by Noisydad » 02 Nov 2014, 8:19 am
BP comes in different sizes of granules starting with 1F (quite course and mostly used in cannon) and going up to 4F which is very fine and mostly used for priming "rock bashers" (flintlocks). Most front stuffers, cartridge rifles, and pistols use 3F. BP generates way lower pressures than modern smokeless powder but it burns differently - it's legally classed as an explosive rather than a propellant.
BP shooters would regard the felt recoil as a big heavy push rather than a hard kick but having said that you can still get knocked around a fair bit by some of the big bore cartridge rifles for instance the .45-70; .45-90; .50-90; .50-110 etc. and of course muzzle loaders that are loaded up as you don't have the constraint of a cartridge case to limit your loads.
I think there would be very few people that could tell the difference in recoil between brands of powder.
Son of Noisy's clay target shotgun loads are 55 gns of 3F and we use the same measure (by volume) for both powder and shot and it's recoil is very mild.
Felt recoil has more to do with the weight of the bullet being launched in other words - inertia. My Sharps .40-65 uses a 415gn bullet with 57gns of 3F powder (slightly compressed to fit it in the cartridge case) and it's recoil is a fair bit more than my .54 cal muzzle loader using a 225gn round ball (also with 57gns of 3F for target shooting) even though the Sharps weighs a pretty hefty 7 kilos.
Last edited by
Noisydad on 05 Nov 2014, 8:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
There's still a few of Wile. E Coyote's ideas that I haven't tried yet.