pan powder?

[deerstalkert]

I'm a newb to FL's but have burned a lot of smokeless. Much of my thread response was driven by the knee jerk warnings about smokeless in BP guns. It is of course a bad idea, though not the certain death many would assert. Thread drift on my part. The core question at hand is smokeless in a FL pan. My surmise is that it is not dangerous, but unreliable. It's a useful question in this era of scarcity. I burn a lot of BE and W-231 in pistols and intent to try them in my FL, just for the learning. My expectations are low.

you have received answers to the question about smokeless in a FL pan. you will age considerably before you get it to ignight.
I plead with you not to try smokeless in your muzzleloaders. there are many differences between muzzleloaders and smokeless rifles. one doesn't sit down and take a scoop of bullseye and dump it into a cartridge with no data to back up the charge. you will find NO data for what might, or will be safe in a muzzleloader.
combined on this forum i would guess there is a thousand years of muzzleloading experience along with smokeless shooting. I doubt anyone will tell you its a good idea to proceed.
we need young blood here and in the muzzleloading community in general. just not spilled on the shooting range.
please don't proceed with smokeless in ANY real muzzleloader .
be safe and become old like most of us.

 

[granth]

For pan powder, It probably wouldn't work. The flash point on smokeless is much too high for the sparks from the frizzen to ignite the powder. For the main charge, it would be catastrophic. In Ned Robert's book, "The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle" he actually does discuss using a duplex load of 5 grains of smokeless shotgun powder and the rest of the charge being black (I wouldn't try this personally). Before you put smokeless powder in a muzzleloader, I beg you, please watch this video! It will change your mind real quick.

Smokeless Powder in a Muzzleloader

 

[kaotikross]

I know a guy who tried smokeless in a BP gun. Good ol' Stubby, it's still funny watching him try to use a fork with his hooks.

 

[M. De Land]

For pan powder, It probably wouldn't work. The flash point on smokeless is much too high for the sparks from the frizzen to ignite the powder. For the main charge, it would be catastrophic. In Ned Robert's book, "The Muzzleloading Caplock Rifle" he actually does discuss using a duplex load of 5 grains of smokeless shotgun powder and the rest of the charge being black (I wouldn't try this personally). Before you put smokeless powder in a muzzleloader, I beg you, please watch this video! It will change your mind real quick.

Smokeless Powder in a Muzzleloader

For information related to this subject only and in the interest of knowledge and safety I will respond from a position of actual experience and many rounds of smokeles duplex loading in black powder cartridge guns. It is safe when kept to 10 percent or less and is/was used widely now and in years past both competitively and professionally but the key is containment.
In a muzzle loader with open ignition (flint or percussion) the large increase in pressure is not contained and once loose goes on a rampage tearing up anything in it's path until the energy spike is spent.
Take any high powered rifle with a safe pressure load . It will handle as many shots as one cares to take unless the pressure gets loose in the action from a blown primer or case head separation then the action can come apart like a grenade.
A muzzle loading rifle when charged with progressive powder alone ,wither flint or percussion, is like firing a high powder rifle with a case head separation and the formerly contained pressure is now loose in the (action/barrel/patent breech ) where it can tear up anything in it's path.
Also many of today's muzzle loading barrels are not made of gun certified steel but rather leaded steel that does not have good pressure shock load numbers. They are particularly susceptible to high pressure spikes (even from black powder only loads) in certain instances like a short started patched ball. I personally examined a 12L14 lead steel barrel split last year from a short started ball with a normal BP only charge.

 

[granth]

For information related to this subject only and in the interest of knowledge and safety I will respond from a position of actual experience and many rounds of smokeless duplex loading in black powder cartridge guns. It is safe when kept to 10 percent or less and is/was used widely now and in years past both competitively and professionally but the key is containment.
In a muzzle loader with open ignition (flint or percussion) the large increase in pressure is not contained and once loose goes on a rampage tearing up anything in it's path until the energy spike is spent.
Take any high powered rifle with a safe pressure load . It will handle as many shots as one cares to take unless the pressure gets loose in the action from a blown primer or case head separation then the action can come apart like a grenade.
A muzzle loading rifle wither flint or percussion is like firing a high powder rifle with a case head separation and the formerly contained pressure is now loose in the action where it tears up anything in it's path.
Also many of today's muzzle loading barrels are not made of gun certified steel but rather leaded steel that does not have good pressure shock load numbers. They are particularly unacceptable to high pressure spikes (even from black powder only loads) in certain instances like a short started patched ball. I personally examined a 12L14 lead steel barrel split last year from a short started ball with a normal BP only charge.

Wow. Very interesting!

 

[M. De Land]

Wow. Very interesting!

And it's true !

 

[Magungo1066]

I would leave the smokeless in a different room from your muzzleloading stuff. A while back there were some horrific pictures of one of our friends on this website who mistakenly put smokeless down the tube of his flintlock. Accidents happen, and one that you can severely diminish a risk of is to just separate black powder and smokeless entirely in your mind when considering flintlocks or any black powder gun. Whether it works or not in the pan is irrelevant compared to limiting the chance that a small mistake yields a shredded limb or face. Id give up shooting for a year and search for powder rather than playing with smokeless, even if just in the pan. Good luck and the members here are experts at finding places to source powder! Stay safe.

