1F in a .44 Navy......

[Stantheman86]

I ended up with 5 lbs of this cheap. Shoot it in a 54 GRRW Hawken, a full stock 58 flint Hawken and a Kibler Colonial in 58. It works, it is dirty, but it works. Use it mostly for the 2 1" bore canons.

Don

This is good info, I wouldn't even know what Skirmish blank powder is graded as, I would think just a conglomeration of all thr F grains that Schuetzen or other powder factories sift out of the leftover stuff that can't be sold as "shooting " powder

 

[azmntman]

I ordered a bunch for my 20GA as t loves it. Shot a 3/4 inch 3 shot group at 65 yrd (or 70?) with it out of my Cabelas Hawkin .58. Right on windage wise but in the barrel just a tad longer than 2f and printed 6 inches high. Very impressed with the group, noise, smoke etc. and it had no recoil. I like.

 

[griffiga]

Back in the early 90's, I had a bunch of blasting powder that I used in my .45 CVA Kentucky. I figured with the long barrel, most of the powder would burn. It shot OK, but the fowling was thick. It wasn't graphite coated.

 

[Bad Karma]

This is good info, I wouldn't even know what Skirmish blank powder is graded as, I would think just a conglomeration of all thr F grains that Schuetzen or other powder factories sift out of the leftover stuff that can't be sold as "shooting " powder

Floor sweepings? ;-)

 

[Stantheman86]

Floor sweepings? ;-)

This is what I call the off brand cigarettes people buy that smell like burning carpet, I'm like, that fine Southern floor scraping tobacco....

 

[nkbj]

 

[Stantheman86]

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What is Jack's Powder Keg

 

[nkbj]

A company near Alexandria, Louisiana.
It used to be run by Judge Angelo Piazza of Marksville and perhaps still is for all I know. Dropped by and met with him maybe about ten to fifteen or so years ago while in the area on business. I found that the powder worked fine for me in flinters, cap locks and revolvers.

 

[Grenadier1758]

We use it (Jack's Powder Keg) in our King's Muskets. Works good for blanks and live rounds.

 

[Dale Allen Raby]

I can see no reason this would not work as a C&B revolver is essentially a six-shot inline. I would imagine that you get lots of smoke and muzzle flash though.

 

[TDM]

A company near Alexandria, Louisiana.
It used to be run by Judge Angelo Piazza of Marksville and perhaps still is for all I know. Dropped by and met with him maybe about ten to fifteen or so years ago while in the area on business. I found that the powder worked fine for me in flinters, cap locks and revolvers.

nkbj, I was at Sportsman’s Warehouse in Slidell, LA a few months ago and started visiting with a fellow by the ML section. He told me about getting powder from Judge Piazza. He offered to give me his number, but I didn’t have my phone or a pen. That’s a coincidence for sure.

 

[dylan84]

Graphite coating just helps seal up the porous powder granuals so they flow better through powder measurers and don't absorb moisture as fast.

The size of grain really has less to do with anything than people think. Yes you can fit more 4f into a given space than 1f but burn rates are very similar. Yes you can fine tune a load with a certain granule size but that is when you are really digging for accuracy. The burn rate from cannon to null is probably not near as much of a change than the next slower or faster powder in the smokeless cartridge world.

If you want to take cannon powder or 1f and make it finer then just grind it and screen it like was originally done at the powder factory.

I actually think that powder with no graphite burns cleaner. I shoot my own 2f, 3f, 4f, or whatever size I have available in my revolvers with no I'll effects. Have not tried my cannon or 1f grain size but sure it would be fine. I even shot 3f in my cannon....

 

[Stantheman86]

Graphite coating just helps seal up the porous powder granuals so they flow better through powder measurers and don't absorb moisture as fast.

The size of grain really has less to do with anything than people think. Yes you can fit more 4f into a given space than 1f but burn rates are very similar. Yes you can fine tune a load with a certain granule size but that is when you are really digging for accuracy. The burn rate from cannon to null is probably not near as much of a change than the next slower or faster powder in the smokeless cartridge world.

If you want to take cannon powder or 1f and make it finer then just grind it and screen it like was originally done at the powder factory.

I actually think that powder with no graphite burns cleaner. I shoot my own 2f, 3f, 4f, or whatever size I have available in my revolvers with no I'll effects. Have not tried my cannon or 1f grain size but sure it would be fine. I even shot 3f in my cannon....

