Best products and Methods

[Rollover Jack]

Greetings, Salutations and all that rot...

I believe that the use of FFFFg can be seriously hazardous to your gun/person when used inside of the barrel and not outside in the pan of a flintlock. If I am correct, the more "F" there is, the finer and therefore faster acting the powder is. I may even recall hearing of "FFFFFg"(that's 5 Fs) used in the fireworks industry. To my knowledge, Fg is appropriate for cannon, FFg is for rifles and FFFg is for pistols although I would use it in a rifle if I had to.

If I may condense some information gleaned from Lyman's Black Powder Handbook & Loading Manual 2nd edition, which I would most recommend that you obtain, I would state that although FFFg can and has been used in rifles, (Heck, I've done it myself.) the pressure difference between it and FFg is of major proportions, that of the FFFg being 4-6 or more (9?) Thousands of psi than the same volumetric load of FFg. So, why stress your barrel? FFFFg could only be worse, they don't recommend it, and THEY HAVE DONE NO TESTS WITH IT IN RIFLE OR PISTOL!

(There is not an appropriate Smilie, it would be a skull and bones or tombstone.)

As to accuracy, it is a matter of experimentation with load/powder combinations that only the owner could engage in with a particular rifle. Myself, I am still not where I want to be in that department, but I have a list of what does not work so well, and my accuracy is improving.

Please let me talk you out of using FFFFg in the barrel of any gun that you, or anyone else, will be standing near, accuracy notwithstanding.

"When you see the smoke on the wind, look for me."

 

[Joel/Calgary]

Traditionally, Fg would be used in muskets, large fowlers, and heavy-bullet rifles. There were larger grades for various sizes of canon, harpoon or line-throwing guns, etc. Pyrotechnics tend to use blasting powder with ungraphited, unglazed, angular grains. There were finer grades of sporting powders, too. I have some 6Fg (dunno what it was intended for) and I seem to recall hearing reference to 8Fg.

I remembered I'd seen this table (below) somewhere, but it took me a while to find it. As usual, the formatting gets lost when I paste it in here. Just found a link to a full version: http://members.aol.com/illinewek/faqs/bptypes.htm

Joel

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Sporting Grade Black Powder "G"

Powder Grade passes screen stays on

Whaling 32/64" 4 mesh
Lifesaving 6 mesh 12 mesh
Cannon 6 mesh 20 mesh
Saluting 10 mesh 20 mesh
Fg 12 mesh 16 mesh
FFg 16 mesh 30 mesh
FFFg 20 mesh 50 mesh
FFFFg 40 mesh 100 mesh

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Blasting Powder "A"

Powder Grade passes screen stays on

FA 20/64" mesh 5 mesh
2FA 4 mesh 12 mesh
3FA 10 mesh 16 mesh
4FA 12 mesh 20 mesh
5FA 20 mesh 50 mesh
6FA 30 mesh 50 mesh
7FA 40 mesh 100 mesh
Meal D 40 mesh -
Meal F 100 mesh -
Meal XF 140 mesh -

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Note that, the larger number of "F"s, the blasting powder is much coarser.

Taken from AMCP 706-175 Engineering Design Handbook - Explosives Series - Solid Propellants Part One.

If you ignore the 'F' numbers, for a given measured grain size, the blasting powder burns faster than the graphite-inhibited sporting powder partly because of the inhibiting action of the graphite, and because of the smaller surface area of the grains.

Blasting powder is less dense because the grains are more irregularly shaped which promotes faster burning.