Pyrodex -- again

[Norton Commando]

I feel like this subject has been discussed many times over but I couldn’t find much when I used the search function on this site. Perhaps I didn’t use the correct key words, so I apologize if I’ve overlooked it.

Anyway, my experience with Pyrodex P recently is that it’s way more corrosive than the genuine black powder. I want to like the stuff because it seems to shoot just fine in my 1858 Remington and my 1860 Colt Army and the price is right compared to black powder.

But I’m having trouble with the corrosion issue. I don‘t know if this is a perceived or real problem, as it’s been some 28 years since I used real black powder. Can anyone verify that Pyrodex is or isn’t more corrosive than the genuine stuff?

Thanks,

Jason

 

[zimmerstutzen]

There are many who noticed the same as you. Including myself. There are a few who maintain that it is about the same. A friend of mine claims to have collected fouling from Pyrodex and fouling from black powder and measured the ph in some kind of scientific manner and that Pyro fouling was indeed more corrosive.

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I found that I had to clean guns fired with Pyrodex much more diligently than guns fired with Goex or Elephant BP or Triple 7 BP substitute. Pyrodex also seems to be harder on cleanup of brass cartridge casings.

 

[Captain*kirk]

Pyrodex IS more corrosive. Which means, for me...absolutely nothing, since I completely strip, clean and polish after each shooting session. Pyro is NON-PROGRESSIVE FOULING, which I love. If you are going to clean and oil your guns each time after shooting, you'll be fine. A quick wipe-down & chuck it in the closet for 6 months; expect trouble.

 

[Dellbert]

Jason

I've always thought coex black powder was cleaner than Pyrodex P, But it's easier to get the Pyrodex. Never had a problem with Pyro messing up my rifles, or revolvers. I just clean the firearm at the end of the day after shooting. I left my first revolver uncleaned over night, and thought it was all over when I looked at it the next day, but it cleaned up real nice with just hot water, soap, and bore butter inside and out. Sence that day I clean them as soon as I'm done shooting for the day. Pyro has a little more power, or speed than coex. I tryed Triple 7 and it's not really clean like they say it is. When I get the chance I will stock up with the real black powder again. Till than just shot the Pyrodex and clean. I hope this helps you out.

 

[frontiergander]

chris hodgdon says pyrodex is no more corrosive than their goex brand black powder. Like anything, if you do a piss poor cleaning job, what do you expect will happen?

 

[Kitchen_Duty]

Ok, I'm really new into black powder sports and since we are talking about it:

How does triple 7 weigh into all this:

more/less corrosive?
more/less fowling?

More importantly can i shoot it in my hawken with a 15% reduced load volume like it recommends?

 

[frontiergander]

less corrosive but leaves behind a nasty crud ring that makes having to swab between each shot a must.

You can shoot it in your hawken but may experience hang fires due to it requiring more heat to set off.

 

[Dellbert]

Triple 7

Yes you can use trip 7 in anything that you use black powder in. Just back off the amount you use by about 15%. So if you use 100grs goex in your rifle, just put 85grs of triple 7. With the hawken you may want to go with musket nipple, and caps. Same thing with revolvers, just back off the powder charge 15% I fond it is dirty to, but water clean up is all it takes.

 

[J-Bar]

"Anyway, my experience with Pyrodex P recently is that it’s way more corrosive than the genuine black powder."

If you don't mind sharing, could you be more specific? Which parts of the gun have corroded? How long did you wait between shooting and cleaning, and how did you clean the gun?

I don't have any stock or other financial interest in Hodgdon. But I like Pyrodex. I just loaded 100 rounds of .357 Mag for my 1873 rifle with Pyrodex RS for an upcoming match. I also loaded 50 rounds of 12 gauge shotshells with Pyrodex RS for the same match. I use Schuetzen 2F in my handguns because the lower ignition temperature makes me feel more secure with percussion caps, but I have used Pyrodex in cap and ball revolvers and won my category with it. I have competed in cowboy action shooting for the past 13 years, and have burned more Pyrodex than any other BP or substitute.

I clean my guns and brass thoroughly within a couple of days after shooting and have not experienced corrosion using Pyrodex. I like it.

I don't doubt that you have experienced corrosion. I'm just not yet convinced it is the brand of powder that is to blame.

