"White Powder" pellets

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olyinaz

New member
Lordy...may have to change the name of the forum to "Muzzle Loading and Cowboy Action Shooting" if they start selling it in powder form! "It"?? What the heck am I yammering about? IMR White Hots, that's what! Have you seen this stuff? It's bloody well white as snow! And I've read that it's not a nitro based formulation. Go figure.

So what the heck is it? Anyone know? :confused:

It's sulfurless - that much we do know but then again black powder goes BOOM just fine without sulfur so that's not a huge surprise and 777 and several others are sulfurless as well already. And given that carbon mixed with saltpetre doesn't go boom (more like fizzle fizzle pffft - it's all the other stuff in charcoal that makes black powder work correctly, not the carbon) I guess that blackness really can be optional.

So what is this "IMR White Hots" stuff? Is it mostly saltpetre mixed with a laboratory developed chemical stew that optimally provides the same fuels that charcoal does in BLACK powder? And what's this jazz I read elsewhere about "ascorbic acid based powders"? Huh?? I mean aspirin is indeed a miracle drug but can a black powder substitute be made out of it? The notion boggles!

All of which makes me wonder how a ball milled mixture of saltpetre and sugar would burn? Hmm...it might smell rather nice...

Obviously with too much time on my hands I remain,
Oly in AZ
 
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Saltpeter and sugar smells like,............well, burning sugar (caramel) when it burns.:D

Saltpeter is not the only oxidizer used in pyrotechnic mixtures. There are also the chlorates and perchlorates. Potassium perchlorate mixed with something that burns will pretty much go boom. We had a jar of sodium chlorate (weed killer) and mixed that stuff with some sugar and it kind of burned real fast leaving a huge cloud of caramel smelling smoke in the air.

I think they use ammonium perchlorate as the oxidizer in the space shuttle solid fuel boosters if I remember correctly.

Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, not ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is Vitamin C.
 
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Personally speaking, I can only tell you what it isn't and that is;
"Not my cup of tea" .... :barf:
They didn't even bother to maintain a decent color. I can tell you that if the balistics are there, the In-Liners will flock to it only because it's the latest and greatest. To date, have not seen any reviews on it but no matter as this child is not goin thar. ;)


Be Safe !!!!
 
>>>Saltpeter and sugar smells like,............well, burning sugar (caramel) when it burns.:D <<<

Ah ha! He says it with authority. Big grin indeed. :D

>>>Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid, not ascorbic acid. Ascorbic acid is Vitamin C.<<<

Oh fer Pete's sake I hate that! Stupidity in public!! Sheesh, I know that...this is what happens when one posts late at night. :rolleyes:

Interesting point about oxidizers but of course a huge advantage of saltpeter is that it's non-hygroscopic and the ash & smoke is relatively non-toxic. One wonders what you'd get with those other chemicals but certainly I do suppose that they might have come up with something else that works well.

I'd sure like to know what these things are made of but I suppose if I found out a team of Canadian mercs would storm down from IMR headquarters and snuff me out. Can't have that.

Cheers,
Oly
 
>>>They didn't even bother to maintain a decent color. I can tell you that if the balistics are there, the In-Liners will flock to it only because it's the latest and greatest. To date, have not seen any reviews on it but no matter as this child is not goin thar.<<<

Yeah seriously, you would think that they could have come up with some sort of brown or grey dye that would not have affected things at all, but perhaps they actually think the inline crowd will dig the weird color.

However, do recall that the term "black powder" was not coined until the late 19th century when the new semi-smokeless powders came on the market...and I've read that some of them were white!

At any rate, here's a test writeup. It looks like this stuff has the performance for sure:

http://www.shootingtimes.com/ammunition/ST_whitehots_122008WO/

Cheers,
Oly
 
Interesting point about oxidizers but of course a huge advantage of saltpeter is that it's non-hygroscopic and the ash & smoke is relatively non-toxic. One wonders what you'd get with those other chemicals but certainly I do suppose that they might have come up with something else that works well.
Click to expand...

I believe that potassium chlorate and potassium perchlorate both become potassium chloride after the oxygen has been released. This chemical is familiar to many who are on a low sodium diet as the main ingredient of salt substitute.
These chemicals also were used in corrosive primers and naturally, the potassium chloride that's left over is just as corrosive as sodium chloride aka salt.
 
It is probably the same (or basically the same) stuff as the Old CleanShot powder which was a pasty tan in color. If that's the case, I hope they do it better than Cleanshot did when they tried pellets. Not only did Pyrodex sue them over it, but those pellets were pure garbage. Tried 'em once in my 1858 and the balls never even made it out to the target set at 15 feet. :eek: The wonder wads hit the paper, but the balls never made it that far.
 
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