Black powder & smokeless question

Thanks for your input fella's

I definately wont be risking it :o Call me a wimp, I dont care :D I'd rather kep my guns (& me) intact :D
 
It is no more a lawyer thing than stamping the caliber designation. It's a safety thing. Black powder and smokeless powder-it's like gasoline and diesel.
Both are motor fuels and perform the same function, but how they do it is quite different and they are not to be mixed up. I won't fire smokeless loads in any of my BP cartridge guns.
 
All powders have a specified "burn rate", the speed at which they burn. They don't EXPLODE. I haven't investigated the rates for most of them, but, in the Marines, explosives training, we were told that primacord, detonating cord, the rate was 100,000 feet per second. A loop 20 miles long, fired from one end, would detonate at the other end within a second.

Many of the very best pistols in the world are made from investment cast parts, frames in particular. Probably 95% less machining that way. Cast from the right metal, machined, heat treated, and you have a 500 or 1,000 buck gun.

Steel frame semi, billet vs cast, probably 1/2 the weight of the frame would be machined away in milling. 10% or less in investment castings.

Smokeless can make very high pressures. BP can also make very high pressures. The 16 inch guns on, what, the Wisconsin(?) that blew up, investigators said that BP can exceed 100,000 PSI, under the right conditions. I have read that sacks of BP were the igniter charge used in naval rifles.

I don't know the steels used in import BPs. I do know that I have or had pics of SAKOs that split their barrels open like banana peels, and they have always been premiere firearms. I'll see if I can find that link in my bookmarks.

Cheers,

George
 
I have read that sacks of BP were the igniter charge used in naval rifles.
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BP has been used as an igniter in some large guns, I don't know if US naval artillery falls into that category. It's done so because BP is easy to ignite, and the propellants used in big guns typically isn't.
 
BP has been used as an igniter in some large guns, I don't know if US naval artillery falls into that category.
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Yes, it does. In fact, military sales are larger for Goex than sales to black powder shooters.
 
That doesn't surprise me; there are (or were, at least) military uses besides ignition too.

The Arizona sunk when her black powder store exploded, but the powder wasn't for guns - it was what powered the floatplane catapult!
 
I have successfully made smokeless work in a Ruger Old Army. In order to make it work, I had to use a small kicker charge of black powder for the percussion cap to ignite. That kicker charge basically does the job of a primer in a cartriage.
Since I had to use a small amount of black powder anyway, I still had to do the full cleanup so I discontinued doing this.

I believe that black powder differs from smokeless in the way it ignites. Black powder asks only to be set on fire, a single spark from a flint is as good as a magnum primer as far as black powder is concerned. Old time percussion ignition was only designed to set the powder charge on fire.

With smokeless, the primer not only sets the powder on fire, it also establishes the initial pressure that smokeless needs to burn efficiently. If you merely set smokeless on fire, you get bloopers and squibs and also you are asking for detonation.
A lot of people have studied the phenomenon of detonation in smokeless loads and the common denominators seem to be light loads of slow burning powder in large cases and weak primers, and there is no weaker primer than a percussion cap and nipple on a muzzle loader.
 
This might seem a bit obvious, but if you want to shoot smokeless powder why don't you buy a modern pistol? Why would you go to the trouble of buying a BP pistol and then shoot smokeless, surely the appeal of cap and ball guns is doing things the old way. In Britain we no longer have the option of shooting cartridge pistols but are limited to either BP revolvers or single shot pistols, you Americans don't realise how lucky you are.
 
Hallo,

One more graphic sample, this guy thought, a little bit of smokeless powder can´t be bad for my Pietta Sheriff, the result of this test:



Again the same, no more experiments with old guns and modern powder.
 
Injudicious use of smokeless powder can blow up modern guns also.

blow_up_it_1.jpg
 
It's not luck. A lot of people have worked very hard and sacrificed a great deal for what we have.

I meant that you are fortunate in being able to choose what types of firearms you wish to own and use, I didn't mean to cause any offence.
 
Gunner269 - No apology necessary; I made a poor choice of words. I was not offended by your statement. My response was more a reminder to those of us here that sometimes take for granted what it cost to have what we do. We often do feel lucky, and we shouldn't; we should be profoundly grateful.
 
gunner269: I meant that you are fortunate in being able to choose what types of firearms you wish to own and use, I didn't mean to cause any offence.
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Well, we have a better choice than what you have over there. But there are limitations. And everyday, the liberal bed wetters try to figure out new ways to impose more limits. There are a lot of people here working hard to combat/resist those who would turn us into Great Britain, Australia, et, al. Our 2nd Amendment in our Constitution is the one thing that differentiates us from every country on this planet. I do have to say that I do somethings feel lucky that France decided to muck things up for GB over 200 years ago. ;) Although there were Americans in France working very hard to make sure this happened.
 
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