Burning coal
talking about blackpowder and shooting today brought back memories.
Making blackpowder is a pretty simple process, and anyone with a little patience can do it. You have to be prepared to save a lot of urine, and you have to deal with the smell. I know re-enactors who use cow urine, it’s easy to come by in large quantities, and it’s got a higher level of saltpeter in it.
Anyway, making the powder and shooting it was a lot of fun, and the smoke was acrid and thick. One day, boogers black form shooting all afternoon, I remembered why the smell was so familiar- Cow urine! Black powder smells the way it does, because it’s made with urine! If you spend time around fireworks you can definitely remember the smell.
So I switched to Pyrodex. It’s less corrosive, and it works quite well.Plus, it’s always exactly the same. And you still get the smoke, but it’s not as acrid. Maybe they use bat urine.
In the State of Washington it’s still illegal to use black powder substitute and inline or break action muzzleloaders during the primitive hunting seasons. Thank God. Still gotta hunt big game with real black powder and arms with ignition systems exposed to the elements and sights with no glass. If one wants to use “modern” muzzleloaders, scopes and fake black powder in the general season, that’s OK. Not much fun, but OK.
Gerry N.
I’m with you Gerry. In-lines and Pyro and primers are efficient as all get out…but I much prefer the charms and nostalgia of the real black powder myself.
Og, you know more about making black powder than I do, so I am more or less talking out of my hat. But: if I recall my history, the arms race between England and Spain centered around cannon and black powder development. From the books I read, black powder did suffer from consistency problems as you say…but the British developed a process called ‘corning’ that greatly reduced such problems and gave them a decisive edge over the Spaniards.
Store bought powders such as Goex are not inconsistent.
Another question: any articles on home made powder I have ever read advocate against it, saying the process is very dangerous. Do you agree with that?
I am going to learn to cast my own projectiles too. Always meant to do that but never got around to it…
Corning is just making the granules a consistent size. It’s like “panning”, which is how candies are made.
If what you want to do is hunt like a primitive, black powder and iron sights are just dandy. I don’t want to hunt like a primitive, I’m totally disinterested in hunting like a primitive. I want to put deer meat on the table, which is the sole purpose of hunting for me. I will use all legal methods to do so.
Corning was the process of wetting the ingredients, mixing them when wet, then letting them dry and grinding to get the desired grain size. Not only made it consistent, it kept the ingredients from separating over time/travel. It was more expensive, and for quite a while was only used for personal arms. Which was why for a long time artillery teams would sometimes carry the pre-measured ingredients, then mix them just before the battle.
Corning was no secret. Matter of fact, I read once where in the papers of the commander of the Spanish Armada he wrote that he’d been surprised and pleased that they received ‘arquebus’ powder- corned powder- for the ship cannon instead of loose powder.
What I want to know is why someone hasn’t come up with a non-corrosive powder with a black-powder pressure curve.
How handy would that be?
That would be Pyrodex, Sigivald.