Powder pellets in Percussion rifles

[wpjson]

A friend gave me a box of BP stuff (measures, picks, sabots) and in the box were some Prodex pellets. Can they be used in another rifle, such as T/C Hawken? Or are they fertilizer?

 

[BrownBear]

I made them work after a fashion by putting a "starter charge" of 10 grains of loose powder under them. But ignition seemed kinda stretched out a couple of times, so I stopped the experiment.

 

[wpjson]

have about 10 of 'em. Probably just toss them.

 

[Zonie]

In most factory percussion rifles made today they can work but you have to load them with the built in 'starter charge' located at the rear, closest to the breech plug.

When I say most, I'm talking about the percussion guns with a powder chamber or "patent breech" design.

The percussion guns that have a side drum going into the side of the bore won't usually make the pellets ignite because the jet of flame will hit the side of the pellet rather than the "starter charge" at the back of the pellet.

Since you got them for free, go ahead and use them for plinking shots. Any shooting is better than none at all. :grin:

As for folks thinking about buying some of these pellets from any of the synthetic black powder makers I don't recommend it.

They are very expensive and using them limits the amount of powder you can load.

A lot of .50 caliber guns shoot well with a powder charge of 70 grains. A lot of .54's shoot very well with a powder charge of 80 grains.

If a person is using the 50 grain pellets, there's no easy way of getting either of these charges.

 

[2172]

my son and his buddies started to try pellets when nthey (forgive them0 got inlines and the pellets wooldn'ti
ignite, so I madethe three of them powder horns with real bp and got three converts. Hank

 

[Rat Trapper]

I have found you get way better accuracy with loose powder rather than using pellets. Pellets cost too much regardless what kind of gun you are using them in. Loose powder in a speed loader is just as fast on the reload as couple pellets. The boxes those pellets come in are not sealed up real well either????????? Oh they shoot good enough to hunt with in a modern muzzle loader, but there are better options.