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Old December 11, 2017, 10:30 PM   #26
Sure Shot Mc Gee
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Never heard of anyone having repetitive touch off's using any sub powder in their flash pans. {not at all reliable stuff.} You might try making your own B/P. Which requires a small investment before hand and is easily recovered due to the overwhelmingly high cost of today's store bought B/P. Swiss brand especially.
Living out in the country as I believe you do. Easy peasy making home-made powder when neighbors are not a concern i.e. nosing into your business.
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Old December 16, 2017, 05:23 PM   #27
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Howdy

I have not shot a flintlock in a bazillion years, but I used to use 4F Goex in the pan.

I am a bit leery of these ideas of crushing the powder.

Black Powder can indeed by ignited by concussion of the grains. When grinding in a powder mill, the powder is always mixed with water to prevent any chance of ignition. Later the powder cake is broken up into grains and sifted to separate the different granulation sizes. The thought of grinding dry powder in a mortar and pestle gives me the willies.
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Old December 16, 2017, 05:26 PM   #28
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You might try making your own B/P. Which requires a small investment before hand and is easily recovered due to the overwhelmingly high cost of today's store bought B/P. Swiss brand especially.
Be sure you do not do this in the basement. Do it outside or in an outbuilding that you will not mind losing if the powder blows up. Your home insurance will not cover you if you blow up your house making Black Powder.
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Old December 16, 2017, 06:50 PM   #29
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I got my 1st flintlock in 1971. An unfortunate mishap caused me to loose better than a half container of priming powder. Since that time, I have always ground my own priming powder and have done so without incident. As with everything, you have to use common sense when doing so. Most of my flintlock shooting buddies do the same as well as make flints.
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Old December 17, 2017, 10:07 AM   #30
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I had my first flint lock. I stopped in the gun store and they handed me pyrodox P and R. It would not go off. I tried and tired. Next I tried smokeless powder. Bullseye. No go. Next we held a propane torch to the touch hole. We never got it to fire until I had some real Black.

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Old December 17, 2017, 11:47 AM   #31
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I had my first flint lock. ... I tried and tried.
Next I tried smokeless powder. Bullseye.
Holy Frisson Batman !
I'm assuming in the pan




...but......... really ?
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Old December 17, 2017, 12:32 PM   #32
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I use 4f but all my flintlocks get a flash hole liner upgrade to a rmc liner I've only had 1 hang fire and it has always gone off with first pan powder.
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Old December 17, 2017, 12:54 PM   #33
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Black Powder can indeed by ignited by concussion of the grains. When grinding in a powder mill, the powder is always mixed with water
Can you provide a source for that info? Black powder needs a spark or flame to ignite. There's nothing in black powder that can spark by concussion, just dont use something that can spark when you grind it. I make black powder with a ball mill. As long as your grinding media is a substance that can't spark (I use hard lead, but copper and brass work too), it will not go boom. I do not wet it, and most people I know of that make their own powder don't wet it either.
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Old December 17, 2017, 02:30 PM   #34
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While the initial mixing/corning is done using a wetted compound
and pressed into cakes to dry (completely), the powder cakes are
then literally crushed by huge rollers into final size(s).
See Here for a complete discussion.
https://www.scribd.com/document/1311...-Manufacturing

(Note that while mortar/pestle is fine -- as is large mill rollers/rotary tumblers/ball mills -- the old "rock-crusher/stamper" method is not recommended to continually hammer the compound really hard, really fast, really often........ )**
Can I recommend a low-numbered Springfield to you...?




** the old stampers most likely produced continuously/compounded compression heating.

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Old December 18, 2017, 09:20 AM   #35
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Quote:
Black Powder can indeed by ignited by concussion of the grains. When grinding in a powder mill, the powder is always mixed with water
Can you provide a source for that info? Black powder needs a spark or flame to ignite. There's nothing in black powder that can spark by concussion, just dont use something that can spark when you grind it. I make black powder with a ball mill. As long as your grinding media is a substance that can't spark (I use hard lead, but copper and brass work too), it will not go boom. I do not wet it, and most people I know of that make their own powder don't wet it either.
One hard and fast rule in Bomb Disposal (either training or practice) is to:

NEVER HAND ENTER A PIPE BOMB

Reason being most are make with black powder. (some may not be but you dont know which).

