muzzleloader is on-BH209.

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Axis II

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The price of this stuff has always turned me away and also the need for a new breech plug so I've always stuck with pellets. Well pellets wouldn't shoot very consistent in my 50 cal cva optima v2 and after trying 3 different bullets I was about to give up. I broke down and purchased BH209, new breech plug, cci magnum shotgun primers, 300gr .452 Hornady xtp and black smooth harvester sabots and head tp the range. I fouled the barrel with 3 primers and fired the first 4 rounds and they too were all over the paper I was ready to give up! After some scope adjustments my 5th shot hit 1'' left of bull, shot 6 touched #5 and #6 and #7 hit the same hole as #5.

Now for the pros and cons

Pros-7 shots fired and no resistance whatsoever like normal pyrodex or 777. IMO a 5yo could have seated these bullets. I really like not having to swab and the extra cost of the powder makes that okay for me. I believe It to also be more accurate and no large smoke clouds. You can also weight the charges to be more consistent. Velocity is also a little higher then 777.

Cons-it is messy when dealing with the breech plug, spent primers, and muzzle. It has a very oily feel to it and water will not get it off your hands. It is also very expensive when having to buy a new breech plug and 10oz/50-60 shots for $36. I've never had powder residue on the muzzle from 777 but this seems to leave black oil on the muzzle/crown. This powder cannot be downloaded like 777 from what I've read so higher charges might not be suitable for youth or recoil shy. At 100gr of volume recoil wasn't too bad but definitely gets your attention.

All in all with the price, oil residue, etc I can deal with that for not having to swab every 2 shots and the accuracy is amazing.

I cant wait for the first week of January to try it out on a deer. I shot a large 8pt last year with 120gr 777 pellets and 250gr shockwave/sst and didn't get a pass through and he ran a ways. I'm hoping these 300gr 45cal bullets do much better. ​
 
BH209 is a smokeless powder adapted for muzzleloaders and will not clean up with water or soap and water. It needs the same thing you use for your smokeless modern guns .. Hoppe's # 9 or other gun cleaner like Shooter's Choice, G-96, etc.
 
Patocazador said:
BH209 is a smokeless powder adapted for muzzleloaders and will not clean up with water or soap and water. It needs the same thing you use for your smokeless modern guns .. Hoppe's # 9 or other gun cleaner like Shooter's Choice, G-96, etc.
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Thanks, I'm guessing this is in response to my water wont get it off your hands comment? We have snow here and I tried washing my hands in the snow and wouldn't come off and even at home I had to use soap 3 times. I'm glad I can use Hoppes cause the Muzzleloader cleaner is expensive. I have a lot of it left and some 777 stuff so this spring ill do some 777 loose testing to use up the supplies.
 
why didn't you like it?
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I bought it when it first came out to try. CVA didn't have the BH209 breech plugs at the time, came out with those a year or two later. I was told to use a wire gauge drill bit on my breech plug, but that was too much hassle.

I've decided that if I want to shoot a smokeless powder, I'll use my .308. :rolleyes: Ain't like Texas has a REAL muzzle loader season, like one BEFORE gun season.

The subs are a bit of a hassle in general for ignition. I want to order some BP, maybe 6 lbs, should last me 30 or 40 years and that'd be well past my life expectancy. :rofl: I like 777 for the power, but when I shoot my sidelocks and my wheel guns, I want easy ignition. Even my home made percussion caps will set off FFFG in my revolves reliably. :D Swabbing the barrel every couple of rounds on the CVA or the Hawken is just part of the routine. And, clean up with 777 on the CVA isn't a big chore at all. If I'm going to shoot smokeless, might as well make it easier to reload in the field....as in lift bolt, pull bolt back, slam bolt forward and lock. DONE, and without a ram rod, imagine that! :rofl:

Purely for hunting and cheating the muzzle loader rules during a muzzle loader season, I understand the attraction of BH209. But, like I say, even the counties like mine that offer a muzzle loader season offer it at the END of the gun season. And, it ain't like I would actually GET a shot that time of year and if I did, clean up isn't a big deal to me. :D
 
MCgunner said:
I bought it when it first came out to try. CVA didn't have the BH209 breech plugs at the time, came out with those a year or two later. I was told to use a wire gauge drill bit on my breech plug, but that was too much hassle.

I've decided that if I want to shoot a smokeless powder, I'll use my .308. :rolleyes: Ain't like Texas has a REAL muzzle loader season, like one BEFORE gun season.

