Picked up this old Hawken style rifle by Investarms and I really have been impressed with the accuracy. It has a chrome lined bore and 22 inch barrel, the peep sight is a huge improvement from the original blade style. It's a very capable rifle with PRB out to 100 yards with 80 grains of black powder at nearly 2000 fps!
Finally got time to post the benchmark results for my home made antique muzzle loading propellant. Using 77-13-10 Pacific Willow charcoal and milled for 18 hrs with brass media then compressed to a density of 1.75g/cm3 , screened to 2F then glazed for 2 hrs it was the first powder I've made that actually threw down to the grain in my powder measure!
Shot #5 on the chronograph is Goex 3F, shot #4 is Swiss and #1-3 are home made - all are 50 grains by volume.
If the fouling from Swiss is considered light and hard then the fouling from my powder would be soft and heavy - requiring cleaning every 4th shot, but coming away easily with even a dry patch.
Not sure how to elevate the performance to Swiss levels but I will start with matching their granule size and milling the charcoal independently for a few hours. Any thoughts would be helpful!
Just another angle for anyone who's interested. Old rims beware, this thing is devastating!
Testing out my 77-13-10 2F Willow charcoal black powder in my muzzleloading rifles. Unfortunately only the 25 yard range was open at the time so I couldn't get any idea on groups, but the chronograph on both rifles shows velocities slightly higher than Goex, and short of Swiss by a good margin. I'm curious because looking at the Swiss 2F powder and Goex 3F my 2F powder looks quite chunky - I think I'll grind it to a finer mesh, maybe what I would consider a 3F would equal Swiss 2F and my velocities would improve. Spreads were great though, less than 20fps between shots!
Pacific Willow charcoal @ 600f, double recrystallized KNO3, 77-13-10 ratio with dried ingredients all milled to air float then combined in a 90 RPM ball mill with brass media for 18hrs. Pressed to 1.75g/cm3 FFF granulation.
Made a quick stop into the range today to test out a new to me rifle. It's a 45 caliber Hawken with a 22-in barrel. When I purchased it it had clearly been abused by its previous owner having the breech plug clamped in a vise and a pipe wrench used to unscrew the barrel - it was pretty beat up. So, it was a great excuse to learn about draw filing, re-bluing, and making a custom front sight.
With a hand cast .440 patched round ball. This rifle was incredibly accurate out to 200 yd where I was able to consistently hit a 12-in target with little effort.
Equally as exciting for me was benchmarking my homemade antique muzzle loading propellant against Swiss and Goex powders. I was a little disappointed at first starting out with 50 grains of each kind seeing my powder 80 fps below Goex (1380's vs 1460's), but as I increase the charge weights the performance gap disappeared. At 80 grains and just shy of 1,800 fps with nice soft fouling I have to say I'm somewhat satisfied.
I'd still like to do better, as Swiss was much cleaner!