The exploded 1858 Remington New Model Army revolver

WOW! :eek:

I bet the shooter is glad he didn't try a "between the legs" shot when you fired that load! Can anyone say "off with the nads"??
 
I think the video mentioned that the guy scrounged smokeless powder from a BLANK cartridge.

Blank powder is usually faster than any commercial reloading powder - there's a good chance he could blow up a modern magnum revolver with that stuff.
 
If you want to safely shoot smokeless powder, you gotta get a modern magnum revolver that was made for smokeless powder.

anaconda-kb.jpg
 
The problem really is not the use of smokeless powder, it is the use of smokeless powder IN THE SAME VOLUME AS BLACK POWDER. If a percussion revolver, or a cartridge to be fired in an old type revolver, is loaded with an amount of the right type of smokeless in the right volume, no problem. (.45 Colt, for example, has been loaded with smokeless powder by the factories for a century and millions of rounds have been fired in so-called "black powder" guns with no problem.)

But if someone loads a .45 Colt cartridge, or a percussion revolver, with THE SAME VOLUME of Bullseye as for black powder, the gun will become something resembling a grenade.

(One saving grace - most smokeless powder is hard to ignite with common percussion caps.)

Jim
 
Bbbbut, aren't the pressure characteristics of BP and smokeless enough different to cause surprises? :eek:
Or is that a smokeless load, deemed safe for a given revolver design, would still be safe for the BP equivalent?
How would that be measured?
From smokeless load data for a similar result as if BP were used?
Velocity over a chronograph?
Knowing how to safely do this could come in very handy.
 
Long ago, back when Bullseye was still made by Hercules, I experimented with smokeless loads for the Ruger Old Army.
I used weighed charges known to be safe in cartridge .45 revolvers behind .457 roundballs.
I did not seat the ball on the powder but only flush with the chamber mouth, much like a cartridge would be loaded.
The first thing I learned was that #11 percussion caps on a standard nipple would not reliably ignite smokeless and when it did, it resulted in a squib load.
Then I added a very small amount of FFFFg to act as an igniter, essentially doing the job of a modern primer.
This worked and I shot several cylinders using this load, but since the small amount of black powder booster still left me with a revolver to clean, I did not see the point of going further and quit doing it.

It seems that the primer in a modern smokeless load has to do more than just ignite the powder, it is also responsible for getting the initial chamber pressure high enough to get the smokeless powder into its fast burning mode. If you simply set the charge on fire, you usually get a squib, and that may fool someone into thinking the charge needs to be increased. So someone increases the charge until there is enough powder in there for it to burn into its fast burning pressure threshold and you go from squib to kaboom.

Backing up my belief that smokeless needs a powerful primer to get the initial chamber pressure up to the fast burn threshold is my informal research in 16 inch guns used on battleships. It seems that between the main charge of about 600 pounds of smokeless powder and the primer goes a 5kg bag of black powder to act as an igniter.

Anyway, in the UK, there is a company called Westlake Engineering that converts modern .357magnum revolvers into smokeless muzzleloading revolvers for the UK market, where cartridge revolvers are extremely restricted. The cylinders on these revolvers are designed to use #209 shotgun primers instead of percussion caps.
 
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