Herb

[shifty]

Herb I am ready for another of your range reports , I read your others over and over .

[Herb]

I  am trying to find Alliant Black MZ powder to test in flintlocks, but Sportsmen's Warehouse is out of stock.  I'll check them again tomorrow.  If they have it, the weather should be warm enough this week to do some more shooting.  I'll test the JoAnn "pocket drill" or whatever it is called.  Looks like good patch material, I just never had a chance to get it before.  I know many of you use it, but I like to find things out for myself.   Also, some of their thick 100% linen, more of a standardized fabric available to many, compared to the linens I get from HomeFabrics.com.  Am also putting together a walnut stocked .50 GRRW barrel Hawken, fitting the butt plate now, then the underrib and thimbles and then it won't take long to finish.  When that is done, I'd like to shoot full-power hunting loads (as for antelope, I'll apply for a draw again this year, I think my fourth year) for velocity, accuracy and trajectory out to 200 yards in comparison to my .54 and .58 rifles.  Just cause I like to know things.

[shifty]

Thanks Herb will be looking for it!

[jamesthomas]

 I've always bought my Mattress Ticking from JoAnns, measures .o22 for my .50 cal. green Mountain barrel with a .490 ball.

[FrontierMuzzleloading]

Herb, don't bother friend! Its re-labeled American Pioneer that gets an extra screening. Same FPS as Jim Shockeys Gold and kitty litter form.

[Mad Monk]

Herb,

If you do a Google search on Alliant Black MZ you see back in 2011 shooters commenting on it.  To the effect that it is yet another ascorbic acid based powder.

The ascorbic acid based powders never did well in a flintlock even when you ignited the charges with black powder in the lock pan or a little down the breech before loading the main charge.

The ascorbic acid based powders are "cool burning" powders meaning they give off little heat during powder combustion.  When the powder is based only on the usual mixture of ascorbic acid and potassium nitrate they burn very slow in the gun and generally give low velocities.  After the original Golden Powder company went under there were a number of people who had invested in that project and ended up having the legal right to "explore" the basic patent.  So we then saw a number of variants of it under different names.
Then some had applied for patents to "improve" upon the basic concept behind the powder.  These included adding a small amount of iron oxide to the basic mixture to speed up combustion reaction rates.  Then several versions came out that included varying amounts of potassium perchlorate to speed up and strengthen the combustion reactions.  And all of those incorporating potassium perchlorate claimed to be non-corrosive.

With these cool burning ascorbic acid based powders they are mainly gas generation compositions.  The open vent hole in a flintlock gun can cost a bunch of velocity compared to a similar charge in a percussion ignition gun.

With the ascorbic acid based powder the main solid product of combustion is potassium carbonate.  The main gaseous product is carbon dioxide.  Most of these also produce water as a product of combustion.  The amount produced per weight of charge may vary.  This water as a product of combustion is why some are/were described as being self-lubricating in the gun.

In the earliest version of this ascorbic acid concept the production of water during powder combustion was a big problem when shooting a percussion rifle.  After the third or fourth shot you had to remove the nipple and drain the condensed water out of the breech and try to dry it all inside before loading any more shots.

Now for a bit of humor.  When shooting these ascorbic acid based powders at the gun club range in the summer months I had to constantly fight of wasps, hornets and yellow jackets.  I would fire the gun and stand it against the loading bench while getting ready to load it again.  I would turn around and there would be one or two of the named insects crawling around on the muzzle.
Plants make ascorbic acid using the basic sugar molecule to make the ascorbic acid.  When you shoot the ascorbic acid powder it will leave small amounts of what is basically burnt sugar in the bore and on the muzzle.  The sugar loving insects flock to it.  Nothing to repel them as we see with the sulfur in black powder.  But if you shoot the ascorbic acid powder around these insects you sure don't want to try and blow down the barrel lest you get a swollen lip!  A good way to cure such an evil habit!

That is about it for now on this.  Time to fire up the F-11 in FSX and head south.

Mad Monk 

[Herb]

Thanks.  Sounds as if I don't need to try this stuff.  Well, I've got other things to shoot, tomorrow may be warm enough. 

[Larry Pletcher]

I appreciate Bill's commentary.  I timed some of this when BlackMag Industries marketed a version they thought would ignite in a flintlock pan.  It was then called BlackMag "Flash".  I was told it was simply a finer grind.  Fizzle would have been a better name.

At that time I had just added Goex Cannon Grade to an ignition timeline.  "Flash" would need another sheet of paper to properly place it on the timeline. Flash was .140 seconds, making it close to twice as slow as Goex Cannon.



Steve Chapman was at my house when I first ignited Flash in a pan.  We had a lock in the fixture and watched it ignite.  We could see the sparks land in the prime before ignition took place.  We tried it a couple of times, seeing the sparks before Flash ignited.  As a comparison I grabbed some Swiss Null B and tried it.  Of course, no chance to see sparks - ignition was so fast that there was never a chance to see sparks before the pan caught.

If I had nothing else, I'd use Goex cannon before I'd use Flash for priming.
Regards,
Pletch