Topic: Why do some guys not like the BP substitutes?
Retrieved: 12/12/2014
Last Post: 04/26/2008
I am relatively new here and I have been reading these posts, threads and boards and have been loving it. But a lot of guys seem to want nothing but BP. I was just curious, why not any of the substitutes such as Pyrodex, Triple-7 or Pioneer? Just curious so don't cuss me!
I have been shooting BP off and on since the '70s. I was in reenacting for like 20 years in which I used BP. Now I agree, nothing sounds as as beautifully and deeply rich as good ol real BP nor puts out that pure, thick, white smoke like BP.
But I just get tired of fouling and cleaning. So for live shooting, which usually is just plinking or target practice out to 100 yds or so (I wish there were some long distance ranges around here in Central Alabama), I switched to substitutes. At first it was Pryodex but here lately I have been using the newer stuff like Pioneer. It sounds and smokes about like BP (nothing actually has that deep boom or volume of smoke as BP), but fouling and cleanup is so much better and easier. I can shoot my Uberti Colt .45 a few rounds with BP and have to stop and clean my gun. I can use Pioneer and shoot forever it seems with just sooting but no real fouling. And you can clean it with just warm water or whathave you.
I just got me a Pedersoli Sharps .45-70 "Lightweight Sporter" with 30" Oct. Bl. It is not really that lightweight either. I can't wait until I shoot my store bought shells and can reload with BP or Pioneer.
So I was just wondering why the BP substitutes are sort of frowned upon by some. Just curious.
Driftwood Johnson
March 07, 2008
BP subs have a very valid place for shooters who live in jurisdictions where it may be difficult to buy real Black Powder. Because of the nature of the Subs, they can be legally sold in some places that have different regulations regarding true explosives like Black Powder. Most subs can be sold in the exact same manner and with the exact same precautions as Smokeless powders. Not always so for real Black Powder. I have to drive over an hour now to buy real Black Powder, I can buy the subs locally. That is probably half the reason the Subs exist in the first place.
You are also correct that at least some of the subs do not require special bullets and lubes, so that is another valid reason for shooting subs if you don't want to mess with special lubes or bullets.
But I must disagree with you about the difficulty of cleaning Black Powder fouling and the assumption that you need to clean your gun after just a few rounds.
I bought my first C&B revolver in 1968, and believed those assumptions too, for a long time. But there is a better way. I can shoot my revolvers, rifles, and shotguns all day long during a six or eight stage match and not give them any cleaning or attention at all. If it is a 2 day match I don't even bother to clean them that night, I just come back and start shooting the next day. And I don't rush home to clean them for fear they will turn into rust immidiately, I clean them when I get a chance.
Yes, I use special lubes and special bullets, but as long as I can continue to get my hands on real Black Powder I will continue to avoid moving over to the subs. I just like shooting real BP. If others prefer the subs because they cannot buy BP locally, or because they don't want to mess with special lubes, that is completely understandable. But BP is not as troublesome as many believe, even those of us who used it for a long time. If I can no longer get my hands on real BP, I'll cross that bridge when I reach it.
Lars
March 07, 2008
Actually, IF you shoot superior traditional BPs, Schuetzen and Swiss, there is not much to gain in performance by going to modern BP replacement powders, such as 777 FFg. In actual match or field shooting, I can find very little difference in performance (number of shots before groups start to open) between Swiss and 777 and see little difference with Schuetzen (as used by others -- have not gotten around to using it myself).
There really is no reason today to burden one's BP shooting with crud-rich powders, like Goex, that is, unless you like to wipe bores often or to clean BP crud or want to get your gun all greazy with excessive lube.
Pigeonroost Slim
March 07, 2008
Driftwood and Lars deliver very powerful and correct information. For me, I can get authentic black powder delivered to my door in bulk quantity on a regular basis at a price that is most favorable compared to the replica powders. I have absolutely no experience with any of the replica black powders except the older lots of Pyrodex RS and P. They shoot OK and smoke pretty well, but they don't stink quite right. The odor of Pyrodex reminds me of over cooked shrimp. I think Swiss and Schuetzen stink really good and even Goex has a passible foul bouquet. As for cleaning and corrosion prevention; give me authentic Holy Black any day over Pyrodex any day. When I clean my arns (and there is remarkably little effort to it) they are way on more clean than a heathern smokieless shooter's arns after a "cleaning". If'n I could not purchase or store authentic gun powder in my local, but the gov'ment varlets would allow me to have and hold replica powder; I would get along with that which was allowed; otherwise its like that Coke commercial; ain't nothi'n like the real thing!
