855, which set a single grain as equivalent to 1/7000^th of a pound.

Interesting, eh?

With this newfound information, it is possible to calculate how many rounds you can load with a pound of powder by dividing the number of grains used per round into 7000. For instance, if you use 4 grains of TiteGroup for a pistol load, then a pound of TG will load 1750 rounds of ammunition. If you’re really curious, you can then divide 1750 into the cost of that pound of TiteGroup to see how much you’re spending in gunpowder for every round you fire. So, if that pound of TiteGroup costs you $40, then each round uses about 2.3 cents worth of powder per shot.