I too shoot 3F in my traditional .36 & .40 flintlock rifles and my question should have been a little more defined and should have read .40 caliber black powder rifles shot off a rest or bench.

I'm shooting my targets at 30 yards off of a table shooting table using the wooden pyramid rest under the barrel and a small sand bag under the stock for support.

The rifle has a 15/16" x 38" - 1 in 48" twist barrel made by Kentuckian Wayne Jenkins. Siler large percussion lock and Davis set triggers. It has a half stock of Ash and weighs in at 9.7 pounds.

I'm using my regular components, .395 ball, .023 Army duck Mr. Flintlock for a patch lube. That combination and 50 grains of 2F Goex is what I won the TS Aggregate at Friendship with in June.

I wanted to try other powders, so leaving everything else the same I weighted out 50 grains of Goex, Olde Enysford and Swiss. Repeated again with 55 grains and the 60 grains.

I do not wipe between shots, I wiped it out between the different weights of each powder and fired a fouling shot before starting the next test.

I did not detect any more fouling than before  and each shot seemed to load the same.

Suprisingly for each powder 50 grains was good, 55 grains was better and 60 grains began to open back up. I will say that the Swiss may have a very small advantage on group size but all three were much better than the 3F I had been shooting.

I had been fighting fliers with everything I had tried using 3F powder. In talking to one of the vendors at Friendship who was a serious chunk gun shooter in years past and telling him my problems he suggested trying 2F as he had had a similar problem with a .40 that he shot and the 2F solved his problem. So off to the range I go with a whole box of new things to try and it seems to be working out very well.

I am fortunate in that I own some 80 acres of land on which I live, I have a small covered firing line about 40 yards from the house and targets  at 25, 30 & 50 yards. Being a metal fabricator, I have built 2 bullet traps for catching the lead and each one is large enough to take a 24" x 24" target board that slides in tracks across the front so that targets and sighters can be stapled on. We can shoot offhand or table shoot just about anytime and usually there are 3-4 buddies at my place once a week burning up black powder.

Sorry about the long response, hope this answers your questions.

Carl

 

Don,

All of the powder is weighed out on an old Ohaus 1010 beam scale down to a tenth of a grain.

Balls are also weighed and grouped in batches that only vary by +/- .1 grains, 91.1 -91.3 / 91.4 -91.6 and so on.

I have found that charges poured from  a volume measure are not consistent and by weighing the charges I eliminate one more variable that may effect my group size.

I found a batch of small glass vials that I use for the powder charges also. They have rubber stoppers rather than threaded caps.

I do like Mr. Flintlock as a patch lube. I put it on my strip of material with one of those very small spray bottles and spread it out with my finger so that the material is dampened but not soaking wet. Every shot seems to load the same and I can shoot a match without cleaning and shots stay consistent from start to finish. The gun also seems to clean up much quicker at the end of the day.

As you do, I enjoy trying new things to see if I can get just a little more accuracy out of these black powder guns. It is indeed a lot of fun.

We're going to do a little table shooting here today to get warmed up for a shoot Saturday over at Morehead, KY about a 2 hour drive from my house. 3 of us are going, it's a 10 shot match so it will be a good time.

Keep shooting !!

Carl

Barton,

In weighing my test amounts I used a regular adjustable powder measure to get close to the desired weigh and then used a RCBS powder trickier to bring the weight up to the desired weight on an Ohaus beam scale.

2F Goex would be pretty close to the number set on the powder measure. For Swiss and Olde Enysford the powder measure would have to be closed by about 4-5 grains to throw the same weight on the scale pan. Thus the bulk density of Swiss and Olde Enysford is higher than that of Goex.

You can see just by looking that 2F Goex has a much larger grain size than the other two. Matter of fact when I opened up the 2F Olde Enysford and poured some out I thought the can was marked wrong. I poured out some 3F Olde Enysford that I had and it was hard to tell the difference looking at the granules.

2F Swiss was a smaller granule than Goex closer to the size of the 2F Olde Enysford but much more uniform granules.

I think even with weighed charges, the uniformity of the grain size in the Swiss makes for more uniformity shot to shot when used in a rifle on a rest.

Just my thoughts though, I'm sure there a lot of other thoughts out there on this subject.