Reason being that grains of BP can get into the threads of the pipe and can ignite WITH NO SPARK INVOLVED.

Now I normally dont like to discuss bomb tech procedures but I thought this would be a good time to throw that out there.

Smashing BP may not always cause problems, but its like seat belts, you dont always crash there just may be that one time.
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Old December 18, 2017, 10:11 AM   #36
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I have made black powder from raw ingredients, way back in the 70s when you could not find any to buy.

You grind it WET.

There is a VERY GOOD reason you do it that way.
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Old December 18, 2017, 10:12 AM   #37
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Bullseye for priming powder David_R? I'll pass on that and I'm glad it didn't work for you.

I tell people to prime with their regular powder - just like the soldiers did in the American Revolution. Priming powder didn't come about until the 1790s and even then, the British soldier primed from his paper cartridge. Riflemen of the British Army had priming flasks (starting 1797).
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Old December 18, 2017, 11:07 AM   #38
David R
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Read closely.

I went to the gun shop and told them I had a black powder flintlock.

They said the Pyrodex would work. They sold me P and RS.

No matter what I did, no joy.

The little bit of bullseye was hard to ignite too. Flint would not do it.
Once I got the bullseye lit, still no BANG from the main charge of pyrodex RS.

Once I got some real black, everything was fine.

I know a guy that made a pipe bomb and used Black. It DID get caught in the threads. It blew. He lost most of his fingers.

David
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Old December 18, 2017, 11:39 AM   #39
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Your BP; Your call !!!

At this point, it might be a good reminder that BP is classified as a Class-A explosive and all other replacement M/L propellant are classified as Combustible-Mixtures. Knew a dealer that had an outdoor storage bunker where he was required to store BP. If you Google BP, it list precautions on how to handle it. I carry a classification of "Vintage" and work with BP as well as the latest and greatest propellants. I also know folks that have gotten hurt by "playing" with BP. ......

Be Safe !!!
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Old December 18, 2017, 12:22 PM   #40
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Reason being that grains of BP can get into the threads of the pipe and can ignite WITH NO SPARK INVOLVED.
The threads on the metal pipe and the metal cap can make a spark. Without a hot spark or flame, black powder will not combust.

Quote:
Smashing BP may not always cause problems, but its like seat belts, you dont always crash there just may be that one time.
Don't crush it with metal that can creat a hot spark. Copper or brass will work. A ceramic mortar and pestle will not cause the bp to ignite no matter how hard "you" can pound it.
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Old December 18, 2017, 12:33 PM   #41
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Originally Posted by Wyosmith
have made black powder from raw ingredients, way back in the 70s when you could not find any to buy.

You grind it WET.

There is a VERY GOOD reason you do it that way.
I'm wanting to produce my own BP at some point as well. Many vids showing safe, dry ball milling of BP using lead balls :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3L93yBwjxA
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Old December 18, 2017, 12:48 PM   #42
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I'm wanting to produce my own BP at some point as well. Many vids showing safe, dry ball milling of BP using lead balls
In a ball mill, you mill it dry. Follow all safety rules (no heat or grinding media that can spark). Mill it outside away from houses and anything you care about, as there's always the possibility your mill could have a catastrophic failure, catch fire, etc (not likely). You wet the meal powder to screen it or "corn" it (compress it to make it more dense). If you corn it, you need to wet the meal powder just a little (not as much as if you just screen it). Wetting the meal powder isn't to keep it from blowing up. It is done to help the potassium nitrate dissolve and really get soaked into the carbon and sulfur. Easier access to the oxygen from the KNO3 makes it burn faster. I just wet and screen powder meant for my muzzleloading rifles and shotguns. I corn the powder for my revolvers. I weigh the charges of my own powder instead of using a volume measure. Makes shots more consistent between batches.
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Last edited by noelf2; December 18, 2017 at 01:00 PM.
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Old December 19, 2017, 12:20 PM   #43
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Dry milling is supposed to be safe in controlled environments. However the DuPont factory blew up a few times as have other factories, and they had "controlled environments".

As for me, I would never try it dry just because doing it wet is so much safer and I am not in any huge hurry to get the batch done. When I was a teen I did it a few times and each time it took me about 6 weeks to 2 months to dry it. So what? I never was in any danger, so if I ever made it again, that's how I'd do it.

