Muzzleloading Basics: Powder

Nothing stirs up a good debate like asking which powder is the best. To simplify I'll start with "real" black powder and then talk about substitutes.

Real Blackpowder:

Basically all blackpowder is the same stuff, its mostly charcoal with potassium nitrate and sulfur. It explodes rather than burning like smokeless powder does but produces relatively low pressure. The 4 cans on the left side of the picture all contain real black powder. The differences in black powder mostly come down to the size of the grains.

1F or 1FG is the most coarse granulation, its used mostly for cannons or sometimes for very large bore guns.

2F or 2FG, sometimes expressed as FFG is finer than 1F and is usually used in guns of 50 caliber or larger. I prefer 2F for shotguns. The larger grains will, in aggregate, contain a little less energy than 3F because of the extra air space between the grains.

3F or 3FG, sometimes expressed as FFFG is even finer than 2F. Conventional wisdom suggests that it should be used in guns smaller than 50 caliber. It would still work in larger guns but caution should be used because of the extra energy vs 2F. 3F can also be used as priming powder for a flintlock although some suggest that it will result in slower ignition.

4F or 4FG, sometimes expressed as FFFFG. This is the finest particle size, its mostly dust and is only used as priming powder for flintlock guns. Some folks suggest that 4F would be dangerous to load into a gun because it will contain much more energy.

Different brands of powder each behave differently but all of them have the same basic grain sizes. I prefer Swiss powder (front row, second from the left) as I think its a little cleaner and has a slightly more consistent grain size. If it were a lot more expensive than the more common Goex powder I probably wouldn't bother but its usually only a little more expensive and when I buy it from the Maine Powder House its the same price as Goex is at my local gun shop.

Black Powder Substitutes:

Blackpowder is an explosive and carries some fairly strict rules for transport and storage. Because of that its sometimes difficult to get. I'm lucky that my parents live near the Maine Powder House so its pretty easy for me to keep a good supply of real black powder. For others a substitute powder might be a good solution.

Warning: Blackpowder substitutes are only to be used as volumetric replacements for blackpowder. Loading substitutes by weight can lead to a dangerous overcharge. Read the safety warnings for all powders and don't blow yourself up.

Pyrodex: This is the original black powder substitute, significantly lighter than blackpowder it touts "More shots per pound than blackpowder". 
There are 3 basic formulations of Pyrodex:
RS: "Rifle and Shotgun" the coarse granulation, equivalent to FFG.
P: "Pistol", the fine granulation, equivalent to FFFG
Select: Similar to RS, Select is equivalent to FFG. Apparently its more accurately screened and should, in theory produce more consistent results.

I have 2 cans of RS and one of Select that I received as a gift from a cousin who has gotten out of blackpowder shooting. I've shot a bunch of the RS in my 11ga side by side shotgun and while it seems to shoot fine it leaves the gun filthy, much worse clean up than regular Blackpowder

777: A more recent formulation, 777 is cleaner and less smokey than real blackpowder. It carries about 15% more energy by volume than blackpowder and again is lighter. Loading 777 by weight can be downright dangerous, don't do it. I've only ever shot 777 in an inline gun. Some people complain that it leaves grey ash deposits that can be difficult to remove. I wonder if those people leave the deposits in place for a long time or don't clean with soapy water first. 

777 and Pyrodex are substantially more difficult to ignite than blackpowder and as such are about useless in flintlock guns. TC and Traditions have both made flintlock guns that were "intended" for use with pelletized substitutes but reports from the field are less than stellar.

Pelletized Powder:

Pelletized powders, on the left 777, on the right Cleanshot. I've never used Cleanshot, I got these pellets for free along with a few pounds of Pyrodex from my cousin.

Pyrodex, 777 and other blackpowder substitutes can be had as pellets. These are really common for in-line guns. Generally you can get either 30 or 50 grain pellets. While pellets can be convenient they do limit your ability to tune the charge in your gun. I've used them before in a CVA buckhorn and while the gun shot adequately with 2x 50 grain pellets it shoots much better with 80 grains of loose powder. If you're using speed loaders its no great issue to pre-measure your powder in advance so I really don't see the utility of the pellets.

Anyway I hope you find these "basics" posts useful. I've got a couple more in the pipeline, stay tuned.

New Gun day!