Pistolero
March 07, 2008
Thanks y'all. Now that you mention it, back when I shot Civil War muskets and pistols only (for years that is all I owned, for shooting, reenacting, plinking, hunting, etc.) as long as I used good lube I had not much trouble. Believe it or not, when I went to the range and used good old kitchen "Crisco" to top off my chambers in my C & B pistols and the hollow base of my minies I could shoot all day it seemed like. And I learned that scalding water cleaned a gun filthy with BP fouling and residue cleaned up just fine with that only. You could pour boiling water down the barrel of a musket, with hammer on nipple and rag over muzzle, shake it a bit, pour that out, then redo, etc.. That hot water cleans it out just fine. Actually, I have all three; BP, Pyrodex, and Pioneer. I shoot all three. I was just wondering which was the best. Thanks for y'all's answers and advice, etc..
Dick Dastardly
March 07, 2008
Genuine black powder is that. Subs/replicas are what they are, but they are not black powder. Concessions have been made for legal and logistical reasons. SASS allows both for "black powder" classes.
When you are shooting black powder you know it. Your fellow shooters know it. When you are not, you are not. You know it and your fellow shooters know it.
Lars
March 07, 2008
Having shot in BP matches over most of USA, sometimes shooting Pyrodex, sometimes Swiss, sometimes 777 FFg, I found VERY few shooters that could tell which kind of powder I was using. Ditto for shooters using APP and Goex. Those few that could, were shooters that used all three fairly extensively.
IF it makes a big boom and lots of smoke, it will be called BLACK powder. No need to have the least concern about which powder you are shooting, aside from performance, that is.
Professor Marvel
March 07, 2008
My interests mainly lay in muzzleloaders - and thus my experiences are swayed by this
My personal preference for "real" BP is due to "ignition failure" of the numerous substitutes that have come and gone over the years. I have never had an ignition problem with any real BP (including a batch of elephant that fouled terribly) whilst Pyrodex and others are notorious in this regards. I simply cannot use Pyro in a flinter.
Some BP subs have pressure curves that seem to more closely resemble "slow smokeless", while the burn characteristics of BP are reaonably well understood. Further, many of the subs are apparently "perchlorate based" and come with their own issues of erosion, corrosion, and whathaveyou (Learned Sirs, please correct any chemistry errors).
Storage of Subs is simpler, but I have found several vendors providing legal, approved powder safes at reasonable prices; since the local Powers That Be have no issues, that is not an issue for us.
When real BP is not readily obtainable, I will use Pyrodex P in my Remmies if I can get reliable ignition, but that is a an unfortunate compromise.
Dutch Bill
March 08, 2008
The idea that some BP subs give pressure curves that more closely resemble slow smokeless is not really accurate. These BP subs are something of a mixed bag depending upon what they are based on.
I break them down into 3 classifications. These being: ascorbic acid based, sugar based and sodium benzoate based.
Clean Shot, APP, Pinnacle and Black Mag are based on the use of ascorbic acid and potassium nitrate. In the case of Black Mag they add potassium perchlorate to speed it up.
These powders based on ascorbic acid are basically gas generating compositions. They burn cool but produce a large volume of gas. The gas being mainly carbon dioxide. They don't produce a lot of heat except in the case of the Black Mag where the potassium perchlorate enters into this point of volume of gas produced versus number of calories of heat evolved. This thing about being gas generating compositions is why they look so anemic is patch ball guns while looking a good bit stronger behind elongated bullets.
The Clear Shot powder that had once been produced by GOEX was based on the use of fruit sugar. Fructose. You can make a powder with plain sugar, sucrose, but it will be slower than one made with fruit sugar. Plain sugar is disaccharide while fruit sugar is a monosaccharide. Di being two sucrose molecules bonded together. In a propellant powder it takes energy to break down the disaccharide to the individual sugar molecules before they can undergo combustion. With the single sugar molecule in fruit sugar there is no need to "pump" energy into it before it can undergo combustion.
I would point out that the sugar and ascorbic acid based formulations call for the use of an iron compounded add to them to speed up the chemical reactions in the powder combustion.
In these various BP subs there are issures with the basic "reactivity" of the materials used. The more "reactive" the base material, the faster they burn. The less reactive, the slower they burn.
Hodgdon Powder Company is the only one using sodium benzoate as the base in the powder. This dates to the original invention of the powder that became Pyrodex. The basic concept being a mixture of potassium nitrate and sodium benzoate. But the "reactivity" of sodium benzoate is so slow that a healthy slug of potassium perchlorate is required to get the burn rate fast enough for use as a propellant powder. The patent shows 17 parts of potassium perchlorate. That presence and amount was confirmed by two forensic chemistry labs that I know of. That make the powder's combustion residue highly corrosive.
When Hodgdon saw the need for a faster version to be used in the in-line action rifles they came up with 777 which is based on the use of sodium dinitrobenzoate sulfonate and charcoal. The formulation still contains potassium nitrate but the dinitro is really what makes it work the way it does. Most of these dinitro compounds are noted for being highly reactive with charcoal. Pyrodex has only a small amount of charcoal. Triple Seven uses a larger amount of charcoal to work with the dinitro. The potassium perchlorate is then reduced to a very small amount, if any at all. Hodgdon's literature is a bit deceptive in this particular area.
