Best Fouling Powder?

[Flint62Smoothie]

I can PROVE to you via anecdotal evidence of shootin' 5-7 pounds per year that Schuetzen cleans up in 1/3rd the time AND patches of Goex.

Knowing MFG processes, I would bet $$ that Schuetzen powder, made by same company as Swiss powdah, is made on the same line and is Swiss that doesn't meet their tighter lot to lot specs ... or that uses less premium ingredients.

 

[BrownBear]

...PROVE....via anecdotal evidence....

Ummmm......

Anecdotal, as in heard from your uncle that his next door neighbor's former brother-in-law's step-dad saw it on a passing taxi?

 

[hanshi]

BB you really do know how to hit the nail on the head; you seem to read my thoughts from time to time.

Rifleman, I seem to be among the few who had good results with Elephant. I burned many pounds of it with the same accuracy as other powders. It was also no dirtier than the others. Obviously their quality control was suspect. I even heard reports of unburned wood chips in some lots. I guess I lucked out because the Elephant I used worked just fine.

 

[coloradoclyde]

How do you get that elephant into your gun? it must take a strong ramrod. :rotf:

 

[Flint62Smoothie]

...PROVE....via anecdotal evidence....

Anecdotal, as in heard from your uncle that his next door neighbor's former brother-in-law's step-dad saw it on a passing taxi?

Nope, but from shooting 4-7 pounds of black powdah per year. I guess I should have said DIRECT hard-earned experience!

 

[Zonie]

You don't put the whole elephant into the gun.

You just use the "contributions" he's left along the path as he wanders about.

This is not as easy as it may seem.

If not allowed to properly age, it sticks to your fingers and to the walls of the guns bore. Ignition is very poor if this is used.

If left to overage, it becomes hard and because the pellet sizes are usually much larger than most muzzleloader bores, getting it all the way to the breech can be challenging.

Strange as it may sound, it is best to find elephants that have eaten large amounts of brussel sprouts.
This adds to the sulfur content which greatly improves the offerings combustibility.

Another strange thing about this powder.

There are no elephants in South America but that is where the cannery was located.

I believe they imported the "raw" material from India because the climate is much better for growing Brussel sprouts than most of Africa. :grin:

OK. For you newbies, Elephant brand black powder was made in Brazil and imported into the USA.
Many of us who used it had no doubts that it fouled the bore much more than DuPont and GOEX black powder.

Mad Monk, one of the most knowledgeable people about making black powder in the world noted when he visited the factory in Brazil that often the charcoal they made and used was made from wood that still had the bark on it.
He attributed the greater fouling the powder created to the charred bark.

In all fairness, Elephant black powder at its worst still worked fine in flintlocks, which is not something the modern synthetic black powder substitutes can say.

Elephant went out of business when the land their factory was on became more valuable than their business.
They sold their equipment to another company who is producing Black Diamond powder, still located in Brazil.

 

[robert reed]

Thank you, Zonie, for an excellent post. Entertaining and informative! We should all aspire to answer questions in like manner. :hatsoff:

 

[hanshi]

Did I say in? I meant "on". :surrender:

 

[nit wit]

We have had good luck with schuetzen and KIK. Diamondback was ok.
Nit Wit

 

[Scota4570]

I recently joined a ML club. They require swabbing between shots. That makes all the hand-wringing over clean vs dirty powder a mute point. Is it common for clubs or ranges to require swabbing.

 

[Col. Batguano]

First I've heard of that. So not particularly common, but apparently it's common in that club. I suspect it's mostly a safety concern. It IS common for artillery re-enactors to require it though.

 

[Petardo]

Hello, I seem to have found the solution to my problem in both the flint locks and cannons of various sizes. While I actually started swabbing and relubricating the bore, this seemed to make it worse. I called around until I spoke with Track of the Wolf, Dixie Gun Works and finally, Steve at Slip 2000. Make a long story short I was using Motor Oil for lubrication which apparently in the black powder world is a no-no for firearms. I had read it worked well for preservation, lubrication, that it was long lasting etc but where I had read it was not talking about BP and muzzle loaders. Of course, as it was explained to me, motor oil when it encounters combustion and more importantly explosion and deflagration like you see with BP tends to burn just like it would in your car's cylinders. This leaves even more fouling behind and makes the BP fouling 5x as bad. This is why it took me 3 hours to clean my flintlock. Well that and I wasn't using the proper equipment, a problem that I have solved.

I am still improving at this but I can now do a very thorough cleaning in a little over an hour. I guess Schutzen in my experience has had the least fouling but it wasn't the powder, it was the oil. Seems like such a dumb thing, I guess 99% of the others on this forum already knew that but I did not and it made life miserable for me. So for the benefit of any future searches about unreasonable amounts of fouling leading to unreasonably long cleaning times, even for BP, look at buying proper cleaning equipment instead of using paper towels, even for cannons, and use proper biologically based (as opposed to more combustible under deflagration petroleum products) lubricants. OK, I know petroleum is a fossil fuel and therefore biological as well, but I mean directly biological, not separated by 60 million years.

Again sorry for the really stupid question, but if you don't know and no one tells you, how can you tell if you're making a mistake?

Best
P

 

[Zonie]

It's not so much that the petroleum oils actually burn when they are used with black powder.
What happens is the charcoal, sulfur and oil combine to create a thick, often hard tarlike substance.

This hard fouling is water resistant because of the motor oil making it even harder to remove with normal cleaning methods. (Black powder fouling by itself almost instantly dissolves in just plain water).

The people you talked to probably already told you this but, use a vegetable oil based patch or bullet lube for any shooting you do.

It is perfectly safe to use a petroleum based motor oil to protect the barrel and other metal parts and it will be much better at keeping rust away than any vegetable oil. That said, be sure to clean all traces of the motor oil out of the barrel before loading the gun.

A good solvent to use to clean out the petroleum oil is 90% rubbing alcohol, denatured alcohol or disk brake cleaner.

 

[smoothshooter]

Can't speak for artillery, but cleaning a shoulder - fired black powder gun should not take longer than 15 or 20 minutes when you have the proper technique down, unless you want it to. Sometimes It only takes me about 10 minutes.