don't think the powder by itself will go off. If anything foreign gets in it that will get hot from electricity the heat from it will set it off.
I have had very fine flash powder that was little more then dust go off . Thankfully with small 2-6 grain amounts . But as you say , could very well be the case . factualy i dont know . that why i said i believe it will go off . doesnt IMO really mater why , only that if everything happens just so , then for what ever reason it will .
kinda like someone wrongly thinking that a flintlock will not fire if you have not primed the pan.
but again , you may very well be correct .
Sam Fadala.
He's done extensive work with b.p., loads, static charges, hi pressure & so forth.
That Sam was a very learned fella is not in question .
However a lot of his knowledge was based around information that he had at the time or had filled in with what he deciphered to be true by his own opinion
Today , we have a lot of information that was not readily available in the past . Whole libraries , historic journals and countless numbers of other references are at our finger tips . Most times for nothing more then the asking.
Case in point , how many of you have had the privilege of seeing the museum at the Tower of London or any other countries national museums ??
How many of us have access to the libraries of congress or the libraries of foreign countries for that mater ??
How about the writings of the firearms Guild masters at Liege.
See the point im trying to make is that most of what we know or think we know about BP and its use in firearms has been lost and thus was being re learnedover the last 50 years .
Relearning the knowledge that was gained over 400 years cannot be brought back in one mans lifetime . It couldn’t happen 30 years ago and it wont happen today with the advent of the internet. The majority of times what we think we know is nothing more then re-inventing the wheel .
Add into all that, with today’s technologies , we can often times prove what has in the past only theory . For that mater we often find ourselves disproving what was once thought to be fact .
While I myself do not care much for the NMLRA , I do have to give them credit for publishing a lot of information even when that information is flat out contradictory to what folks have for a very long time believed . In some cases even dispelling historic information by proving it wrong with the use of todays technologies .
So while I agree that one should not believe everything the read on the net . What I suggest should however happen is that what you read , should be considered , weighed and researched . Thus one becomes informed instead of perpetuating an opinion which may or may not be fact just because someone wrote it in a book or wrote it on the internet on some forum . doesnt mater if its Fadalla , wakeman ,Hawks , Pope, Lindsey , Bridges.........
Factually we have far to much of that perpetuation , which somehow then becomes fact and eventually historic truth .
Thus we know that static electricity wont set BP off .
We know that the inline ignition dates as early and possibly earlier then 1710.
That the use of cartridges follows near the same timeline as muzzleloading application .
That conical type projectiles were being used well before the invent of the Minie.
That Sam colt wasn’t the inventor and father of the revolver and Gantline factually was near 200+ years late in being the first to produce a repeating magazine type , mounted volley gun .
That smoothbores , to include trade guns often did indeed have a rear sight.
We also know that famous figures in our history like Davy Crockett or Daniel Boone did not use 3F and prime with 4 as at that time there was no such thing .
anyway , just my thoughts on it