The subs are a bit of a hassle in general for ignition. I want to order some BP, maybe 6 lbs, should last me 30 or 40 years and that'd be well past my life expectancy. :rofl: I like 777 for the power, but when I shoot my sidelocks and my wheel guns, I want easy ignition. Even my home made percussion caps will set off FFFG in my revolves reliably. :D Swabbing the barrel every couple of rounds on the CVA or the Hawken is just part of the routine. And, clean up with 777 on the CVA isn't a big chore at all. If I'm going to shoot smokeless, might as well make it easier to reload in the field....as in lift bolt, pull bolt back, slam bolt forward and lock. DONE, and without a ram rod, imagine that! :rofl:

Purely for hunting and cheating the muzzle loader rules during a muzzle loader season, I understand the attraction of BH209. But, like I say, even the counties like mine that offer a muzzle loader season offer it at the END of the gun season. And, it ain't like I would actually GET a shot that time of year and if I did, clean up isn't a big deal to me. :D
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I mainly switched because 777 loose cant be purchased locally within 30 miles but every Wal-Mart around me carries the black horn. I tried a bunch of different bullets and the pellets just never worked well. I also noticed my new cva optima gets a really, really bad crud ring in the breech area that my other two cva rifles did not. Swabbing wouldn't help unless there was solvent or water and most the time i would have to attack it with a brush. I don't shoot the muzzleloader all that much but maybe 15 rounds a year. I will sight it in during the summer/fall and then double check zero a month or so before season and then take a few fouling shots a few days before opener because of 777 corrosive properties i don't want it left in the gun more then a day. This new gun definitely likes to be dirty. Best group was 2-3'' with 777 pellets and couldn't seat a bullet after 2-3 shots and if i swabbed anything accuracy went down the drain to 4''+. it took about 5 shots with black horn even after shooting 3 primers to get good accuracy.
 
Well, jeez, Walmart? I can't recall ever buying ANY black powder sub from Walmart. I do remember they had packs of 20 Great Plains 385 grain Minies at a Walmart once, were selling 'em for a buck 50 a pack. I was the only one in that town even interested and I bought 'em out as I recall.

I have to go to a gun shop for powder. There's a new gun shop over in Columbus that stocks all sorts of powders. Walmart has nothing concerning black powder. In Texas, nobody cares. :D I think it has something to do with a lack of a primitive firearms season.

But, I have to drive to Columbus or Hallettsville, 20 miles to either, just to find a Walmart. If I want a super-Walmart, I drive 40. And, each of those towns has a gun shop. :D Whether they'll have any BP sub on a given day is a gamble, though, and BH209 would be the LAST sub they'd carry, just don't sell that well. Pyrodex is number one followed by 777.

My CVA Wolf will fire a 2" 100 yard group with 385 grain Great Plains Minies from a clean barrel swabbed with water and dried every 2 rounds. If it wouldn't, I'd look for another rifle.
 
All my Wal-Mart's used to carry was 777 loose, pyrodex and 777 and pyrodex pellets but visiting all 3 of them they only have the white pellets in the tubes and BH209. My hunting partner switched to using BH209 and this also persuaded me to switch incase one of use forgets something we use the same thing. They also used to carry several different bullet/sabots and now only carry the 200-250gr shockwaves. Its almost like someone doing my regions purchasing is a fan of it. I used to like when they carried the 777 stuff because end of season i would grab a bunch of it for really cheap. I'm hoping they do that with black horn at the end of the month.

It is expensive, not that many shots per jug but i just couldn't live with 3-4'' groups. :) This new rifle is picky on what i can and cannot do but i think i have it figured out now. My old optima and buckhorn as well as a buddies wolf would shoot whatever we fed it for the most part. He threw two 777 pellets in the wolf with a clean barrel and fired the first shot and hit the bull and the next 2 followed the first and he smiles and says i'm done and leaves me sitting there with a bag of bullets and sabots. In the spring i may take the drive for 777 loose if walmart doesn't put the BH209 on clearance and see what loose does for me. I just cant see driving 50miles round trip. :) I have a cabelas 10min away and they never have powder.
 
I just cant see driving 50miles round trip. :) I have a cabelas 10min away and they never have powder.
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Well, I just can't see having to drive to a shooting range or to go hunting. I just walk out my back door to shoot and into the woods to hunt. :D

But, ya know, I got my fill of living in town, no mas! And, in Texas, we normally measure distance by the hour. It's not 60 miles to the nearest Academy, it's an hour. :rofl:

I may pick one of those BH209 CVA breech plugs up and try the stuff again this spring. I can order the thing online, easiest way to buy stuff out here. :D
 
MCgunner said:
Well, I just can't see having to drive to a shooting range or to go hunting. I just walk out my back door to shoot and into the woods to hunt. :D

But, ya know, I got my fill of living in town, no mas! And, in Texas, we normally measure distance by the hour. It's not 60 miles to the nearest Academy, it's an hour. :rofl:

I may pick one of those BH209 CVA breech plugs up and try the stuff again this spring. I can order the thing online, easiest way to buy stuff out here. :D
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amazon was the cheapest for the plug and occasionally puts them on sale for less then $25.
 
lastofthebreed said:
BH 209 is my go to black powder substitute. I loads easy and the accuracy I get using it far outstrips the best I ever got with 777. Sure it's a little more expensive, but in the overall scheme of things, not that much more.
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Absolutely my experience as well. BH 209 turned my very best pretty accurate ML into an incredibly accurate shooting machine. I am a 100% convert to BH 209.
 
