AmericanLongRifles Forums
General discussion => Black Powder Shooting => Topic started by: Molly on January 28, 2017, 03:53:37 AM
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I know an person who has a case of this stuff from years ago. In plastic containers unopened and sealed. From what I am reading it was a dud of a product. Anyone have a different view?
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Mad Monk is the local authority.
I'd pour it all in a pile and have a party and light it up. But then I have good access to black powder.
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I have a friend that tried a pound of it an he hated it. I think he ended up pouring most of it out. I myself have never shot anything but black in my over 35 yrs of this sport so I cant say personally
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It eats guns alive. I don't believe it has much of a shelf life either.
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Seems like it's a confirmation that the stuff is no good. The maker is also out of business and has been for a while. Nothing like the real stuff!!
Thanks!
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Pour all of it in a pile with a long trail up to it. Light it up and if it all burns up it's ok for making pile fires. ;D
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I've never used anything but black, myself; I don't trust any of the subs.
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Clean Shot is a bit old by now. That was another in a long line of powders based on the use of ascorbic acid. In my patched ball guns I found it to be weaker than BP. In my .50 when I went over 100 grains to try and get some velocity it actually lost velocity.
Clean Shot was one of the ascorbic acid powders that did not use potassium perchlorate to speed up the burning so it would be minimally corrosive in the gun. Most of these ascorbic acid powders had chemical stability problems. Once the grains start to clump, or stick together, in the container it will give lower velocities compared to fresh powder.
This ascorbic acid based powders that are based on a mixture of potassium nitrate and ascorbic acid are "cool burning" powders. They produce very little heat during powder combustion. They are more accurately gas generating compositions. The lack of heat generation is why they are not known for higher velocities.
Clean Shot had been involved with Hodgdon over Clean Shot's pellets. Hodgdon claimed that Clean Shot was infringing on their pellet concept patent and won in court. So the Clean Shot company was quickly folded and reformed as American Pioneer Powder. I should point out that Clean Shot had been formed out of the failure of Black Canyon Powder Which was an evolutionary powder out of Golden Powder. There were several other attempts at the ascorbic acid powder concept that saw short periods of limited production or no production at all. One of the no shows was to be called Longrifle powder. One of the guys from that group gave up on ascorbic acid and switched over to fruit sugar and potassium nitrate which became GOEX Clear Shot. As I joked. If I got into it I would have made on called Cheap Shot powder. Was always good for a few laughs at Dixons.
These ascorbic acid based powders produce only potassium carbonate as a solid product of combustion so bore fouling is little as easy to deal with. They produce mainly carbon dioxide as a gas. But they do produce varying amounts of water as a product of combustion. This can be a problem in the smaller caliber percussion ignition rifles. After a few shots you may see enough water in the breech that prevents the ignition of subsequent charges. With the cool burning you may see a good bit of the water produced condense in the breech. Not enough heat to turn it to a vapor, steam, which would be carried out with the gases once the projectile leaves the muzzle.
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Is he going to pay you to take it?
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The fruit sugar thing reminded me of something that happened right after I got out of the service, and before I quit drinking. In my father-in-law's basement, my brother-in-law and I were making rocket fuel using confectioner's sugar and saltpeter. We had half a fruit jar full, on the floor, and were testing half a teaspoon full on a metal table. We were adjusting the proportions of the mixture. When the test sample was lit, it threw an amazing flame and sparks everywhere. One wayward spark landed in the jar. Flames from the jar hit the rafters and spread an impressive way across the overhead. My father-in-law was alerted when white sweet smoke began pouring out of the heater vents. It is hard to imagine how much chaos that half a jar of saltpeter and sugar made in about 5 seconds. No house fire ensued. In my own defense (I guess) It was doubtful that either Tim or I were entirely sober at the time.
I am not entirely at fault here. Ask me about the time Tim created a steam explosion in a big smoker and blew two frozen turkeys 100 feet in the air. I had nothing to do with that. Although Tim might still differ with my assessment, no one was seriously injured.
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Damg frogwalking. You are kinda like an airplane crash. If you can walk away from it, it was a good landing.
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How about trying to find a re-enacter that isn't going to worry about velocity, just bang, and smoke, and make him a deal.
Hungry Horse
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The fruit sugar thing reminded me of something that happened right after I got out of the service, and before I quit drinking. In my father-in-law's basement, my brother-in-law and I were making rocket fuel using confectioner's sugar and saltpeter. We had half a fruit jar full, on the floor, and were testing half a teaspoon full on a metal table. We were adjusting the proportions of the mixture. When the test sample was lit, it threw an amazing flame and sparks everywhere. One wayward spark landed in the jar. Flames from the jar hit the rafters and spread an impressive way across the overhead. My father-in-law was alerted when white sweet smoke began pouring out of the heater vents. It is hard to imagine how much chaos that half a jar of saltpeter and sugar made in about 5 seconds. No house fire ensued. In my own defense (I guess) It was doubtful that either Tim or I were entirely sober at the time.
The difference between how the sugar burns versus ascorbic acid is why the one guy from Golden powder switched over to fruit sugar in the powder.
Plants make ascorbic acid from the basic sugar molecule. With Golden powder they mixed solutions of potassium nitrate and ascorbic acid then heated the solution in a baking dish in an oven to dry it. The ascorbic acid also went through a heat decomposition reaction. None of them understood what was going on in this heating and their ascorbic acid supplier was handing them a line of nonsense as to the chemical reactions going on during heating. But the basic was that the heat was simply breaking down the ascorbic acid, giving off the OH groups the plant had tied to the sugar. So basically they were starting with $9 a pound ascorbic acid. Then heating it to revert it back to 50 cents a pound caramelized sugar. Took the guy behind Clear Shot 20 years to figure that one out. GOEX's Clear Shot came pretty close to their black powder in performance in the gun.