Others may feel safe doing it dry and maybe they will be.

maybe.........
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Old December 20, 2017, 12:43 PM   #44
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I can find only two references to definite reasons for the various explosions at the DuPont powder mills, and they took place in the packing houses, not the milling areas. Another issue was lack of electrical lighting for the periods the explosions happened. They only had oil lamps, and accidents will happen. If you plan to dry mill your powder, I recommend you don't use oil lamps. They did have a wet milling process because the dust created by such large batches of powder would be hard to control. So I also recommend you don't have a one ton ball mill if you plan to mill it dry.
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Old December 20, 2017, 03:26 PM   #45
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Now don't go off half-cocked...

Since this thread on priming a flinter has gotten milked out pretty fair (wow, really!), I thought I'd go out to the workbench and grind me a little batch of 2fg using my little porcelain mortar and pestle. I haven't had to do the M&P grind for a few years now, as all my priming horns still have plenty in them

And for the sake of all these thread sharings here, I thought I'd just tell of my procedure, and BTW, I've never had any kind of flashing surprises, nor do I ever expect to have one. I did use the two spoons method a long time ago, but the M&P deal is far and away a better way to go. The mortar is 2" across, and 1 and 1/4" deep. The pestle is about 3" long, and looks like a little baseball bat.

Just for the sake of this post, I weighed what I usually dump in the mortar and found it comes out to right at 20 grns. of powder (average for three throws using the powder can cap for a measure, partially full). Using the pestle with just enough downward pressure to feel the grains crush, it takes no time, really, to make good priming powder. I then used a large Siler lock and weighed what I normally use to prime my rifle. I did this 3 times to get an average of two grains for the priming. All this works very well for me, and I know I'm not the only one who does this method. I've never heard of any kind of mishap in doing this procedure.

Our Old Continental soldier and his contemporaries have been mentioned a couple of times, so I thought I'd bring up an old adage that's been around for a long, long time; "don't go off half-cocked." This is how I understand that to really mean, when it was coined back in the day.

Just a scenario:

Holding the musket in the crook of his arm, our soldier grabs for a cartridge from his box just after firing his "Bess" in the volley against the Crown. Standing shoulder to shoulder with his compatriots, he's facing the totally professional British infantry just a mere 40 yards away. They're leveling their muskets, getting ready to fire their own volley against the American line, of which he's part.

The soldier's musket has needed some lock repair for a while now, but the armorer hasn't been able to work on his gun yet. His musket, from time to time, will slip off the half-cock notch and fall on the closed frizzen, which really could give any soldier "the willies," since the proper procedure in loading the musket calls for priming the pan first, with powder from the pre-made paper cartridge. Once primed, and the frizzen closed on the pan with the lock on half-cock, the rest of the powder along with paper and ball is rammed home down the bore. As our soldier rams his load, he hears the British Sgt. Major yell, "Fire," and the crash of musketry fills our soldier's ears as he pulls the rod from the bore. The whole time he's shakily thinking, or maybe even saying out loud to his musket, "NOW DON'T GO OFF HALF-COCKED!"

If anyone has another angle on the meaning of the adage, I'm primed to hear/read it. This has been an interesting thread (IMO), certain sure.
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Old December 20, 2017, 11:03 PM   #46
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The old hands primed from the horn, with what type powder it had in it.

The "priming horn" as some say it today, was either a pistol horn or a "day horn" as it were. This has been debated and the experts agree.
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Old December 21, 2017, 04:46 AM   #47
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I would imagine the "old hands" primed with whatever they happened to have at the moment...but today I think we can do a little bit better job of it by choosing the best powder for the job. While coarser grains will fire up in the pan, smaller grains will ignite better and burn faster. It doesn't take a lot of money or fooling around with it to get the best results.
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Old December 21, 2017, 09:59 AM   #48
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Priming horns that I know of were first carried by the Germanic riflemen of the 5/60 (fifth battalion, 60th Regiment) in 1797. The later raised 95th mimicked them.
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Old January 17, 2018, 04:50 PM   #49
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Grind it wet. Absolutely.
In addition to making the process safer, Moisture aids in the incorporation of the elements so that they become one thing as opposed to finely ground but still separate elements.
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Old January 18, 2018, 11:03 PM   #50
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Forgot what soldier (Brit. Lt. Col. George Hanger maybe) who wrote that dried out Spanish Moss could be used to prime the pan.
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