 A guy from the rod and gun club I shoot at died and his collection recently went to auction. I'd never been to a gun auction before and because of COVID this one was 100% online so I figured I'd watch.

Item #850 was listed as a "Fusil de Chasse" or "Gun of the Hunt". Flintlock, 20ga, whats not to love? I tossed a bid on it and waited. The auction started at 9am, the gun came up around 6pm, the auction ended around 7pm. One auctioneer with strong vocal cords and a bladder made of stone...

Along the way I tossed bids at a couple other things, a few Browning Auto 5s including a rare 20ga. A couple Berreta semi-auto shotguns including one in 10ga. I didn't bid on a Remington pump rifle in .35 Remington and immediately regretted it when the gun went cheap.

Then I got caught up and accidentally bought a Smith and Wesson semi-auto shotgun. Oops, auction excitement can get anybody. That one, being a modern gun, has to go through the FFL process so I'm still waiting on it. The flintlock arrived the other day.

I don't think its actually a Fusil de Chasse, the stock on those generally has a huge drop to heel, and only one barrel ring. This has a squared off stock and two barrel rings.

The Lott lock is normally associated with English Trade guns. Combined with the stock and barrel I'm thinking this is an English Trade gun and in fact looks an awful lot like a Track of the Wolf kit gun.

I don't think its ever been shot, there isn't any soot or discoloration like you'd expect on a gun thats seen black powder.

The barrel almost certainly started its life as a piece of thick wall pipe and was machined down. At the muzzle end they left quite a sharp edge around the outside of the barrel. Its octagon at the breech and transitions to round partway down, the flats all have machining marks. I haven't decided yet if I should polish them out or leave it as is.

So anyway I paid significantly less than the price of a Track of the Wolf kit for a gun already assembled. These Lott locks don't have a great reputation but this one throws a nice shower of sparks with just about any flint I put in it. I'm pretty happy overall. I've ordered some .600 round balls (20ga is .62) and some 20ga wads, it'll be fun finding out what it takes to make it shoot.

Black powder scatter gun fun part 2

 

So the last post ended with my second shooting session and the mention that my cousin had given me some Pyrodex to shoot. During that second shooting session I decided to try loads with Pyrodex. In case you're not away Pyrodex is a "black powder replacement". The advantage, as I see it, is that Pyrodex is not classed as an explosive so its easier to ship than real black powder and thus is available from a lot of vendors who won't carry real black powder.

Pyrodex is more difficult to ignite than black powder but in a cap lock gun its not a real issue. I did notice a tiny amount more delay with the shot going off and it throws a little less smoke which smells a little less sulphery.

What I found that I really disliked is the cleanup. Of course black powder cleanup is never fun but its not terribly hard. I mix up a little hot water with dish soap and soak the barrel for a few minutes, that water comes out all black with the powder residue, then I run a couple patches with TC #13 cleaner, and a patch or two with denatured alcohol to dry things out, then a couple clean patches and an oiled patch to finish the job. Usually the second clean patch will be pretty clean.

I never did get clean patches with the Pyrodex and worse those stupid plastic shot cups left terrible fouling.

Thats a bore brush coated with plastic fouling, its bronze underneath I promise.

Lest you think that the problem was all caused by the plastic fouling I took the gun to shoot Trap last Friday. We fired a total of 8 shots, I fired 4, Angie 2 and one of the other guys at the range fired 2. Each of us managed to hit one bird but the machine was set strangely and was throwing very high. This machine also gets used for sporting clays and they move the aim around. The black powder shots were the first we fired, I got better at it after a couple rounds.

Anyhow I used all pyrodex for that excursion and it was nearly as bad to clean, the Pyrodex fouling doesn't seem to be particularly water soluble, I let it soak longer than I normally would, and with very hot water and the water didn't get particularly black, it took many patches before I finally just gave up and let it be a little dirty. I'm fairly confident that the corrosive elements have been removed though.

So would I use Pyrodex again? Sure, I've got a pound and a half of it and this gun burns through 82 grains (3 drams) for each shot, it'd be silly to not use it. I probably won't use it for hunting, that extra split second delay could be the difference between hitting a bird and not. One of the cans I was given is Pyrodex Select, as near as I can tell Select is just regular Pyrodex RS (Rifle/Shotgun) screened more carefully. Most folks seem to suggest its not any better than RS. At the very least it'll be interesting to test that out.

