blackhorn 209 with booster charge for 1858 remington

[experimentor]

Wanted to use blackhorn 209 in my cap and ball revolver for easy clean up. Finally came up with 10 grain by volume American pioneer sulfurless powder topped by 20 grains blackhorn 209. very accurate but not chroned yet. what do you think?

 

[grter]

Be careful Blackhorn 209 packs more punch than any of the standard black powders or substitute

You may wind up shooting the remmy loose before it's time. These Italian copies don't use the same metals as cartidge firearms.

In a Ruger Old Army you should be fine

 

[Patocazador]

If it works, go for it with a 30% reduced charge. I tried it with 4F blackpowder and BH209 in duplex loads in my ROA and got inconsistent results. About 10-15% were hangfires.

A conversion to small pistol/rifle primers is necessary for consistent ignition of the BH209. There was one on the market years ago called a 'Flam-in-go'. You may be able to find some (6) on an auction site.

grter is right, a Pietta or Uberti is not a Ruger. Be careful.

 

[experimentor]

didnt work out

well it was the most accurate load I tried but probably because of the blackhorn. But how do clean two different powders that require water only and solvent only? I just get tired of cleaning my black powder revolver. By the way American pioneer is very very irradic. Thanks for your thoughts on safety.

 

[RPRNY]

I have never found AP to be a consistent powder. I think if you used something like Olde Eynsford, Swiss or even Goex as your primer, you will diminish standard deviation and increase ignition reliability. Clean with Ballistol / water mix. I use OE as a booster at 15grs and 50 grs Triple 7 in Marlin 444 Black Powder cartridges.

The no 10/11 percussion cap is plenty for any 1858 load. A 209 or pistol primer in the 1858, if you could even work it out, it's way too powerful. It would knock the charge halfway down a 7.5" barrel before the powder would even start to ignite!

 

[frontiergander]

American Pioneer needs to be compacted TIGHTLY. It always does best with heavier projectiles or tight fitting projectiles. When my .44 comes in I plan on trying some APP as well just the fun of it. Its very easy to clean up APP.

 

[experimentor]

I think half the fun of shooting black powder firearms is adjusting loads and trying different powders so easily. But I would truly enjoy being able to go out in the back yard, shoot a cylinder full and put the gun up till next time. I am not always in the mood to go through the cleaning just to fire a few rounds.
Modern cartridge guns just don't seem to give me the same satisfaction shooting.
On clean up thoughts, guess clean up is about the same whether its a little bit dirty or completely gunked up. Until someone invents a sub that is non corrosive, solvent cleanup, I should just stick to true black powder. Its the cheapest propellant I can buy anyway.

 

[mykeal]

I've been shooting black powder since 1972. In that time you hear a lot of, well, stuff, and I thought that by now I'd pretty much heard everything. Today I learned my lesson - there's always another one just around the corner.

A 209 or pistol primer in the 1858, if you could even work it out, it's way too powerful. It would knock the charge halfway down a 7.5" barrel before the powder would even start to ignite!

Thanks, RPRNY, for keeping it interesting.

 

[rodwha]

From people's posted results, what I've seen is that BH209 gives very similar velocity compared by volume, Triple 7, which I've also seen posted results showing similar velocity to that of Swiss and Olde Eynsford. It seems those 4 powders are all much more energetic than the other powders.

Triple 7 was burned alongside Pyrodex and Goex on a piece of steel. After several days left in the garage it showed that Pyrodex ate into it quite nasty, followed by the BP. But T7 barely left a mark after clean up. I'm not so sure that this means it's OK to leave it for a while, but it certainly is less corrosive.

And what I have read and tested is that after firing a BP weapon it can wiped with Ballistol and left with no ill effects. The theory being that the Ballistol oil soaks into the residue leaving no way for moisture to contact the steel. I left mine in a Texas garage and the next day it was just fine. I sprayed Ballistol EVERYWHERE.

 

[RMc]

I have never found AP to be a consistent powder. I think if you used something like Olde Eynsford, Swiss or even Goex as your primer, you will diminish standard deviation and increase ignition reliability. Clean with Ballistol / water mix. I use OE as a booster at 15grs and 50 grs Triple 7 in Marlin 444 Black Powder cartridges.

The no 10/11 percussion cap is plenty for any 1858 load. A 209 or pistol primer in the 1858, if you could even work it out, it's way too powerful. It would knock the charge halfway down a 7.5" barrel before the powder would even start to ignite!

Did the use Black Powder as a starting booster reduce or eliminate the heavy carmelized fouling 777 leaves in cartridge cases?

 

[RPRNY]

Did the use Black Powder as a starting booster reduce or eliminate the heavy carmelized fouling 777 leaves in cartridge cases?

Reduce ? Yes. Eliminate ? No. I started with 5 grs OE and didn't get full or very clean T7 combustion, although with Magnum primers it burns well - but leaves a lot of crud in the brass. With 15 grs OE, I get good combustion with LP primers, brass fouling not much worse than straight BP and better velocities from the T7. The fouling is still a little 'stickier' than straight BP it seems.

And to the grizzled veteran Black Powder guru who has been shooting since Jesus was in grade school and has heard it all, I would ask that you share your great wisdom with us poor plebs and tell us about the numerous cap and ball revolvers that you have converted to use 209 primers or pistol primers and how effective these substantially more powerful primers have been in igniting 20 -30 gr charges of powder and 140 gr ball. Please do.

 

[swathdiver]

And to the grizzled veteran Black Powder guru who has been shooting since Jesus was in grade school and has heard it all, I would ask that you share your great wisdom with us poor plebs and tell us about the numerous cap and ball revolvers that you have converted to use 209 primers or pistol primers and how effective these substantially more powerful primers have been in igniting 20 -30 gr charges of powder and 140 gr ball. Please do.

A grizzled veteran of Black Powder leaves well enough alone and would not fool around with duplex powder charges and foreign primers.

A grizzled veteran of Black Powder would sit back and watch because you plebes aren't going to listen anyway!

 

[BCRider]

Experimentor, why not just find a better way to clean out the gun and stick with black?

The barrel is easy. It's just a straight through hole. I dunk my Remingtons muzzle down into a smaller size bucket that is filled to where only the barrel is submerged. This avoids having to clean out the action unless I'm going to do so anyway.

I normally only clean out the action ever 150 or so shots. That's about 4 cowboy action days.

The cylinder chambers are the tough one to clean. But I've come up with a secret weapon that has turned out to work like a charm. I bundle 6 or 7 pipe cleaners together, bend the first 1.5 inch back and fold it hard then bend part of the tail into an offset crank handle. The folded part does a wicked job of cleaning the chambers including the deep end.

The nipples only get removed when the action is cleaned. When I replace them I butter up the threads with some modern synthetic boat trailer grease. They stay easy to remove over the 150'ish rounds between detail cleanings.

I've gotten to where between my barrel bucket and the crank handle pipe cleaner tool that I can clean my 1858 or an 1860 in roughly 10 minutes from trigger lock removal to fully assembled and oiled and ready to put the lock back on. OK, maybe 15 minutes if I doddle a little.

At any rate I see nothing good coming from using two products which require different cleaning methods. Even if you don't end up leaving some fouling in place due to the two "soups" you're doubling the work required.