• This community needs YOUR help today. We rely 100% on Supporting Memberships to fund our efforts. With the ever increasing fees of everything, we need help. We need more Supporting Members, today. Please invest back into this community. I will ship a few decals too in addition to all the account perks you get.



    Sign up here: https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/account/upgrades

Substitute for Goex Powder

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Garryowen

32 Cal.
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
9
Reaction score
0
If you can't get Goex powder what would be the next best powder to buy?

Garryowen
 
I primarily use schuetzen powder (who also makes swiss powder), but there are several others. If you can't find Goex, though, I doubt you'll find the others. If you can't find them locally, consider ordering online, in which case you can find just about anything.
 
if you're shooting a caplock, you can get away with Pyrodex, but you will doubtless pay more for it on a per- shot basis, and you'll have to work up your optimum load. i haven't done the arethmatic, but i'd be surprised if a case of Goex was more than the same amount purchased locally, even with shipping and HazMat fees, so in terms of cost, you're probably better getting 'real' powder.

if you're shooting flint, you're gonna be really dissapointed in Pyro, even if you can get it to go off, which is unlikely, so in either case, you should get the real stuff. Real BP (unlike the substitutes) has an indefinite shelf life, so it's not like the stuff is going to get stale like the stuff in my fridge.

good luck, and

Make good smoke!
 
YOu can get Black powder shipped to your door any place in the USA, except, perhaps, Kodiak Island. So, the question is false in its premise. It assumes a fact that just is NOT true. If you look under the Accessories topic above " general Muzzleloading", you will find many threads that discuss this topic, and give details on who is selling BP the cheapest. If you go to the member resources section on this forum index, then click on links, you will find a list of BP dealers who will sell you Black Powder. If you contact Goex- also available under "links", or by googling-- you can locate the nearest retailer to you, or the local distributor for your state. Most have email addresses, and phone numbers. Many have toll-free phone numbers to call. They will either tell you the closest retailer to your home, or arrange to ship the powder to you.

There is a $20.00 Haz Mat fee charged per shipment, so it pays you to order more than one can of powder. Most suggest you order at least 5 lbs. We all suggest that you find other BP shooters and pool your money to buy a case of powder- 25 lbs.-- to get the lowest cost per pound.

There is NO adequate substitute powder for use in flintlocks, no matter what the advertisements claim. In percussion actions, the best sub is still probably Pyrodex. It comes in two grades, "RS" for Rifle/Shotgun, and "PP" for pistol powder.
 
Pyrodex RS stores just as well as Goex. 777 works just fine in caplocks too but doesn't store as well.

Both are very cheap at the end of the hunting season at Walmart. That's when I stock up.
 
MSW said:
if you're shooting a caplock, you can get away with Pyrodex, but you will doubtless pay more for it on a per- shot basis, and you'll have to work up your optimum load. i haven't done the arethmatic, but i'd be surprised if a case of Goex was more than the same amount purchased locally, even with shipping and HazMat fees, so in terms of cost, you're probably better getting 'real' powder.
if you're shooting flint, you're gonna be really dissapointed in Pyro, even if you can get it to go off, which is unlikely, so in either case, you should get the real stuff. Real BP (unlike the substitutes) has an indefinite shelf life, so it's not like the stuff is going to get stale like the stuff in my fridge.
good luck, and Make good smoke!
The way I interpreted the question was "what OTHER" black powder other than Goex. There are several brands....Swiss (very good), Schuetzen (also good), Wano (same as Schuetzen), those are some I have used. Then there is Kik, and a powder made in South America that I don't recall the name, and a Chinese powder that should be relegated to blank charges from what I have read. Do as Paul suggested and search the links for distributors and best prices; some distributors are a lot cheaper than others!
 
Are you not in the United States? If you are, goex and other REAL black powders can be mail ordered, you will have to pay a hazmat fee, but still cheaper and better than the subs. I still can't imagine why someone would buy a muzzleloader and use fake powder, heck just buy an inline or stick to modern guns if you are going to use this stuff. Sorry to rant but this comes up a lot, black powder is EASY to get, unless you are a criminal. If you are serious about muzzleloading, you owe it to yourself to use the real thing, which is black powder, not the subs. If you are only going to shoot once or twice a year, or to just hear a BANG just use whatever you can get your hands on in the subs. flinch
 
I would buy KIK if you can find it locally.

Powder Inc has Goex for 16.25 per lb. if you buy in ten pond lots.