 

[Norton Commando]

J-Bar,

The day after shooting, I stripped the gun (1860 Colt Army) down to the last screw and scrubbed the bore with a wire brush followed by patches soaked in Hoppes powder solvent. I also removed the nipples and scrubbed them with a fine wire brush and reinstalled them with NeverSeeze. Next I squirted everything down with a liberal dose of WD 40 and vigorously rubbed all surfaces.

Then after about three weeks I noticed rust blooms on the edges of some of the nipples and a bloom or two on the OD of the cylinder. It was odd to see this blatant rust after a complete strip-down, thorough cleaning and liberal dosing with various cleaners and lubricants.

So there you have it.

Now this last shooting secession I dunked everything in water, scrubbed the bore, etc and then blew everything dry with compressed air. I followed up with liberal doses of WD 40 and more compressed air. We'll see how the water method holds up over time.

Jason

 

[J-Bar]

I swear by Hoppes for cleaning up after smokeless powder, but prefer Ballistol when cleaning after BP or any sub. I dilute Ballistol with tap water, 10 to 1 and use it on an old toothbrush on everything except the bore, which gets soaked with the mix, followed by a boresnake. The Ballistol leaves a bit of protective film, I guess.

Maybe its a geographical thing. You face different conditions than I do inland. I just hate to see a powder that has worked well for me condemned outright.

Hope you find a combination that is satisfactory. Bring those guns up to Missourah and we'll run a field test!!

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Here in the very humid east, I would travel a few hours to matches and a good strip down cleaning wasn't possible before leaving the match. After 4 hours drive home and unloading, cleaning then was a late night chore. I would give the guns a quick swabbing with Hoppes black powder stuff, wipe it down good and clean the next day at home. With Black powder it was never a problem. With Pyrodex the gun looked ruined by the next day. I now use old army ww2 surplus bore cleaner which does a better job of cleaning and seems to do a better job of nuetralizing the powder fouling residue. Leaving it a few days until thorough cleaning is no problem.

 

[bill97222]

Regarding the 777

You'll read all over the place that you must reduce your Black Powder loads by 15% when using 777... It's repeated like gospel on these internet Black Powder sites.

I can only speak to shooting Cap and Ball revolvers, perhaps in a single shot applicaton other factors come into play, but let me be perfectly frank... I never had any Black Powder loads in the first place.

The statement is made like it has something to do with safety.

I've shot 50 grains of 777 in my 2nd Dragoon and 40 grains in my 1858.

I would not recommend either of those loads... neither is easy on a pistol, but neither was unsafe or even unpleasant to shoot in my pistols.

The statement might be more accurate if it read, reduce your Black Powder loads by 15% if you'd like to approximate those loads using 777.

Start low and work up.

 

[45-70 Ranger]

I have used Pyrodex off and on since it hit the market years ago. The only time I ever saw anything form on my weapons was once when I got lazy after a days shooting and I left my weapon to clean in the morning. I was greeted with heavy grey fuzzy stuff all over the place. However, cleaning in the normal fashion took care of the mess. I can't complain as it was me being tired and not wanting to take the time to clean when I needed to.

Now as to T7? In my pistols, I clean like I always do and no problem. In my cartridge weapon I have had rust form a day or two after cleaning. But then again I believe this might also be related to the choice of oil used in this piece. But this is in another thread and I won't tie this one up with this problem.

Been shooting a BP weapon since the mid '60's and have loved every minute of it. From the stink, the smoke, the nasty cleaning, I don't care, it is just plain good fun. With the real BP being hard to get at times, we will use subs and they have their own set of rules I think. There is always a chance to learn more on things, and with this forum we get that chance. So many of us here in different locations with years of time in the field so to speak, we all learn from eachother as we go.

Ok, I gotta go to work....See ya guys and have fun and be safe!

Wade

 

[Carl N. Brown]

I now use old army ww2 surplus bore cleaner which does a better job of cleaning and seems to do a better job of nuetralizing the powder fouling residue.

If I recall Hatcher's Notebook correctly, GI bore cleaner was designed to deal with corrosive chlorate priming compound. If it will handle WW2 corrosive primer fouling, it ought to be good for handling corrosive BP substitute fouling.