Ignition temperatures vary considerably in these BP subs. When GOEX had APP develop the Pinnacle powder they specificed a lower ignition temperature, compared to the APP powder being sold. GOEX wanted a sub that could be used in flintlocks without having to resort to kicker charges of a few grains of bp under the main charge or bp in the lock pan. It worked in my .45 cal. "Schimmel" but others have reported that Pinnacle in the lock pan did not reliably ignite the main charge.
This thing about storage of subs versus black powder is something of a joke. Ignition temperature alone does not determine how safe or how dangerous a powder is to store and handle. But when it comes to govt. regulations we are lead mainly by fools.
When I looked at the "open burn" of Black Mag and Triple Seven I was a bit shocked. In an accidental ignition situation I doubt if there would be much difference in damages caused.
In looking at the bore fouling produced by these various BP subs you have to look at what they produce in the way of solid particulate matter and how much heat are they capable of producing during powder combustion.
The ascorbic acid powders, without potassium perchlorate, produce only potassium carbonate, or potash, as the only solid product of combustion. Along with this is low gas temperatures. So there is no fusion or melting of the potassium carbonate as one will sometimes see in black powder. You usually see a thin film of what looks like an ash in the bore than turns into a wet film if the relative humidity is high enough or you blow on the ash. This is why the maker of APP claims that the powder is self-lubricating in the gun.
With the sugar based powders you may see some partially burned sugar as hard patches on the surfaces of the bore black in the breech. Also you might see some black carbon due to an incomplete combustion of the sugar.
With Pyrodex you have crystals of potassium chloride, from the perchlorate, scattered over the bore's surfaces. No problem with patched balls or lead, lubed, slugs. But that can be a real problem with plastic saboted bullets. Making loading most difficult after the 2nd or 3rd shot without wiping.
With 777 you may see what has been described as a "crud ring" in the breech. This is simply a thing of gas temperatures going high enough to fuse and or melt the potassium carbonate produced by powder combustions which then adheres strongly to the surfaces of the bore. These dinitro compounds are capable of some fairly high combustion temperatures.
Lars
March 08, 2008
Prof Marvel,
Don't intend this as an attack on you personally but rather on a widely spread bit of folklore. I have seem very few pressure curves for any traditional BP or any BP replacement powders. Those for "BP" are especially suspect because there can, and have been, so many different traditional BPs. Yes, there are diagrams in many books. Seldom, if ever, are they based on any actual pressure data - fiction really.
What is well known from modern piezeometric pressure testing is that max pressures for all useful gunpowders occur well before bullet or shot charge has exited chamber. After that they all fall off rapidly -- nitro powders can be especially diverse in rate of this, say, Red Dot vs Reloader-25. Actually, rate of pressure rise is key parameter of ALL gunpowders. If pressure rise is too fast, bullet or shot charge acts as obstruction, chamber becomes effectively a closed pressure vessel and pressures can exceed that which gun will withstand without plastic or rupture deformation. As you know, pressure rise has to be paired with effective inertia of projectile, such that projectile moves forward, giving more room for expansion of powder gases, all without exceeding pressure boundry for plastic deformation.
There have been a few pressure testing setups that placed pressure gauges at various points along barrel. All of these setups I know of are for shotguns, where their thin barrels, compared to rifles, makes this a very valid matter of concern. Even more so because of pechant to make shotgun barrels thin to improve handling and reduce weight. The most widely quoted such data for shotguns showed clearly that slower nitro powders for shotguns can mimic down- barrel pressure curves of at least one traditional BP (Goex -- as I recall, test was not run with any other traditional BPs or any BP replacement powders).
As regards replacement BP for C&B revolvers, I have found Pyrodex-P and 777 FFg to give excellent results in my replica Remington New Armys and 3rd Model Dragoons. Better than Goex by wide margin. Do follow Hodgdon's published load data for 777 -- DO NOT just load it like Goex in ANY Colt replica C&B because they are far too weakly assembled.
Dutch Bill,
After years of using 777 FFg in full case loads in 44-40 and 12,7X44R rifles, as well as 12X65 shotguns, I have yet to see that "crud ring" you mention. May encounter this when I attempt to replicate original BP loads for 8X58RD in Carl Gustafs Stads rolling block (Remington design) at chamber pressures under 28.000 psi (max service pressure, as determined by Norma many decades ago). Hodgdon-published chamber pressures for 777 FFg in true bottle-necked cases have chamber pressures in range 25.000-35.000 psi, as do/did more european and british powerful BP rifle cartridges.
I did find that use of plastic sabots and 777 FFg worked fine for first few shots, but then group sizes opened badly as plastic fouling build up. Gun was the 12,7X44R mentioned above. Great for a shot or three hunting -- useless for a match requiring 10 consequtive shots and no chance to clean bore.