They sell KIK for 14.35 per ten lb lot. This will include shipping and Haz M fee.
 
KIK is made in Slovenia. A small country near Italy.

I use 3f Goex and 3f KIK , and I can't tell the diff in the results.

I have seen some data indicate that KIK has some fine particles that make give it a slight edge in velocity.
 
Gary, Get ahold of Ron Fernwalt, he's the State Coordinator. He should be able to tell you where the closest place for you to get powder on your side of the state. He's with Grand Valley Cap & Ballers.

[email protected]
616 675 7454
 
Excuse me? I do not consider Slovenia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia, to be " close to Italy". When the USSR fell apart in 1992, one of the results was a division of the former state of Czechoslovakia, into two states, the Czech Republic, and the Republic of Slovenia. Hungary, Austria and Germany stand between Italy and these countries. Then there is the Adriatic Sea, and the countries that used to be Yugoslavia on the Northern side of that sea that also separate Italy from Slovenia.

Yes, Slovenia is the location where this powder is made, and its similar in composition to WANO or even the Swiss powder, in that the company also gets its charcoal from the same source that Swiss powder uses. I suspect that KIK is trying to get a foothold in the US market- not for the BP shooter market, but for the Explosives market, trying to take it away from GOEX.

I buy Goex because I want to keep a source of Black Powder here in the USA. If all the powder has to be imported, the President, as the head of the Executive Branch, and leader with sole authority to set foreign policy, He can terminate the importation of powder for any reason, or NO REASON. That is how the first Pres. Bush was able to ban the importation of "assault rifles".
 
There is NO substitute for Real Black Powder. There are other brands than Goex, though. There are pretenders to black powder that some use when they can't get BP, but no substitute.
 
Don't feel badly about this. Geography is lost to a lot of folks. When all Heck broke out in Boznia, back in 1992, the Chicago Tribune printed a picture of the Balkans, showing all the republics that comprised the former Yugoslavia, and surrounding countries. However, they omitted Abania from their map, until a whole lot of displaced Albanians, living in Chicago, screamed and hollared. A couple of days later, a new map appeared that amazingly showed Albania still exists!

How about that. Oh, no apology by the Tribune Staff for their error, either.
 
O.K. then what other brand works as well as Goex powder. To be honest when I started there were only two brands Goex and pyrodex. I've always used Goex. Just couldn't bring myself to use pyrodex.

I didn't know you could order it and have it delivered to your door though.

Some of the other brands I've never even heard of before.

Garryowen
 
There are occasional fly-by-night operations that produce another ascorbic acid-based substitute powder every couple of years, or change their names to avoid creditors about that frequently. Right now, you only hear about 777, Pyrodex, and Black Powder here. Goex actually makes a substitute powder( American Pioneer) for use in BP cartridge guns. Some people try it in their percussion guns. Some report hang-fire ignition using the stuff.

The ignition temperature of the substitute powders is a critical factor. You probably need modern pistol primers, or shotgun primers( in-l$%*&), or at the very least, the " Magnum " percussion caps, and/or musket caps to insure ignition of these other powders.

I shoot flintlocks, mainly, and have no need for the others. The cost of the subs, the problems you have using any acid based powder in your barrel, their shorter shelf life, and the fact they cannot be used in flintlocks makes them very easy to ignore- even Pyrodex. Of the bunch, Pyrodex has been around the longest, and is probably the most reliable.

There is a considerable difference of opinion here on the forum as to the shelf life of Pyrodex. My father bought some back when it was " New " to use in his percussion revolver. I think he was only able to use half the can before he found that it lost so much power that he could no longer keep his rounds on the paper. Since he was not shooting a BP rifle, he put it aside.

I think my brother took what was left when we cleaned out his gun cabinet after Dad died in 1996. If I recall, he used it to fertilize his garden, as he could not get it to shoot worth a tinker's "darn" either.

The Black Powder he Inherited from Dad worked just fine, and was as old. We did screen the powder for " fines", as this was DuPont powder which had the reputation of being a " blended Mix". Once screened, the 2Fg, the 3Fg, and the 4Fg powders fired off as advertised.
 
I don't want to hijack this thread, so I'll just say this and let it go. Here is Wikipedia's lesson on Geography.

Italy en-us-Italy.ogg /ˈɪtəli/ (help·info) (Italian: Italia), officially the Italian Republic (Italian: Repubblica Italiana), is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia.
 
Back
Top