• Friends, our 2nd Amendment rights are always under attack and the NRA has been a constant for decades in helping fight that fight.

    We have partnered with the NRA to offer you a discount on membership and Muzzleloading Forum gets a small percentage too of each membership, so you are supporting both the NRA and us.

    Use this link to sign up please; https://membership.nra.org/recruiters/join/XR045103

Historical black powder smoked less than modern.

Muzzleloading Forum

Help Support Muzzleloading Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
We need to differentiate between expensive commercial sporting powder of the 1850s-1890s (let’s call it the top shelf stuff), the British Waltham Abbey military powder of the same era (also very good) vs. the probably merely adequate powder produced for military use by both sides in the Civil War. And 18th century powder was an order of magnitude “worse” in terms of power, ballistics, smoke produced, etc.

Goex is probably better than they had in the Revolutionary war, but I’m sure it pales in comparison with the best English or American commercial powder of the late 19th century when industry and chemistry had finally brought the stuff just about as close to perfection as possible. It’s like the difference between Goex and Swiss. I’ve never shot Swiss myself but people do say it has a little less smoke.
 
After graduating from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal school in July, 1959 i was assigned to the 864th Ordnance Detachment (EOD) at Fort Bragg, NC. That unit was responsible for EOD support to the entire state of North Carolina. We picked up tons of Civil War explosive ordnance.

Using our .50 caliber dearmer we had the capability of breaking open the projectiles without exploding them. Another EOD unit had a muzzleloader addict who used black powder from Civil War ammunition. Never heard the guy mention the smoke.
 
Back
Top