Lars
March 08, 2008
Those flames are from impurities in Goex. Never seen it with quality BPs, like Swiss. Have not noticed it with Schuetzen either. Those burning impurities from Goex is why "real" BP sometimes gets nixed for primitive weapons (e.g., BP) deer seasons under dry fall conditions -- fire hazard.
Driftwood Johnson
March 08, 2008
Quote
Driftwood: can't yoe git BP delivered from Powderinc. or another BP outlet?
They deliver it by Fed Ex and ya hafta sign but it some areas they just leave
it at the door. $260.00 shipped for a case of KIK powder.
Yes.
I usually go halves with a 25 pound case of powder from Maine Powder house with a friend, about once a year. But sometimes if I run low I want to grab a pound or two. My nearest supply was about an hour away, but it was a nice gunshop and I always enjoyed the trip. But he failed to renew his lisence, so now if I want to grab a pound or two I have to drive a bit further.
Pigeonroost Slim
March 08, 2008
Damn it Lars! Its only 16 degrees outside and the wind is howling like the Banshee is swoop'n down upon me soul and you have me think'n 'bout going out into the darkness to fire off a few rounds of Swiss and Scheutzen to see if'n thar be flames! It not fair, I tell Ya, its jest not fair! Seems like many of us come-up through the ranks of muzzle loaders. Even with DuPont one of our questionalbe tests back in the 60's for the limit of effective powder charge was to shoot progressively larger charges from our rifles over snow. When you saw an inordinate increase in powder residue blown out onto the snow blanket, you knew you were past that limit. I think it was a rather bogus test, but we liked the big booms. In a 5 1/2" revolver, even Unique gives a fair flame in the darkness. Maybe some other night for this 'speriment!
John Boy
March 08, 2008
Quote
Seldom, if ever, are they based on any actual pressure data
This isn't fiction... Here you go Lars, the real deal. Black powder measurements done by an ASSRA shooter using a strain gauge...
http://www.assra.com/public_html/yabbfiles/Attachments/45_70_pressure2.jpeg [404]
http://www.assra.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1202959756
Lars
March 08, 2008
OK, John Boy, a bunch of simple chamber pressure vs time curves for several large bore BP rifles and ONE for a fast burning nitro powder. Not a single set of even these simple data for any BP replacement powders. Or for nitro rifle powders suited for use in Sharps, rolling blocks, etc. Nothing whatsoever about pressure down bore, past chamber.
Lars
March 08, 2008
The flames I was talking about, and which I always thought all those avid Goex shooters are in love with, are those little balls of fire that are so abundant with Goex. I was not talking about muzzle flash, which is seen at night with all guns shooting standard loads (not some of low noise, very subsonic ammo intended for special purposes). I have looked for those "little balls of fire" when shooting Swiss, even at night, and have yet to see anything more than maybe a small one.
The impurities giving those "little balls of fire" are also what burns holes in paper and plastic shotshell hulls. I got very few burn-through holes with Pyrodex and even less (essentially none) with 777.
I would not want to be cause of you freezing anything out there tonight. But, it would be a great test of both degree of muzzle flash and "little balls of fire".
Dutch Bill
March 08, 2008
Those little balls of fire under low light may be oversize particles of charc oal in the powder. I had another shooter refer to them as "fireflies".
Sometimes when I look at a new sample of powder I will break down a weighed amount in water and then flush it through a 200 mesh stainless steel screen. Then dry what remains on the screen and look at it under a microscope.
Some of the old batches of Elephant, most notably the 1998 production had a good bit of "oversize" charcoal particles in it. Roughly 15% of the charcoal was plus 200 mesh in size. Sometimes in my ml rifles it would look like a "willy peter" in front of the muzzle.
In regular GOEX product the average is around 4 to 5% of the charcoal being plus 200 mesh. In Swiss that is 0%. In Triple Seven it is 0% (for another reason though).
John Boy
March 08, 2008
Quote
OK, John Boy, a bunch of simple chamber pressure vs time curves for several
large bore BP rifles and ONE for a fast burning nitro powder. Not a single set
of even these simple data for any BP replacement powders. Or for nitro rifle
powders suited for use in Sharps, rolling blocks, etc. Nothing whatsoever
about pressure down bore, past chamber.
I know just the person with the knowledge and skills to buy the proper equipment and test all the powders indicated from the chamber to the muzzle ... how about if you volunteer and let us know the results? I certainly would be interested knowing the results and presume others would also.
In the meantime, we have to take what another person has tested with his strain gauge
Dutch Bill
March 08, 2008
The old term for the thing about the little glowing embers being ejected from the gun was known as scintillation. Websters, to sparkle or twinkle.
The old sources on preparing wood for charcoal for use in black powder tells that the wood must have the bark removed or you will have a powder that scintillates. Meaning to throw sparks.
