Curtis and Harvey’s, how old is this powder?

[Chocktaw Brave]

A friend gave me this, I’ve never heard of them. Looks like 3F granulation from the size. No other markings on the can.

[Daryl]

Appears to be similar to the cans of powder we bought in the 50/60's.
Does it have a rubber pouring spout fitted into an odd shaped hole in the top, or a screw top.
If a screw top, it is from the 70's.

[Chocktaw Brave]

Rubber flip up cap.

[Longknife]

Premium powder back in the day! Shoot it!!!!

[smylee grouch]

Yep, good powder. Shoot it and then save the can,

[Dphariss]

A friend gave me this, I’ve never heard of them. Looks like 3F granulation from the size. No other markings on the can.

Up until maybe the 1920s-30s, along with a couple of premium American powders, C&H Diamond grain was if not the, then one of the best powders ever made. It and a couple of the best American powders were preferred by serious rifle shooters. However, by the 1960s, if not before, their "propellant" powder was made in Scotland in a blasting powder plant. It was really poor stuff and required a 10 gr or more of powder to even get to DuPont/GOI/GOEX velocities as was documented in the first Lyman "Blackpowder Handbook" from the early 70s. Bill Knight explained that being made in a blasting powder plant the powder was probably not milled properly for a rifle powder and/or could easily have had some Sodium Nitrate contamination. I believe that Diamond Grain ceased to be made when the Spanish Civil War cut off the supply of the charcoal they used. Dupont had literally killed off the high grade BP Industry in the US by about 1900. They bought every powder company in the US and shut down or scraped all the BP making. Forced divestiture then resulted in 2-3 Smokeless powder brands being established. But by then the demand for and the plants to make good blackpowder were gone. Only Swiss comes up to the old sporting powders of the late 19th c.

[Daryl]

I've shot a LOT of this C&H powder, some Dupont, some Meteor made in Scotland. I would say that the Meteor was the worse of the bunch, but it all shot.
C&H of that time was down on power, that's for sure.
With the rubber stopper/pour spout, this is likely from the 50's or 60's. IIRC, we (Taylor and I) paid $0.98 for a pound of C&H back then, for our little cannons.
Those C&H 1 pound cans of 3F had rubber stopper/pour spouts.

[duca]

To Cool!

[Bob Roller]

I've shot a LOT of this C&H powder, some Dupont, some Meteor made in Scotland. I would say that the Meteor was the worse of the bunch, but it all shot.
C&H of that time was down on power, that's for sure.
With the rubber stopper/pour spout, this is likely from the 50's or 60's. IIRC, we (Taylor and I) paid $0.98 for a pound of C&H back then, for our little cannons.
Those C&H 1 pound cans of 3F had rubber stopper/pour spouts.

Down here in the Lower 48 we called it Hartless&Scurvy and I bought it from Farris Gun Shop in Portsmouth Ohio.Charge for charge it would out perform DuPont or Kings.I still have a can of it.
Bob Roller

[Daryl]

Funny thing, Bob. Taylor and I called it that, back in the 60's.

[David R. Pennington]

Posted for another member who may add comments

[alyce-james]

Good evening. Couple of extra pictures of the Curtis and Harvey's "FFF" Gunpowder can. I started shooting muzzleloaders in the spring 1974. This was the first powder I used. This has the rubber pour spout. Note picture #1 Pour spout in open position. Thanks for looking. Ya'll have a good Tuesday. AJ

[Daryl]

This appears to be identical to the cans of C&H we bought in the 70's.

[OLUT]

I agree with the 1950's - 60's dating. The rubber top can was around when I first started shooting black powder in the late 1950's.
As a general reference to old powder cans, especially duPont brand, check out the Hagley museum on-line collection .... it's a great resource

[Pukka Bundook]

We bought our first C+H powder back in the UK in 1970.  the cans looked like these, but I never did see the rubber pour spout on any of them!
Some had a nice picture on them of a snipe or something.    Most had  a plastic lid that had to be pried out.
I still have my cans as I liked them and used them for bulk Goex when we  came here.
I think the white plastic containers with black lids and marked C+H held  the powder made in Germany.

Bill Curtis RA, a sadly missed member of British Militaria Forums, was a descendant of the original Curtis in the business. He was a wealth of knowledge on 19th C powder.

[Daryl]

LOL - memories are just that, sometimes askew. Right-on Richard. Saved the day. I now remember those plastic caps.
When the can was almost empty, I'd just grab it with thinner nosed (not needle nose) pliers and pull it out towards the narrow side which
pulled the tin of the can into a small spout. This allowed me to get ALL the powder out of the can. Otherwise, impossible.
The rubber stopper/pour spout was from the 50's/60's as well as likely earlier. Most had a quite soft rubber. It also could be easily pulled out leaving an odd shaped hole.

[EC121]

I bought C&H from a store in Columbus, GA in the 80s.  They sold 25lbs. of it in a plastic bag in a cardboard box.  It was up to the customer to have his own cans to hold it.  I remember dipping it out of the bag with a coffee cup and using a funnel to fill the cans.  I remember seeing the superfine dust floating out of the funnel looking for a spark.

[Daryl]

Up until GOEX went out of business, we used to buy it in 25 pound plastic bags, in a cardboard box- or in 25 individual cans, in the same size box.