Carl

A conversation over on the American Longrifles Forum got into differences in powders.
Here's a link to the whole thread: http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=40692.0
I got out my scale, and did a little comparison testing as follows:
For this test, I'm using a plastic Thompson Center powder measure with a pouring spout that slides over the end of the powder chamber. I have checked it against weighed charges in the past and found that it's right on the money with Goex 3f. For this test, I set it to throw "80 grains" and poured it full in the same manner I do when I'm loading at the range. I then emptied the measure into my scale pan and got a weight on it.
Repeated 5 times with each powder, pouring a new charge from the powder can.
My Goex 2f gave me an average actual weight of 73.7 gns. with a 1.4 gn. spread from lowest wt. to highest in the Goex series.
My Swiss 2f gave me an average actual wt. of 80.6 gns. with a 0.7 gn. spread..lowest to highest in this series.
Thanks to a donation from our friend Moleeyes I was also  able to report the following results of 5 charges of Olde Eynsford 2f powder that were thrown, using the same measure that I used to prepare the previous report comparing Goex and Swiss.
As before, repeated 5 times, each time was a new "80 gn" charge from the can.

Olde Eynsford 2f gave an average actual weight of 78.0 gns. with a 2.0 gn spread between the lowest and highest wts. in this series.

I was a little surprised at the spread I got with the Olde Eynsford. It could easily be just personal error and a larger, more statistically valid sampling would wash it out. That wasn't my goal however. I just wanted to find out how the loading density between these 3 common powders compared and I believe we have enough information to know what we should expect, in general terms.

My scale has NOT been calibrated with NIST certified weights.
Your results with your measure and your scale may differ. These are mine.  

Last edited by Don Steele (7/23/2016 4:44 AM)

The wide range observed in the Olde Eynsford results really surprised me. It "looked better" than that.
I've never used it for shooting. I only came be the can to run this test when Moleeyes saw my ALR post and loaned me a can to add to the data.
Swiss is gorgeous. Even though it's labelled "2f" just like the others..it looks more fine than Goex or Olde Eynsford.
That might be due to the more uniform granules. It really looks good. I would go over to it completely but for the fact that I would have to replace the sights on my SMR to accommodate the higher p.o.i. it will give me, and while I'm convinced it's a better choice for serious target shooting, I shoot the SMR offhand, woodswalks, gongs, etc. and (sadly) my offhand ability is not sufficient to ever see much difference.
I am using Swiss for any shooting done from a rest. My tests show a small, but noticeable improvement in group size. Those tests were done using "hand poured charges" at the loading bench, using a volumetric measure. I'm wondering if that small difference would remain if I compared individually scale- weighed charges of Swiss vs. Goex..???
Hmmmmm.....projects...projects..!!

I did weigh some charges of goex 3f and found that 75 gr. by volume was always 71-72 gr.  Reasonable consistency, though I want to switch to Swiss 2f in my 50s especially and will weigh it up when I get some.  I did not weigh charges but was extra careful about consistently measuring and emptying the measure at my next chunk shoot (Louisa) and it did no harm, anyway.  For that match, I did weigh balls to +/-.5 gr and that gave me some extra confidence at the very least, and possibly reduced flyers.  The hornadys ranged from 181 to 187 gr. unsorted.  I'm hoping that 2f Swiss will eliminate more flyers and wide shots.  My intuition is that sight picture and consistent position are most important and my major problems, but it is nice to eliminate as many variables as possible.

Now, let me embarrass myself.  The first trial with 3f goex yielded 71, 38, 24.  Powder was sticking in the brass measure.  I believe this was in part because I was being gentle with the scale, but it could also happen during a match if one wasn't careful.  Exacerbating the problem, in my opinion, was that the powder used was the last bit of a can, so the amount of fines could have been higher than otherwise, leading to compaction.  I've also had the bottom of an adjustable measure come loose, and the resulting inconsistency is not pretty!  That consistent grain size of Swiss is very attractive!

So, I'd been dragging my feet on weighing balls and powder as unnecessary bother given the sorry way I shoot, but it now seems an efficient use of time.

Thanks again, Carl, for sharing your processes and opening up the discussion!

Don Steele,

I did go to the ALR Forum site and checked out the black powder discussion that you referred to.

Read all of it and found it quite interesting and informative.

Thanks for the reference.

Carl

Don,

I've never tried 2F in an offhand rifle, I'm a big fan of 3F Olde Enysford in my 36 & 40 offhand rifles.

When will you be at Friendship for the Nationals? Would like to meet and talk with you a while if your schedule permits. I'm only a little more than an hour away from Friendship, matter of fact if you come up I 75 you go right by my place on your way to Friendship.

Send me an email at flintlock54@zoomtown.com and I'll give you my cell number and maybe we can meet and discuss this fine art of black powder shooting.

Carl