When you char wood with the bark on the bark quickly chars to a very high fixed carbon content. That makes it, compared to the sap and heart wood, more difficult to grind in the ball mill and wheel mill. In addition the bits of very high fixed carbon char produced by charring bark burns very slowly. Which is why these bits that are plus 200 mesh exit the muzzle still glowing unless you have a fairly long barrel for them to burn in.
By 1999 I had the plant in Brazil removing the bark from the Imbauba wood before charring it. That dropped the plus 200 mesh charcoal from around 15% down to less than 1%.
The Swiss purchase their buckthorn alder wood with the bark removed. The alder that goes into Schuetzen also had been stripped of the bark prior to charring.
The charcoal that GOEX buys had been charred with the bark on. Nothing can be done about that. The charcoal supplier would charge an arm and a leg if they had to rip the bark off the wood they char. That would greatly increase the cost of the charcoal with only a minimal benefit in the powder.
When dealing with charcoal that had been charred with the bark on you can sort of compensate by working it in the ball mill longer with the sulfur before you use the ground charcoal and sulfur mixture in a batch of powder in a wheel mill. But this increases the cost of the finished powder through additional machine time and a reduction in the pounds per man hour production in a BP plant.
Lars
March 09, 2008
Quote from: Dutch Bill on March 08, 2008, 08:55:03 PM
But let me tell you from experience. If you open up with a cap and ball
pistol loaded up with GOEX 3Fg in a dark alley when confronted by some thug
just the flames and sparks off the forcing cone and the long flair out the
muzzle sends them running like you have never seen. They think you have some
sort of really nasty weapon that shoots bullets and flames. In a near pitch
black alley the discharge is awesome. Noise, flames and smoke.
Dutch Bill,
I have seen that, did it on purpose, just to see what total package is. Actually, heavy muzzle blast and flash and smoke from Pyrodex, 777 FFg and Swiss have same effect. In one situation for a few years, I kept a heavily loaded and capped Remington New Army handy -- powder was Pyrodex-P, 35 grains by volume. Actually, save for smoke, one get all that from short barreled revolvers loaded heavily with slower burning nitro powders -- nasty little things one does not want to shoot unless really needed.
Thanks for explanation for why one sees those "little balls of fire" with Goex. Noone outside your experience would be likely to ever know those informations about unbarked wood. One other observation that may or may not fit with that explanation, is that in shotshells and sometimes in 45 Colt, there remainded literally "little balls", some of which were clearly burning holes in plastic or paper hulls.
Lars
March 09, 2008
Actually, there are several groups that each do some very specific ballistic pressure and velocity testing that is of interest to them. Some use commercial ballistic testing labs, some use expensive "hobbyest" transducer (strain gauge) rigs, some mine data from major ammunition companies, such as Norma, for older cartridges and guns that used them. I am a more or less card- carrying member of some of these groups, in other cases, I am an interested onlooker. In any year, I have a few loads pressure and velocity tested, as part of my interests in recreating safe loads giving authentic chamber pressures and muzzle velocities with guns actually made in late 1800s, early 1900s. I use those guns and loads for match shooting and for hunting. Many of these data are and remain private, shared only with fellow contributers.
One really can have and use just those kinds of pressure and velocity data I refer to, and have them now. There is no excuse for spreading misleading information about pressure vs time curves when real thing can be had at a modest cost. There are not so many pressure data for various distances down barrel, thanks to rather restricted demand for such data, almost entirely to those shooting old doubles. One commonly quoted source is Sherman Bell's data, published in Double Gun Journal and sometimes mentioned in posts on DoubleGunShop.com.
It has always been absurd that folks will put up real or conjured up chamber pressure vs time curves for BP and fast burning nitro powders and then generalize to all nito vs BP powders. Not only is this really bad logic and displays one's ignorance of powders, both BP and nitro, it is totally ignorant of extensive information about use of slower burning shotgun and rifle nitro powders to reproduce such "BP" chamber pressure vs time curves AND muzzle velocities. Even one maker of modern muzzle loaders has developed such nitro loads for their muzzle loaders -- one does have to be savvy enough to use ONLY those slower burning nitro powders they specify. One smaller commercial ammo producer provides (or did last I knew) loaded ammo that uses slower nitro powders to reproduce BP pressures AND muzzle velocities -- no rocket science, just factual data put to good use. Pressure is pressure folks, and, pressure curves are pressure curves. Which chemical reaction was used to turn solids to voluminous gas is a matter of choice.
Dutch Bill
March 09, 2008
Got into that charcoal with the bark off versus bark on in a strange way. Here is the logic.
The so-called "standard" formula is 75 parts potassium nitrate, 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur.
So in a 100 pound batch of powder you have 75 pounds of potassium nitrate, 15 pounds of charcoal and 10 pounds of sulfur.
