Using fly's Balck Powder corning press dies

[brushhippie]

I have been making my own powder for some time and up until lately the screen powder was good enough for everything I needed to do...NOW however I have a new old Colt I recently acquired I need to load some cartridges for (Colt 1895 civilian) so I called ol fly up and had him send me one of his pressing dies for pressing the powder into pucks for grinding...and gave her a whirl...works pretty dang good!... I cant wait to shoot some of this stuff...check it out! I believe he gets 20 bucks plus shipping.
http://youtu.be/I2DgcMuIXIY

 

[CANNONMAN]

More info please

Does pressing into pucks assist "saturating" the charcoal with the Kno3 more so than hand pressing and screen milling? Or...? Is ceramic grinding to prevent unintentional ignition or just a better grinding method? What is the history of the creation of pucks? Is there a storage benefit?

 

[brushhippie]

Compressing it and grinding to size gives you a product that measures just like commercial powders and once compressed takes up less space...you cant load enough screen powder into a cartridge but once compressed you can...and they say it burns much cleaner...not sure why but cleaner is always better. I have some ground and plan to shoot some at the test range later this week...I am anxious to see how it comes out myself. I believe the ceramic jawed grinder it to reduce the chance of spark...but I must confess I ran a little bit though my grain mill today (I just dont see it making sparks) and it came out awesome. I ground some up in one of those small glass pepper mills and it came out great as well..but having plastic jaws you could see the damage after one puck...so wouldnt last very long but inna pinch...

 

[Diogenes415]

I'm not familiar with loading BP cartridges so please forgive the noob question... is a finely ground powder usually used in BP cartridges as opposed to an FFg or FFFg powder?

 

[brushhippie]

What I have ground is in the neighborhood of fff....I dont think you want a finer grind it just has to be compressed to get enough in there....a full cartridge of screen powder inna 45 shell might be 15 grains.

 

[Diogenes415]

Gotcha... thanks!

 

[ofitg]

I'm not familiar with loading BP cartridges so please forgive the noob question... is a finely ground powder usually used in BP cartridges as opposed to an FFg or FFFg powder?

Curator made an interesting report on the powder used in 1880's cartridges - see post #17 in this thread -

http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?p=9386701&highlight=powder#post9386701

Rodwha has also posted interesting info on the Hazards Pistol Powder used in those times. I have read that the stuff was so finely granulated it could dribble through the flash channels in modern nipples.