 

[M. De Land]

I would leave the smokeless in a different room from your muzzleloading stuff. A while back there were some horrific pictures of one of our friends on this website who mistakenly put smokeless down the tube of his flintlock. Accidents happen, and one that you can severely diminish a risk of is to just separate black powder and smokeless entirely in your mind when considering flintlocks or any black powder gun. Whether it works or not is irrelevant compared to limiting the chance that a small mistake yields a shredded limb or face. Id give up shooting for a year and search for powder rather than playing with smokeless, even if just in the pan. Good luck and the members here are experts at finding places to source powder! Stay safe

Fear of these different powders and their uses is not the answer but rather knowledge and diligence of their proper applications in a safe manor are. Any one who has used both smokeless and black powder much will have no trouble in identifying which is which and when ever in doubt a simple burn test will quickly reveal.

 

[Magungo1066]

Fear of these different powders and their uses is not the answer but rather knowledge and diligence of their proper applications in a safe manor are. Any one who has used both smokeless and black powder much will have no trouble in identifying which is which and when ever in doubt a simple burn test will quickly reveal.

Im not suggesting fear. I am just suggesting habits one can develop to eliminate even the possibility. I am sure our friend who hurt himself was familiar with smokeless powder because the only use for loose smokeless powder is to reload with it. People drilled and trained in shooting far beyond our level can still accidentally shoot themselves or blow something off. You see it in the news all the time when someone shoots themself in the leg or something far worse with an "unloaded gun". Taking steps to mitigate and hopefully eliminate these possibilities is not a fearful approach, and I agree with you on the importance of diligence and knowledge about the things you are working with and around.

 

[Pilgrim]

I'd like to post a reply, but the words escape me....

Yep.

 

[Snake Pleskin]

What are you using for your main charge? Assuming it’s real blackpowder it will work in the pan.

As far as using BullsEye in the pan, I have never tried it, but I don’t believe it would work very well. Smokeless powder burns fast and generates pressure when contained, but in an open flintlock pan, if the sparks from your flint ignite it, it will just burn much slower than blackpowder does in that open pan (flintlocks can be slow enough to go off with real blackpowder) and likely wouldn’t consistently ignite the main charge. Biggest danger I see is having smokeless powder around when loading a muzzleloader. Get the two mixed and use the BullsEye for the main charge and you will have some real excitement if you manage to light it up. And not the good kind of excitement. I’d save the BullsEye for reloading smokeless pistol rounds.

The answer for EVERYONE should be an emphatic NO. never use Smokeless powder for anything you do with a ML!!

 

[Joemolf]

Are we really discussing this? I can see the next Guns America headline.

 

[Pilgrim]

Are we really discussing this? I can see the next Guns America headline.

Lol, I know. Not to mention the next gun legislation point.

 

[deerstalkert]

for years I have had my reloading room upstairs on the third floor. the whole third floor was mine for all my gun obsessions.
about 4 years ago i discovered i wasn't doing squat up there because it was more difficult to climb those two flights of stairs with these tired old legs.
i just recently moved a machine that makes food for a 410 suppository gun down into the garage.
the garage has always been my Blackpowder relm.
i make my rifles and pistols there, i make my powder there, i do leather and horn work there. and i do limited blacksmithing there.
i am still not comfortable with having smokeless powder in that area, even after 60+ years of playing with both. i can identify them with a glance. i can not think of one single smokeless powder that i would mistake for gun powder. I am still not comfortable having them even close to each other.
playing with both but NEVER at the same time. characteristics of the two propellants are so different that to consider them in the same game is disaster waiting to happen.
the question of will smokeless work in a flintlock pan is 99.9 percent no.
the question of will smokeless work in the barrel is yes. at least once. think ticking time pipe bomb.

 

[Greenjoytj]

To the OP:
If you have real BP and want some finer granulation for the priming pan in a flintlock, just get and use a mortar and pestle tool and crush what you have to a fine dust.
The dust will will work perfectly as prime.

 

[SDSmlf]

I would leave the smokeless in a different room from your muzzleloading stuff.

Open containers of different powder types on a bench are not a good idea. They can get mixed and/or switched if you are careless.

But if you have different rooms for smokeless and muzzleloader stuff, do you have different rooms for smokeless pistol and rifle powders? Putting fast burning pistol powder in a rifle round can be disaster. Do you store weed killer, fertilizer and insecticides in different rooms? You must have a lot of rooms in your house.

 

[Tenring]

Smokeless under pressure for what we do is suicidal but in an open pan you’ll be ok but I doubt it will give fast ignition.

 

[deerstalkert]

Smokeless under pressure for what we do is suicidal but in an open pan you’ll be ok but I doubt it will give fast ignition.

10 tries with a Kibler lock and Red Dot and it wouldn't ignite. guess by that time even my targets would be gone with the wind!

 

[SDSmlf]

10 tries with a Kibler lock and Red Dot and it wouldn't ignite. guess by that time even my targets would be gone with the wind!

i bet if you had one of those old depleted uranium frizzens you could light it up. They put on quite the light show back in the day.
https://www.orau.gov/health-physics-museum/collection/consumer/depleted-uranium/frizzen.html

 

[Musket69]

I have been shooting BP since mid '70's. Front stuffers, revolvers, cap & ball, and flint...
I really enjoy flint. I generally use 2f as main charge in large caliber muskets, 1795 Springfield or Long Land Bess, 3f in KY Rifle and try to prime with 3f in the pan as 4f is not easily found here. I have tried Pyrodex P as main charge and found that it will fire reliably using true black powder 2 or 3f as prime. Using Pyrodex P for prime did not ever work. 3f gave good ignition and 2f gave a "Hollywood " delay, not long but noticeable. This info is for those who have local powder shortage issues and don't want to order and store large amounts of BP