The only thing I think about is fouling, other than that, if it fits it ships

1F in a .58 rifle makes loading subsequent Minies a little more challenging vs 3f but there's no accuracy difference that I really care about

1.5F did well enough for 30 or so rounds through my P53. It looked similar enough to 1F really, it's just academic after a certain point. I'm sure 70 grains of 1F would do what 55 grains of 3f can

 

[dylan84]

The only thing I think about is fouling, other than that, if it fits it ships

1F in a .58 rifle makes loading subsequent Minies a little more challenging vs 3f but there's no accuracy difference that I really care about

1.5F did well enough for 30 or so rounds through my P53. It looked similar enough to 1F really, it's just academic after a certain point. I'm sure 70 grains of 1F would do what 55 grains of 3f can

Or if you go by weight I would wager that it's all the same as long as you have the volumetric room.

 

[Stantheman86]

Or if you go by weight I would wager that it's all the same as long as you have the volumetric room.

Another reason to love a .69 Smoothbore. They shoot well enough to 100 with anything from 1F to 3F

I try to keep the 2F and 3F for the rifle-muskets and revolvers but if I'm just popping a few off for fun I'll use 1F. Since I bought 25lbs of it in 2019 when it was all you could get.....and with Goex shipping again soon I'm doing my part to burn this 1F up and pretty much "standardize" on 3F for everything

The more BP we buy, the more Distributors buy from Goex, and Goex will package more BP for the "civilian " market if they're making profit so let's do our part and blow through as much Goex as possible

 

[dylan84]

I will order some as soon as Powder Valley gets it! No shops will stock it around here. Local gun shop had caps here last week though so maybe things are looking up! Hoping they have something comparable to Swiss. Pretty stupid that something as simple as black powder should have to come from Europe. I need better powders to compare my homebrew to....

 

[Stantheman86]

I will order some as soon as Powder Valley gets it! No shops will stock it around here. Local gun shop had caps here last week though so maybe things are looking up! Hoping they have something comparable to Swiss. Pretty stupid that something as simple as black powder should have to come from Europe. I need better powders to compare my homebrew to....

The ATF requirements are so strict and the amount of real BP local gun shops sell is so low that almost all of them surrendered that part of their FFL. Plus people who are serious BP shooters just order it , so my local shop jumping through all the hoops to maintain that "07 Destructive Device & Explosive" part of their 01 FFL to sell 5lb of Goex a year just wasn't worth the hassle

 

[springfield art]

I have a full case of Goex 1F that I bought for my .69 Muskets, and given that it would probably take me years to burn up 25lbs of powder, plus my range has a new policy against "shotguns" at the pistol range, I shoot them a lot less.

So, today I thought, why not burn some 1F in a .44

I probably should have gone with a steel frame but my .44 Brasser "Griswold & Gunnison " was what I grabbed for the task

I used the 30gr spout on my flask , with my finger in it, probably dispenses about 27 so I figured it's roughly equal to 20gr of 3f .

The arbor had a light coat of Wonder Lube, I used no wads or anything over the ball

At 15 yards, I fired 6 rounds, nice satisfying boom, an upward "push" of recoil, not a snap , and lots of smoke. After correcting my aim and aiming at the waist of the target, I fired 2 more cylinders pretty much point shooting , one handed. Most of them hit the scoring area and the few misses definitely scared it, and were just off the scoring area

After 3 cylinders , the gun got gummy and required a quick wipe down with a baby wipe and I fired another cylinder at a different target

That stuff looks like a pile of Coal in those chambers, I forgot how huge the grains are

If I had put tallow or other lube over the ball the gun probably would have kept running all day. The front of the arbor had most of the fouling

I'm sure if I sandbagged the gun , the groups would have been just fine. It didn't seem to know the difference between 1F and the 3F I had used previously.

If you want to use your imagination at the range, you can pretend that it's 1865 and you're a Confederate raider, and all you have is Musket powder and round balls you cast over a camp fire to load your tired, hard used brass frame revolver and you are just staying in the fight with whatever you can find . Or you just want to burn up some 1F that's usually in stock because few people buy it from powder inc

I wonder how that Reenactor Musket powder would work?


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[springfield art]

I'm sure some guy on this great site will offer practical advice! The knowledge about C&B revolvers is amazing here! Have fun, thanks for the good photos.

 

[Rifleman1776]

I have read, but never tried, that bp could be ground finer by putting it in a rotary tumbler with a couple boxes of 50 cal. lead balls. This info came from one of my bp books I believe. If done, it just seems safest to me to put the tumbler outside, in the shade on a nice dry day. You could grind 1F down to 4F if you needed.

That, and other stunts do not make a finer granulation of powder. What happens is that your bp, whatever granulation is turned into dust. Good for almost nothing.