Oh, yeah I did mention hunting didn't I? That season is coming up soon. One goal I have this year is to take some birds with black powder. Recently I realized that there are a lot of pheasants stocked in my area. I actually saw one last fall while duck hunting but we'd just moved into a new area and I didn't want to spook the ducks. I ended up shooting a goose there so I'd say it was a good choice. I think this old gun will work well out to about 20 yards. That fits with what I've been reading for other folks suggestions on open choke guns.

I've mentioned my 16ga cap lock once or twice, that has a modified choke but its a much lighter gun than this, I don't want to use more than 1 1/8 oz of shot in that and probably I should only be using one ounce. Its been awhile since I shot it, I should probably put it back on the patterning board...

Black powder scatter gun fun part 1

 Geez, looking back it would appear that I never did mention the side by side shotgun I bought back in February.

I picked this up at the "Ancient Ones of Maine" show. Its a good show and the same place I got my TC Renegade a couple years before. In view of current events, I'm glad we got to go.

Anyway it was sold to me as "10 gauge" but the bores measure right around .74". 10 gauge would be .77, 12 is .72, so this is more like an 11 gauge. Actually, Track of the Wolf says 11 gauge would be .75 so this is more like "11 and a half gauge". I bought some 11 gauge wads and they work pretty well. The barrel has proof marks that I was able to look up. I was looking in a proof mark book my dad has, he said "You'll probably never find them" and at that very moment, I happened to spot one. Based on that I very approximately date the gun to the 1890s.

I shot it back in March but was under impressed with the pattern it would produce. The barrels are cylinder bore so they're never going to get the 80% pattern the turkey hunters go for.

More recently I ordered some plastic shot cups from Ballistic Products. They're normally used to protect the barrel from hard shot like steel or tungsten. I've had them several months but didn't get around to shooting them until Monday.

On the left and unfired shot cup, on the right, one I recovered downfield. You can just make out where I slit the cups, this is important, if you don't slit them the shot stays together.

This is the side of a computer case I found on the range, notice where it had been hit with shot before. Without help, the shot won't penetrate the steel. The big hole is where an unslit shot cup with 1 1/2 oz of #6s blew on through. This might be interesting for shooting targets but not useful for my purposes.

I didn't take any pictures of my pattern boards, it's just a bunch of holes in cardboard anyway. After a bunch of tests, my best load is 1 1/2 oz of shot with 3 drams of powder. This is following the old rule of thumb "Less powder, more lead, hits hard, kills dead. More powder, less lead, kicks hard, wide spread." I suppose this would be considered an "under square" load since my volume of powder is less than the volume of shot. Anyway, with that load I was able to get 142 pellets into a 14" square target at 25 yards. #6 should run around 270 pellets per ounce so I was shooting around 405 pellets. That's about 35% pellets on target. Pretty poor by modern standards but not bad considering a 100+ year-old gun. I probably wouldn't try it on turkey but I'd like to give it a go on ducks and pheasant, probably for squirrels too.

I did try going to 1 5/8oz of shot and both 3 and 3 1/4 dram but actually ended up with fewer pellets on target. The is pretty heavily built so I probably should go back and try 1 3/4oz to see if more pellets help.

While I was in Maine a month ago my cousin turned up and gave me a few pounds of Pyrodex powder. I'd never shot any before and since the shotgun burns a substantial amount (3 drams is 82 grains) I figured free powder was the way to go. That turns into its own story so I'll save that for another post.

Fishin'

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time fishing. My father and grandfather we both fishermen and I kind of followed along. Somewhere along the line I just stopped but this year I find I've got more time on my hands... Back in April as the weather warmed I headed out. For reasons I don't really understand I had already collected a couple fishing poles and so I took to the river. The Millers river flows not too far from us and interestingly while people were flocking to our local state parks you don't have to walk too far to leave the crowds behind. People will go on the main trails but not much farther. Those early months didn't see a lot of success, I was catching some small trout but not too many and none of real size. That all changed in early June when I walked up Priest brook. Priest brook is a tributary of the Millers and while I didn't catch any fish where the road got near the river when I walked upstream my luck changed.

Mostly on Priest brook I find trout although there are some sunfish, perch and what I think are small pickerel.