MCgunner said:
Okay, Senior Patocazador turned me on to this product for my Hawken. I'm going to try it with BH209, supposed to work. If not, it'll replace my small rifle primer adapter I have on it now and make that gun even MORE reliable. :D

http://www.pineridgeblackpowder.com/mag-spark.html
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I put one on mine but never shot it. The person I sold the gun to said it shot really nice. I didn't ask his powder setup but there are a few videos that show where they load a 10 grain load of blackpowder/FFG in it first behind like 80 grains of BH209. Now I don't remember if that was with the old primer holder or the 209 one. I would suspect that the 10 grain preload would be for the old style primer and that you could use straight BH209 with the new 209 primer holder. Sorry not to be more help, but I added the 209 primer holder and sent it out and reblued it and I redid the stock and sold it to a new up and coming Smokepole hunter. I just wouldn't recommend using the same charge weights with BH209 as FFG because BH209 has much more snap to it. Remember that on Muzzleloaders that say 150 grain max that BH 209 says not to go over 120 grains for safety reasons. So I would start at 72 grains of BH209 and go from there. Check my math but 120 grains is 80% of 150 grains and 72 grains is 80% of 90 grains. If I remember correctly, they recommended max loads of 90 grains of FFG in those rifles. Could be wrong. Check me on that. Just trying to share what I've learned.
 
DKSDonnie said:
I just wouldn't recommend using the same charge weights with BH209 as FFG because BH209 has much more snap to it. Remember that on Muzzleloaders that say 150 grain max that BH 209 says not to go over 120 grains for safety reasons. So I would start at 72 grains of BH209 and go from there. Check my math but 120 grains is 80% of 150 grains and 72 grains is 80% of 90 grains. If I remember correctly, they recommended max loads of 90 grains of FFG in those rifles. Could be wrong. Check me on that. Just trying to share what I've learned.
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The conversion ratio by weight for BH209 is use only 70% of what is used in black powder loads. I shoot 90 grs. of black powder by weight but only 70% of that with BH209. It weighs out at 63 gr. for that load. (90 x 0.70 = 63)

The nipple hole or breech plug hole should be cleaned out every 5 or 6 shots with BlackHorn 209. Carbon buildup can plug the hole after just a half dozen shots.
 
Well, thanks for the heads up. I did the priming with pyrodex on my inline, but it defeats the purpose. The whole deal with BH209, why I tried it, was to get a clean gun, no swabbing between shots on the range, and non-corrosive.

Yeah, I've been reading that this 209 primer adapter is supposed to fire BH209 in a sidelock. I'll see when it gets here. I'll play with the charges, too. I don't intend to weigh charges, just go by volume. I'll chronograph things and work up with numbers to back me up on what I'm doing.
 
Patocazador said:
The conversion ratio by weight for BH209 is use only 70% of what is used in black powder loads. I shoot 90 grs. of black powder by weight but only 70% of that with BH209. It weighs out at 63 gr. for that load. (90 x 0.70 = 63)

The nipple hole or breech plug hole should be cleaned out every 5 or 6 shots with BlackHorn 209. Carbon buildup can plug the hole after just a half dozen shots.
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Yepper, you're correct. I weigh all my loads for my speedloaders because I'm anal and I reload so I'm used to weighing charges. I don't like the volume method. It's close but not close enough for me. I shoot 77 grains by weight/110 grains by volume out of my Knight Disc extreme with 300 grain Harvester PT Golds and it shoots great. BH209 is too nice to work with. I'll never go back to Blackpowder.
 
.209OTE="MCgunner, post: 10712656, member: 22716"]Well, thanks for the heads up. I did the priming with pyrodex on my inline, but it defeats the purpose. The whole deal with BH209, why I tried it, was to get a clean gun, no swabbing between shots on the range, and non-corrosive.