Now one specification I looked at showed a maximum "ash" content of a charcoal as 1.5% maximum. Meaning that the 15 pounds of charcoal going into the batch could have a maximum of 1.5% by weight mineral content. The "ash" being minerals in the wood.
One BP supplier, who shall remain nameless, was purchasing a charcoal that could be up to 2.5% "ash". Meaning that at time there was only 12.5 pounds of actual charcoal going into a batch of powder.
That would cut down on the pounds foot of energy/work per pound of powder plus increase bore fouling. Then if the ash should have more than a trace of calcium it does ugly things in the fouling. In the charcoal mentioned the particular tree that made up most of the charcoal is one noted for loving lime rich soils. If it has access to any lime in the ground it will pick up more than some other trees would.
Removing the bark from the wood before charring greatly reduces the "fireflies" and lowers the ash content of the charcoal considerably. I never saw anything in writing that a powder maker would alter the amount of charcoal going into the powder to compensate for the weight of the ash content of that charcoal.
My buddy in Oz and I had looked into trying to turn weeping willow wood into something as good as black alder for charcoal in black powder.
Rye Miles
March 09, 2008
Quote from: Lars on March 08, 2008, 06:42:36 PM
Those flames are from impurities in Goex.
Lars, didn't know that. I use KIK and it has flames! I've had Schuezten also and I swore we all saw flames!
Lars
March 09
There are "flames" and "flames". Traditional BPs, like many nitro powders, have a rather pronounced muzzle flash. Many modern (late 1800s to present) battle rifles have "flash surpressors" to hide this somewhat. In addition, Goex produces abundant "little balls of fire", to use my description, "fireflies" to use Dutch Bill's description. This does give a nice shower of burning debries that can be spectacular at night. In one of his above posts, he clearly describes these "fireflies" as result of using charcoal made from wood that had not had bark removed. That is what I am talking about.
You don't see much muzzle flash with most CAS loads because they use so little of fast-burning pistol or shotgun powders.
Dutch Bill
March 10, 2008
In Reply 29, Lars writes:
"There are "flames" and "flames". Traditional BPs, like many nitro
powders, have a rather pronounced muzzle flash."
With those evil nitrocellulose powders you are looking at a gas mixture, leaving the muzzle, where one of the gasses has not undergone complete oxidation. If hot enough the gas will undergo a secondary combustion when mixed with the air outside the muzzle.
With black powder you have gases leaving the muzzle in which incandescent debris is suspended. This will give the long muzzle "flare".
You can see streamers w ith charges where lube has contaminated a few grains of powder which slows down their burn rate. When ejected from the muzzle you may see them leaving little smoke trails.
Then of course you have some that give these little bits of high-carnon charcoal where the bits of charcoal are still burning/glowing when they leave the muzzle.
Now lets get into flames rather than sparks or fireflies.
Back in 1983 I was taking GOEX apart because it did not behave the same way a bp was described to behave in old writings. Far more hygroscopic than it should have been.
So after running some water extractions I did the platinum wire bead flame test to look at the flame color of the "saltpeter" extracted from GOEX. Gave a bright yellow flame indicated the presence of sodium. Indicating sodium nitrate in the powder.
Then picked up some Vicksburg Chemical Company "saltpeter" at the farm supply store. Turned out that the Vicksburg Chemical Company "saltpeter" was a fertilizer grade then being sold to GOEX as a technical grade. Also evidenced by the fact that GOEX had to screen sticks and stones out of it before they could use it in their process.
Now If I shot my flinters under low light I would get this jet of oarnge- yellow flame out the vent and out the muzzle.
That that started me pondering. Old paintings of F&I War battles here in PA and Rev War battles showed the muskets and rifles throwing long "flares" of bright red flame. Artistic license??? Then of course there is the line from our national anthem. "And the rockets red glare".
Then there was the day I was making a batch of powder out on the deck using 99.9% purity saltpeter with alder charcoal. Dumped the fines/tailings into the wife's lupine bed in front of the deck. But close to midnight I went out on the deck to smoke my pipe. Forgetting what I did earlier in the day I dumped my pipe over the railing into the lupine bed. Next thing you know I am looking at a wall of violet flame making a loud wooshing sound. Then the tattered lupine leaves began to flutter back towards the ground.
I remembered that high purity potassium nitrate gives a violet colored flame in the platinum wire bead flame test.
More pondering.
Then I noted that the English and some old U.S. powder mills used limestone wheels in their wheel mills, rather than cast chilled iron. So the limestone wheels wore and added traces of calcium to the powder. Calcium giving a very bright red flame in the platinum wire bead flame test.
A buddy of mine in West VA had some powder made in a small powder mill down near his place in the mid-1800's. When he shot some of it at dusk it gave this long red muzzle flare.
Once I got my hands on some of the first Swiss powder into the U.S. I set up the flinter for a shot (no ball) in the back yard at night. Around here anything less than a 10 round magazine gets no response from the police. The Swiss powder gave a violet flame. Real pretty.
