Shiloh Rifle Forums

You guys are talking as if with the disappearance of Goex, no there is no BP available anymore in the US?? You just might try some other brands which are indeed imported, but still, they're there... I do find it strange, if there's no Goex, I'll have to go to the substitute BP's. What about Schuetzen, Swiss? Yup, might cost you the Hazmat fee to ship, but hey, it still is the real stuff.

I just stopped using BP substitutes…not about to restart using them…

Since I switched to Swiss several years ago I had lost track of the other BP suppliers. I just spoke with Powder Inc. & answered by earlier question about Elephant & KIK powder. Both are no longer being manufactured. The possible demise of Goex will remove the following from the market: Goex, Olde Eynsford (made by Goex), Graf Black Powder (made by Goex), Skirmish Black Powder (made by Goex). So, unless I missed a supplier, that leaves us with Swiss, Schuetzen & three BP substitutes: Pyrodex, Blackhorn 209 and Triple Se7en.

BTW, WANO brand BP is still available but it’s intended for the pyrotechnics (fireworks) market. WANO is manufactured by WANO Schwarzpulver GmbH, the same German company that makes Schuetzen.

Wayne

Thread on the Muzzleloading forum this morning, saying that DuPont will be taking over Goex at the end of the year..
Be interesting to see if it pans out.

DuPont has 150 research and development facilities located in China, Brazil, India, Germany, and Switzerland, with an average investment of $2 billion annually in a diverse range of technologies for many markets including agriculture, genetic traits, biofuels, automotive, construction, electronics, chemicals, and industrial materials.

This was before a merger in 2017. The fly in the ointment is which division would BP be transferred to and where that division is located.

From that thread, one of the DuPont granpooba's has listed their house and is moving to Doyline..
More rumor mill? Stuff who knows.. Guess we'll know more about it this time next year.

What goes around comes around it seems

Looks like it is the old story of: We don't know what we don't know

Well, if DuPont brings it back to life hope they bring back the O.E. I kinda liked that powder but I like Swiss better.

So what is the most dangerous part of making black powder? The ball milling or the granulating and sifting the different grades? Anybody know or have experience with that? I was reading some of the black powder recipes - the ingredients are ball milled into a very fine flour with all the constituents together. Wondering if one could ball mill them separately and reduce the risk of “kaboom” or maybe ball mill the mix slightly damp? I also see that they press wet/damp black powder in a press with a die and turn them into pucks or disks. Seems like it takes a few tons of pressure. The article was saying when done right the disks are extremely hard and dense and have ring to them when struck. They are then dried to a certain moisture content and then granulated. It also seems that the quality and consistency of the charcoal is a big factor as well.

I recall from reading that the most dangerous part of the operation is the “corning” step, where the dry, pressed cake is broken up and the particles separated by size with sieves. The powder cake is bone dry and hard, easy to set on fire from friction or grinding.

The manufacture is detailed in The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives, by Tenney L. Davis. The book has been in print forever; might be On Line by now.

It’s like color case-hardening; the procedure itself is pretty straightforward, but the nuances and artistry are only gained by long experience. The critical part of the operation for uniformity is the milling, or incorporation, step. The individual ingredients are pulverized, then mixed together and “incorporated” with two heavy wheels that spin and roll around in a circular trough. The mixture is slightly dampened, which helps incorporate the saltpeter, but the rotation of the heavy wheels actually presses the sulfur and saltpeter into the pores of the charcoal. The more uniform the incorporation is, the better and more consistent the product, but getting every pore filled with exactly the same amount and proportion of the other ingredients takes time and good judgement, which is a big expense.

If the people who were working at Goex are still around when (hopefully) the new buyer starts the place up, the products might be back with few issues. But if they’ve taken early retirement or moved on, and new people have to be brought up to speed, it might take a while.

I worked for Coast Fuse, an outfit that made safety fuse for mining. We blended lots of black powder of differing burn rates together to get the fuse to burn at a rate of two minutes per yard. The calculations were made off a burn-rate curve developed by DuPont, which had been dead reliable for decades. But when DuPont sold the business to Gearhard-Owen, and the operation was moved to Louisiana, the curve was off a little, and the calculations had to be tweaked slightly to get the same results as before. Same formula, same machinery, same processes, just a different workforce and location. The Goex powders were very uniform, but not the same as the old DuPont products anymore, and nobody could figure out exactly why.

Too bad—I like Olde Eynsford; not only was it a very good powder, but it was also competition for Swiss, which I hoped would maybe stabilize the prices of both products and keep the quality of both high.

Search "black powder mad monk" why bp is the way it is, the foibles of Goex, the importance of creosote and the temperature of charcoal. And never neglect your water source.

I presume we will have to wait and see. If guessing, the current and historic failures possibly are/were human in origin. Who knows? When that much money and vested interest insurance entities get involved the whole outcome may have been massaged.

We don't know what we don't know.

What worries me ....... Biggest user of BP is the military. It's used for priming in all kinds of munitions. If the gov't were to go into the powder business in order to keep an in-country supply -- probably "government owned -- contractor operated" -- that might be an end to indigenous powder on the open market. There are certain politicians who would love that arrangement.

CHRIS

Being an employee of Dupont, I asked my plant manager if there was any talk about getting back into the BP game. He said he would ask the higher up's. Today I got my answer, it was as follows......NO, at this point Dupont has no interest in going back to making BP, and have sold the machines off to other interested company's, and will not buy/make tham again. Its in our best interest to stay in the chemical, industrial, N&B areas of manufacturing . I thank you for your interest.

So Im taking that a a NO, they are not going to start making powder again. Now this may change at a moments notice if a crisis arises, but short of a world war that they will not. Its a shame that the end of our sport may come down to insurance company's and/or poor wages.

matt