pan powder?

[Joemolf]

I had a similar experience. I have a dixie cup on my loading bench for any castings that I cull for remelting. Unfortunately it was kept under a shelf on the bench. Long story short, I was feeding them into the pot singley and when there was only a few left I dumped the cup into the pot with a resultant explosion of spraying lead. A primer had fallen into the cup. My hand , face, shirt, and safety glasses, had varying degrees of splatter and my shorts were fouled.

Murphy at work! Damn I’m glad you are okay!

 

[Snake Pleskin]

Both Lyman/Investarms and Pedersoli only have stated in the past that they use chromoly alloy steels for the barrels. Never stating the EXACT alloy. 41XX steels are chromoly. 12L14 can not be chromoly. Getting the exact specs from Investarms and Pedersoli (both have made the GPR at some point) would be akin to blood from a turnip. Here is a list of COMMON chromoly steel alloys-

4118, 4120, 4130, 4140, 4150

I have intentionally left out the less common alloys 'cause I'm lazy. There is a whole slew of 'em.

This is quite a deep 'rabbit hole' to go down with lots of twists and turns and deadends. However if you wish to spend the time and effort, the info is out there in dribs and drabs.

But I still say a properly made barrel from 12L14 AND loaded sanely is safe under virtually all conditions.

But we have gotten off topic here. No ONE should EVER use smokeless powder of any type in ANY muzzleloader for ANY reason unless one is loading and shooting a SAVAGE 10ML under explicit direction from the included manual. There is a reason why the 10ML has but three (3) powders and one (1) sabot/bullet combination allowed. Period. End. Of. Story. What your drunk redneck cousins buddy did last 4rth of July has no bearing on reality. What some youtuber did has little bearing on reality. Muzzleloaders and smokeless powder do mix! EVER!

Thanks, good information. I agree, you should not have Smokeless powder near any ML, period.! That being said, it has been used and is used in BP shooting. My brother used to shoot 1000 yds BP,with a Shiloh Sharps Rifle. They used compressed loads that were both Smokeless and BP combined. Again, not a true ML, and certainly the rifle was strong and made of modern steel etc.

 

[Joemolf]

I would encourage any one who uses or makes muzzle loading arms to investigate what most of the barrels they buy are made of and the intended purpose of the steel alloy used namely 12L14 . It s designed for high speed screw stock and fastener use not gun barrel pressures. The "L" stands for lead content of .15-.35 percent which makes it very machinable. The 12 stands for sulferized and re-philosophized and the 14 stands for the percent in hundreds of the carbon content which is actually only about .09 in this alloy. That means it won't harden.
The upshot of all this is the alloy does not handle pressure shock load well and it gets worse as the temperature drops.
It is said that hot rolled 12L14 is stronger than cold rolled and not being a metallurgist I could not say but I can read and at least one who's paper I have read on this issue has said it is not certified for gun barrel pressures period.
The legal dodge is that all muzzle loaders fall under the reloader category which apparently is bullet proof in court.
There are only a couple of companies that actually use gun barrel certified steel and are the only ones I will currently use.
I still have one rifle with a Douglas XX barrel that is 12L14. It is super accurate but I realize any mistake in loading could make it come apart which is the reason Douglas stopped making muzzle loading barrels of this alloy and altogether.

Douglas XX? I have a rifle 45 cal. The barrel is old but brand new. I have yet to shoot the rifle. I was told the barrel company went out of business a while ago but I was not told Douglas barrels can be sketchy. It was implied they are very good barrel and a great find. So I guess I’ll take the barrel out of the stock and see how it’s stamped. For me it’s a non issue I don’t play games with loads. You would think in modern times barrel steel would be consistent. That’s the part I don’t get.

 

[user 48702]

Bullseye is #13 on the burn chart, with #1 being the fastest. It only takes about 8.5 grains to push a .44 mag at over 1220 fps. Just to show how powerful Bullseye is when used in an unorthodox way: I had a rock ledge fall from the ceiling of one of the caverns on our property. One section of rock was about 2' feet thick and 14' feet long. There was no way to gain access to the area with equipment, so I read up on micro blasting. We used a hammer drill with a 1/2" rock bit and drilled about half way through the rock. First tried about 100 grains of 3F black and all it did was blow the packing clay out of the hole. Next I moved to smokeless and tried about 45 grains of IMR 4895, which did crack the rock on a few occasions, but was still too weak. So I checked the burn chart for various powders and found the fastest powder I had on hand was Bullseye. I drilled a hole about 12" inches into the 2' foot thick rock, put about 15 grains of Bullseye in the hole (which only filled the 1/2" diameter hole 1/2" deep), inserted fuse and packed with 2" inches of modeling clay. The blast was tremendous, not only fractured the limestone, but rolled bowling ball sized chunks 15' to 20' feet. I think we drilled the largest section 5 or 6 times, blasting one shot at a time and a slab of limestone 3'X14' 2' foot thick was broken into manageable pieces. Only two pieces required two people to carry out of the cave, the majority was carried out in 5 gallon buckets. So in other words, it doesn't take much Bullseye to have devastating effects.

Here are some photos of "Bullseye Busting", before and after. In the last photo, you can see where the tip of the drill bit ended, the blast made an almost perfect cone shaped plug

 

[Johnny Tremain]

Have someone mail you a 4f can, they last decades. I bought 2 in 94 and still have some.