Before cutting off here I ought to mention that the lupines came back real nice the next year with the extra special fertilizer.
Lars
March 10, 2008
Now I am sitting here pondering what I could post next that would elicit another wonderfully informative tutorial from you.
Yellow, red and violet flames --- just like in those chem lab demos for first year analytical chemists. Na contaminating K salts is so common, but, consequences of using limestone grinding wheels instead of cast iron ones was a surprise.
I have some personal experience with using Goex to fertilize roses -- got some really nice red roses that year!
Dutch Bill
March 10, 2008
GOEX did upgrade to a higher purity saltpeter sometime in the year 2000.
Vicksburg Chemical Company began constructing the conversion plant outside of Vicksburg, Mississippi in 1965. It went "on-line" in 1968. Quickly drove out of business all of the other saltpeter producers who were using the old process. Between 1970 and 2000 there were only two companies producing saltpeter in the U.S. and one was owned by a farmers co-op and would not sell outside of thaty co-op. So GOEX was in a position of having only one source for saltpeter so they really had to take what they could get. The sad part is that GOEX was being lied to repeatedly as to the actual quality/purity of the product while being charged for the technical grade.
An aside here. The U.S. family who owned Vicksburg Chemical also owned the potassium nitrate production plant in Israel along with a number of other such plants in other countries. They controlled roughly 2/3 of the worlds saltpeter production for some time.
A company in Chile began a new process in the 1990's to produce saltpeter down there. For a very long period of time they had produced mainly sodium nitrate extracted from large deposits in a desert in Chile. Then they got into a another conversion process. Most of the saltpeter now entering the U.S. comes out of that operation in Chile and it is a fairly good product as far as quality/purity goes.
The funny part is that in 1984 when I commented that GOEX was using a fertilizer grade I was threatened with legal action and called all sorts of names. But by late 2000 I was proven to have been spot on the money in that issue. The kind of work I did on the saltpeter looking wasn't all that different than my normal work in the chemical plant I worked in. Ditto on the work on the wee critters found in the powder. Those same we critters can turn a 10,000 gallon tank of gum dip latex for tire cord application into a huge mass of rubber whale blubber. Been there and seen that.
Lars
March 10, 2008
Quote from: Dutch Bill on March 10, 2008, 12:02:24 PM
Ditto on the work on the wee critters found in the powder.
Bugs in BP!! Somehow that really does not surprise me, even though I must admit it never crossed my mind.
John Boy
March 10, 2008
Speaking of stones, take a look at these ...
Found the picture while perusing the Damascus post from Takahoe Kid.
Dutch Bill
March 10, 2008
The old Du Pont, then Goex, black powder plant at Moosic, PA was in the heart of the eastern end of the Pennsylvania hard coal area.
Sometime on the Internet look up what is known as the Knox Mine Disaster. That ended deep mining of coal in the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area. After the river bed collapsed into a mine tunnel the majority of the tunnels filled with water. A group of bacteria known as iron fixing bacteria went after the iron pyroites in the rock layers where coal veins had been removed. These bacteria then released elemental sulfur which is used as food by sulfur oxidizing bacteria. These are the main agents in acid mine waste waters in abandoned coal mines.
Within a year or two the ground water level stabilized with the river level. Then began the problem with mine waste water seepage into nearby streams and rivers. When the state began to seal these seepages the ground water quality went down quickly. Well water became unfit for use.
Normally GOEX used Moosic municipal water in the powder during the processing of the powder. Figure 10 pounds of water to wet out 100 pounds of powder in the wheel mill.
During periods of drought GOEX could not use municipal water in the powder. Only for drinking and showers in the plant. For "service" water they had to switch into an on-site deep well. Well water laced with sulfur loving bacteria going into the powder without pre-treatment.
In essence the use of the well water was seeding the powder with its own destruction mechanism.
Powder made during periods of high rainfall would exhibit a good chemical stability. Powder made during a drought would have poor chemical stability. Data on this from 1974 drought production shows the effect of storage changes in the powder in Army testing of that year's production in closed bomb work after the "catastrophic failure" of a 155mm howitzer during a cold weather exercise
When I studied this in the lab I was laughed at by certain folks in the NMLRA. Then some company in California patented a process whereby they culture certasin types of bacteria and use them to clean up explosives contaminated military sites.
In lab work checking a host of different powders you could almost match level of chemical stability to how much the water around the powder plant had been contaminated. Nobody that I know of uses distilled water anymore to make black powder.
You know a bit about smokeless powder.
One of the things that took so long in the devopment of smokeless powders was the understanding that the nitrating acids had to be removed from the pulp nitrocellulose with huge volumes of what is described as "ultra-pure" water.
I stumbled/blundered into the bacteria thing when I was looking at the particle size of the charcoal and sulfur in different powders using a machine known as a Coulter Counter that had been used in blood work counting red and white cells in blood samples. I simply used it to size and count black and yellow "cells" in bp.