 

[ZVP]

I have had good luck controlling barrel and chamber fouling if I use an over the propellant Pistol Wad.
Evidentlly, the lubricant saturating the Wads and the remnants of the fired Wad clean-up powder residue and fouling.
When I use an over the ball grease, fouling becomes more aparrent.
A cornflake-like deposit begins to develop within 8 hrs after shooting. This removes easilly with soap and water.
ZVP

 

[Macgille]

HOT water and soap (or detergent) works for me. Scrub em up and oil em down. No rust on any of my guns. I use light machine oil (sewing machine oil) and wipe every surface. May be old fashioned, but I am old.

 

[shunka]

Real Black Powder contains sulfur and potassium nitrate and charcoal. On combustion we get gasses (which propel the bullet) and byproducts of incompletely burned material (fouling). Both are corrosive due to the resultant chemicals formed.

Pyrodex contains, among other things Potassium Perchlorate. That is the material with which people take issue. Unfortunately it *is* Chemical Science. Any chemist (and any advanced chemistry student) who is also schooled in metallurgy and corrosion can understand and explain the difference in corrosion vis-a-vis chlorates and steel.

It has been proven in various scientific tests that when fired in a gun, the residues from
Potassium Perchlorate (whether via "corrosive primers" or via any powder mix), are
particularly corrosive to steel (not so much to wrought iron) at a microscopic level
and is particularly difficult to stop once this corrosion gets started. This was very
well known in the early 1900's and became the topic of the "corrosive primers" discussions in the past.

It is because of this particular "perchlorate corrosion" associated with Pyrodex that people are upset.

The big advantage In My Opinion to Pyrodex is that it is not classified in the same manner as BP, and thus is treated in the same manner as Smokeless for transport and storage. To quote my Chemist friends, "Potassium perchlorate is a low-order detonating compound. But when you mix it in with a bunch of other things it is now longer capable of going low-order detonation." (Thus it is less sensitive than BP) .

Also "Compared to potassium nitrate, the potassium perchlorate simply provides more oxygen in a shorter period of time." so you need to use less Pyrodex than BP *BY WEIGHT*

- Both BP and Pyrodex are corrosive. But not in the same way.
- Both can be cleaned - but with different cleaners to stop the corrosive action.

one must pay attention to the nasty details.

the big issue is that if perchlorate salts are missed during cleaning the resulting
corrosion is initially subtle but aggressive.

This sort of corrosion is more easily seen and dealt with in C&B revolvers than in closed-breech ML, and is even less apparent if Pyro is used in cartridges.

I have contacts in the Very High End ML gunsmith community who have dissected modern made traditional ML rifles and analyzed the corrosion to the Breech. To a man they are all able and willing to identify the unique perchlorate corrosion and evaluate how badly the breech has been compromised.

The basic problem is clearly that the perchlorate residue has not been adequately cleaned, thus allowing corrosion to proceed. Whether the corrosion is due to BP or Pyro is irrelevant. What is relevant is that the appropriate cleaning solvent was not used.

Lately the advert is that Pyro "is no more corrosive" than BP. That statement, whilst
technically correct in some ways, is misleading to newbies without telling them exactly what cleaning product *will* kill the "corrosive salts".

It is unfortunate that "back in the day" Pyrodex was in fact advertised and marketed as
a BP substitute that did not require the kind of cleaning that BP needs. That was both
unfortunate and wrong, and we can blame the "marketeers" and their usual hype.

In fairness to the marketeers it is nothing different than advertizing that "Kedz Sneakers make you run faster and jump Higher" or that "Koldgate toothpaste makes your smile whiter".

Unfortunately, once the product is purchased and used, the reality of the situation strikes home, at times with a vengence, and the marketeers are nowhere around to pay the piper.

yhs
shunka

 

[MCgunner]

Meh, maybe I clean my guns throughly, anyway, but I can't tell that Pyrodex is any worse. I can say it doesn't gum up the cylinder on a .51 navy as quick as does Goex. I can go near 100 rounds with Pyrodex, only got around 50 with Goex before things started to gum up. Whatever, I can't get black anymore, not possible for a decent price. Have to order it and pay more for the hazmat fee than the powder costs. If I want to keep corrosion down, and at least it's much easier to clean, too, I shoot 777. The stuff is marvelous, FAR better in my revolvers than either Black OR Pyrodex. Traditionalists hate me, but I don't care, i'm a pragmatist. I'm also a chemistry minor and understand about perchlorates, but I seem to clean up Pyrodex just fine and if it is more rust prone, I wouldn't know it. With any charcoal, fake or otherwise, CLEANING is the solution to corrosion. The cost of black isn't worth it to me. 777 is the out of the ball park answer for corrosion. I'd hoped APP would work, but that stuff sux. Too many other problems.