Yeah, I've been reading that this 209 primer adapter is supposed to fire BH209 in a sidelock. I'll see when it gets here. I'll play with the charges, too. I don't intend to weigh charges, just go by volume. I'll chronograph things and work up with numbers to back me up on what I'm doing.[/QUOTE]
I couldn't find the video on Youtube but like i said, he used the regular sidehammer #10 caps and used 10 grains of blackpowder then added the BH209. The #10 caps won't ignite BH209. As PATO corrected me because it is 70% less with BH209. I would go no higher (With the 209 primer for the sidelock) with BH209 than 63 grains because that's the equivalent of the max for those guns of 90 grains by volume. Now I had a friend who had one of the original Knight Hunters (First Inline) or Maybe it was the MK85, that said max was 90 grains. He called Knight and they told him he could go to a MAX of 120 but I don't know if the sidelock would handle that. I wouldn't try it.
 
My Cabela's gun says no more'n 90 grains of ffg or equivalent by volume pyrodex RS. Now, then, I'll run this by you. What I plan to do is weigh out 63 grains of BH209, then find the right Lee scoop that throws this weight and use that scoop. It is 70 percent by WEIGHT, right???? Oh, hell, I see Pato answered this already, yes, by weight. :D

I'll fire 10 percent less than that and chronograph it. I know my Hawken Hunter Carbine shoots about 1400 fps with a 385 grain Great Plains Minie and 90 grains Pyrodex RS. If I get a LOT more, I'll scale back. 1400 fps is plenty for 100 yards. The gun has only a 20" barrel, light and handy. :D
 
MCgunner said:
My Cabela's gun says no more'n 90 grains of ffg or equivalent by volume pyrodex RS. Now, then, I'll run this by you. What I plan to do is weigh out 63 grains of BH209, then find the right Lee scoop that throws this weight and use that scoop. It is 70 percent by WEIGHT, right???? Oh, hell, I see Pato answered this already, yes, by weight. :D

I'll fire 10 percent less than that and chronograph it. I know my Hawken Hunter Carbine shoots about 1400 fps with a 385 grain Great Plains Minie and 90 grains Pyrodex RS. If I get a LOT more, I'll scale back. 1400 fps is plenty for 100 yards. The gun has only a 20" barrel, light and handy. :D
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Like I said, a friend of mine had one of the original Knight inlines and it had a short carbine barrel and with 90 grains of Triple 7 and a 240 grain Hornady sabot, it would knock your teeth out. The only time I really look at fps is when I start to see higher than normal advertised fps with a certain bullet/powder/gun/barrel length combo which tell me that I have too much pressure and it's time to back off. I'm not a speed freak, I want it group as tight as I can get it too and hit what I aim at. I would say that through testing, that's why Blackhorn has come up with the percentage multiplier of .70 to equal the pressures of say the black powder equivalents and Blackhorn 209. I'm sure they are looking at the safety side because BH209 has more snap to it. I would guess that the velocities of 63 grains (BY WEIGHT) of BH209 would be very close to the same velocities with 90 grains of Pyrodex RS. I'm curious to see if you find that to be the case. I've never tried that test. I trust the makers of BH wouldn't put anyone in a dangerous situation. You may also find that backing it down to 80 grains of Pyrodex RS or 80 X .70 = 56 grains by weight of BH209 will give you better groups. You may even drop back to a 300 grain projectile and still will do an excellent job of taking down game and you will gain some fps and lesson the recoil. Remember also that the bigger the bullet, the faster twist rate you need to stabilize them. It's been awhile, but I thought that most of the Hawken and some other sidelock muzzleloaders had slow twist rates like 1 in 40 something and 1 in 60 something so they might have trouble stabilizing heavier bullets. Hence better accuracy with lighter bullets. Testing and trying different setups is why it's so much fun. The sense of accomplishment in the end is what it is all about.
 
specificCgunner, post: 10704243, member: 22716"]Well, I just can't see having to drive to a shooting range or to go hunting. I just walk out my back door to shoot and into the woods to hunt. :D

But, ya know, I got my fill of living in town, no mas! And, in Texas, we normally measure distance by the hour. It's not 60 miles to the nearest Academy, it's an hour. :rofl:

I may pick one of those BH209 CVA breech plugs up and try the stuff again this spring. I can order the thing online, easiest way to buy stuff out here. :D[/QUOTE]

What year is your CVA? I was going to do the same with my CVA but found out they don't make a BH209 specific breech plug for my year. If I remember correctly, CVA told me anything from 2009 an older didn't have a special breech plug for BH209. You could only get one for the 2010 models and up. CVA told me to get a drill bit that was .035 and driil the hole and it would shoot BH209 fine. Just keep the bit with you and clean the hole every 6 shots or so because they will sometimes clog with carbon from the 209 primers. The primers make more mess in my knight than the BH209 does.
 
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