I left a sample of GOEX in water overnight and gave it a second pass the following day. Puzzled why the particle size data had changed drastically. After all, one does not create or destroy matter. Took me two weeks to get into the bacteria in the powder thing.
Lars
March 10, 2008
I did once know some about sulfur-eating bacteria, some decades ago. And I have seen mine drainage from some coal mines. Will look up Knox Mine Distaster. I once ran a chem lab adjacent to a "bug pond" where bacteria were used to destroy various chemicals before the water was released to further treatment. We once managed to kill the pond operator's "pet bacteria" and got, among other things, a very pointed lecture about why that "bug pond" was there and how it operated.
That is rather a "horrible death" for some of those batches of Goex! To have your sulfur eaten by bacteria!! Might make a good theme for a science fiction movie, say, where someone releases sulfur-eating bacteria into a nation's BP warehouses, say in 1840s. Biological warfare against BP!!! I may laugh myself to sleep tonight.
This is all getting more and more fun with every new post from you... now, what next?
w44wcf
April 24, 2008
Further on that thread that John Boy referenced (Thank You John Boy!) there is also a trace of 4759. Here it is in comparison with the b.p. traces. We now know that the proper smokeless powder does not spike nearly as fast as b.p.
Lars
April 24, 2008
Thanks for pointing out those data for 4759 -- I missed them somehow. For a rifle powder 4759 is pretty fast. Load up a full case of one of the slower rifle powders, normally used in way over-bore magnum cartridges, powders like Reloader 22, Norma MRP, 4831, 8700, etc. in one of the old BP cartridges, especially the bottlenecked, small bore (8 or 9 or so mm) ones, and you can get nice velocities and BP or lower chamber pressures. Never seen even simple chamber pressure vs time curves for such loads, but, cases and primers often show even less evidence of pressure than with BP loads.
These large loads of slow rifle powders completely avoid possible problems with double charges, extreme sensitivity to position of powder in case, ringing of chambers, etc.
Only bummer I ever hear about with these slow rifle powders in big, old BP cases is that any unburned powder granules are so big that they can jam up any rifle with really small clearances in critical lockup parts.
Fingers McGee
April 25, 2008
Cause it dont smell as good as the real stuff does; dont go boom the same, and some dont throw as big a flame.
w44wcf
April 25, 2008
Yes, the slower powders work well in the .45-70. The best group I ever shot came with 55/H4831 which ran about 1,300 f.p.s.
Historically speaking, though, "Sharpshooter" powder was used in factory smokeless loadings for black powder cartridges for many, many years (approx 1900-1950). It was developed by Laflin & Rand specifically for duplicating b.p. ballistics.
The factory load for the .45-70 was 20 grs. It was a wee bit faster burning than 4759, but close enough, so that I would expect that the millisecond rise time would be similar to 4759.
Many folks believe that the pressure spike for smokeless is faster than b.p. thus harder on the gun. Thanks to DuckRider, we now have data to show that is not the case.....providing the correct smokeless powder(s) are used.
Lars
April 26, 2008
Quote from: w44wcf on April 25, 2008, 07:51:14 PM
Many folks believe that the pressure spike for smokeless is faster than b.p.
thus harder on the gun. Thanks to DuckRider, we now have data to show that is
not the case... providing the correct smokeless powder(s) are used.
Your statement in bold type is so obvious that it should not need to be stated -- yet, the frequency with which folks state that BP is easier on old BP guns than proper nitro loads keeps making it obvious that bold type and frequent repeating of that comment is well justified.
Today, I shoot very few of my original, late 1800s, early 1900s BP guns with BP or modern BP replacement powders for just the reason stated above. Nitro powders used are quite on the slow burning side for the specific cartridge, resulting in good velocities and low chamber pressures, either measured or inferred from easy extraction (cases often dropping from chambers, even after repeated firings with no resizing).
Dick Dastardly
April 26, 2008
FWIW, My pet 45-70 long range BPCR load uses 5% SR4759 under a compressed load of Holy Black compressed by a 1/16" Circle Fly fiber over powder wad topped off by the new DD 45-70 Mk-III 500 grain semi spitzer Big Lube
Jose Grande
April 28, 2008
I never cease to be amazed at the amount of good info on here. Thanks to one and all.
Here in S.W. Miss. subs or Goex is the only game in town. Pyrodex has been hard to light in the two lbs. I have tried. Both were gifts so I felt I had to at least try to use them. Our distributor in Raymond Ms. passed away and now Goex is only in one place that I have located.
I get reliable ignition with Goex and decent groups, thank goodness, 'cause Kik, Elephant, Swiss and so on are not to be found anywhere I ask about the Holy Black.
Of subs, there is only Pyrodex. I've not seen any other sub in local stores. (Within 100 miles or so.)
Thanks again for the great info. I love reading about how things work and why.