BTW, I clean everything with hot, soapy water. What "cleaning products?" I find DAWN to work pretty well.

 

[Norton Commando]

Shunka -- thank you for the well-thought-out response to the Pyrodex corrosion issue. So what is the best cleaning solution to combat this "perchlorate corrosion" ?

 

[Norton Commando]

Mcgunner -- so Tripple Seven is less corrosive than BP and Pyrodex? What solution is the most effective at cleaning T7 residue?

 

[shunka]

My Dear Monsieur Commando -

Regarding The Cleaning of Perchlorate Salts

It appears that it is no longer generally well known that "modern bore cleaning solvents" are not effective on chlorate salts; this does unfortunately include Hoppe's No 9.

It used to be generally well known that "hot soapy water kills the salts"

Some feel that that a strong lye soap is the key, whilst others maintain that the hottest water possible is the cure.

However, being a pragmatist, if one is using very hot soapy water "which one does it" becomes irrelevant

Some feel that the vinegar in Windex will do it, this I do not know.

whilst one fellow believes "Hoppes says right on the bottle 'neutralizes corrosive salts'", there is an excellent discussion seen here on THR:
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-571391.html

with excellent points by Jim Watson, which if I may snip his statements:

snip...
Hoppes does not neutralize the corrosive salt (potassium chloride) from chlorate primers.
Nothing "neutralizes" the corrosive (chloride) salts, they are already neutral.
...
{{meaning, PH neutral which he later clarifies}}
...
The only reliable way to deal with corrosive primers is with water. You can dress it up with Windex or peroxide or emulsifiable oil, but it is the water that dissolves the potassium chloride. Then dry and oil.
...
The research that showed what the problem was with newfangled smokeless ammunition came out in a paper titled "Corrosion Under Oil Films."
...endsnip

and he later states regarding Hoppes:
...snip
The corrosive residue from chlorate (or perchlorate) primers is potassium chloride, KCl.
That is what is known as a neutral salt, the product of reaction between a strong acid and a strong base. A KCl solution is at or very near pH 7 which is as neutral as you can get. So you cannot neutralize it in a chemical sense.
...
Hoppe's main ingredients on the MSDS are kerosine and alcohol. KCl is not much soluble in either.
So you would be depending on it flushing out the salt physically.
...
endsnip

In the book "Gunsmithing" by Roy Dunlap, the author writes: "Water must be introduced to the chlorate or salt-containing primer mixtures ... Oil will not disolve salt..."

And A wonderful post by Jowen Lawson here:
http://pistolsmith.com/workshop/9338-soap-water-pistol-cleaning.html

briefly discusses the issue and the "fix" by the U.S. Army: extremely thorough cleaning of the firearm using boiling water and Government Issue soap. It is my opinion that the only "magical property" behind GI soap is that it is already issued

hope this helps


yhs
shunka

(I trust my excerpts and snippets follow "fair use" and THR standards ; if not please feel free to edit as req'd)

 

[[email protected]]

That's why I been using water to clean my Black Powder guns for 50 years.

 

[45-70 Ranger]

Many a GI back in WWII were known to take their striped down M1's into the showers to clean their weapons when showers were available. Nearly all primers then were corrosive and the soapy water did the trick while cleaning themselves to boot.

This information came to me by my father, and not personal testing. I'm old, but not that old!

This lends to the theory of the GI soap and hot water with primers with the salts and such eh? All I know is that if ya clean your weapon right it will not be an issue. Use WD-40 or similar product, you can expect rust in a bit as it's gonna happen.(This will start a war over the WD-40 thing, but I can't help that. It does have it's followers. But it does contribute to rusting) Good protective oils or the synthetics available for preservation will keep your shooters looking good...

Lessons learned by an old man that worked on weapons for Uncle Sam, the PD, and his own gunshop for the past 50 years. But there are some here that have more time in this sport that me and they will be able to make some input here as well that will aid us in keeping our weapons clean and happy! We learn from all on the forum.

Wade off his little rickidy soapbox....it was a GI soapbox by the way......