Its hilarious to catch fish so small the lure is bigger than they are. This little guy was really punching above his weight.

Since then Angie has started fishing with me and I've learned a couple things:

1. I'm a luckier fisherman than her. She'll admit it too "I've never seen anybody so lucky."

2. You really have to get away from the crowds and since our local rivers meander that means you'll be bushwacking.

3. Bushwacking is going to but a hurt on your legs. The other day I think I tangled with a stinging nettle, the results were excruciating.

4. When you're into the fish the pain doesn't matter.

So far we've taken 2 good sized trout to eat and 3 smaller ones that had the bad luck to swallow the hook so deeply I couldn't get it out without killing them. Angie caught a sunfish that we could and maybe should have taken but "It looked at me, I can't kill it!"

Going vintage, again

I think I've written about my first computer on here before but its been awhile. To bring you back up to speed its my old TI99/4A. It came to me for Christmas 1983 a mere 2 months after the model had been discontinued. 😎

In 2018 I picked up a TIPI for it. The TIPI connects my TI to a Raspberry PI which allows all sorts of interesting things. I primarily wanted it for mass storage. TI used a gigantic "Peripheral Expansion Box" (PEB) for floppy drives and its really inconvenient and loud. The TIPI is little and handy:

You actually can't see the TIPI in this picture, at the right side of the computer theres a sidecar that contains a 32K RAM expander and the TIPI. On top of the computer is a Raspberry PI 3.

Mostly what I got the TIPI for is to play my favorite video game of all time, "Tunnels of Doom" (ToD).

ToD is one of the original role playing games, its actually a framework under which many games or I guess game scenarios can be played. The one we played when I was a kid was "Quest for the King" where you take a group of adventurers into a dungeon to save the king and his orb of power.

The worst thing about ToD as a kid was the load times where you had to wait 200 seconds (3 1/3 minutes) for it to load from audio tape. Then often the tape load would fail and you would need to try again. The TIPI is so easy, I just type "TIPI.TOD.QUEST" and it loads in a second or two.

After playing a quick game I messed around with the telnet client. I managed to log into the Heatwave BBS which at least purports to be running on Geneve hardware which is old school cool.

Anyhow in recent days I've run the TI/TIPI combo 3 or 4 more times. I've got a game of TIPI Chess underway. This is actual multiplayer chess across the internet. Its slow, I'm generally making a move every other day but we're getting it done. I've also logged into Heatwave a few more times and played some door games.

I missed the BBS scene back in the day, I was just a little too young. So its fun going back and playing around on Heatwave to get some idea what it was like back then. So far I've lost a game of Battleship but it was oh so close. I've also lost the "Trolls Lair" text adventure several times, I can't figure out how to get past the troll...

A vacation, during this? Well, for fiddleheads...

Yeah I know, pandemic and all. Heres the thing, we've got this place in Aroostock county Maine, population 67,000 give or take a few and 8 COVID cases. We've done a pretty careful job of quarantining ourselves and since we would spend the vast majority of our time at camp anyway we figured we were safe for the journey. The one variation we took from our normal trip is that we didn't take our kayaks. In retrospect that was a mistake but not a big one, we were able to rent a pair up there.

That kayak rental was really important as it let us pick fiddleheads.

I know I've written about fiddleheads on here before and they're somewhat of an obsession for us. This year's trip was a little early so our normal picking spots weren't ready yet. However there was one spot we usually pass by because we were too late that was just perfect.

Our early estimate is that we had picked around 25 pounds, I'm thinking that was probably low its probably more like 40 pounds which took us about 4 hours.

We waited to process until we got home, its really hard to blanch fiddleheads without running water and a good source of ice. My old Coleman 413E did heating duties. I really need to get my Handy Gas Plant up and running, we could have used a larger burner.

This is secondary cooling. I let this get up to 15 bags and then I'd haul the first ten to the freezer in the basement. Secondary cooling ensured we weren't putting warm fiddleheads into the freezer.

We ended up with 52 quart bags. We tend to pack them pretty full, in fact we should probably get a scale to weigh out the product for more consistent results but since its just for us it probably doesn't matter.

Anyway the rest of vacation was fantastic, the weather was perfect if maybe a little warm and we got to really relax which was great. I found time to plant a garden and Angie trimmed a bunch of trees. I'll post more on that later.