New Swiss Powder-Who's Got Any & Shot it?

[Steve Rhoades]

Rabbit poop?

[beltfed]

Wow, Spherical Black powder. Imagine how accurately it should meter.

OTOH, being uniform in size, it may not have as high a bulk density as
the existing range of "fractured" grain sizes.
beltfed/arnie

[DeadEye]

JB,

Butch was testing it in Phoenix last November at the Arizona State Match. He liked it but hadn't finished his testing.

Paul

[Tebbeman]

I testd a can of it and really like it. It meters very well (as expected) and consistent. Pretty much the same load density as 1.5 Fg that I use and accuracy was the same. I'll buy it when it's available.

KT

[arnie]

Are they changing all there powder to this type or is this something new ? Arnie

[longshot10x]

Question: Here we are one of the Premier BPCR forum's and we can't get any info or product
info on new developments in Black powder or support from the makers of Blackpowder?
Do they care? You would think they would check in from time to time?

[Smokin]

I think they don't care that much in that there are about a couple-three dozen regular or semi regular posters here and that is not a very large market to massage.

[beltfed]

It is noted that ammonium nitrate fertilzer comes as small prills aka little balls.
I do not know exactly how the prills are formed, but--
Perhaps they adapted such a procedure from the AN producers.

beltfed/arnie

[Jim Watson]

Not likely.
Ammonium nitrate prills are formed by melting and dropping, just like lead in a shot tower.

[beltfed]

Thank you Jim re. melting and dropping AN to make the prills
I did not know just how it was put into that form.

beltfed/arnie

[Jim Watson]

You got me to thinking.
You can also pan granulate ammonium nitrate although the process is more usual with other fertilizers; including potassium nitrate.
It might be adaptable to gunpowder with a lot of safety precautions.
Have to be something of the sort.

[opencountry]

AN prills are formed by spraying a mixed liquid slurry through a small orifice nozzle into a hot bed of prills tumbling (rotating) in a huge spherodizer. I worked in an AN-producing plant for (16) years, and worked on these spherodizers constantly (they're high maintenance).

Robert

[Dutch Bill]

Are they changing all there powder to this type or is this something new ? Arnie

This was a shot at making a powder specifically for black powder cartridge loading. The Swiss had some old machinery sitting around from long ago.
In the last half of the 19th century almost every powder company attempted to make perfectly spherical powder with a very uniform grain size. The idea being that with those grains there would be almost no variation in the relationship between the weight of the charge, in the case, and the amount of volume it occupies in the case. At one point in time Ely claimed a maximum shot to shot variation in a box of cartridges of 20 fps.

C&H (ICI) tried a process they called "rilling". But the biggest problem in forming perfect spheres with black powder is getting the density of the grains high enough.

Bill K.

[Jim Kidwell]

Are they changing all there powder to this type or is this something new ? Arnie

C&H (ICI) tried a process they called "rilling". But the biggest problem in forming perfect spheres with black powder is getting the density of the grains high enough.
Bill K.

Bill,

So what are you saying??? Good / Bad, So -So???
Do you think today's state of the art is up to producing a "Ball" black powder???

Not trying to bait you. I am just curious, since I respect your previous posting. ...............................................Jim

[Ken Heier]

Thanks for posting, Bill, good to hear from you.
Ken