semi-smokeless v. smokeless powder
Does anyone know of a loading reference which compares the pressures of the semi-smokless powders shotgun powders produced from the mid 1890's through the 1930 and standard smokeless powder. From what I've found semi-smokeless powder was basically smokeless powder with about 5% blackpowder.
The reason I ask is because I have my great grandfather's Belgian , 12 ga double. It has Belgian semi-smokeless proofs, "fluid steel" barrels.
Apparently my great grandfather originally used black powder rounds on advise of the gunsmith that sold him the gun new, and did so up until they were no longer available locally about the mid 1930's. My dad recalls being with his grandfather when the local gunsmith told him that he could no longer supply blackpowder rounds. The gunsmith recommended the use of "low brass" commerical one ounce loads of 3 dram equ. (ie,.Remington Shur Shot)The old man took the smiths' advice and thereafter did all his rabbit and bird hunting with that load .
The gun was passed to my dad & uncles , and now that they're all gone, it's my safe. I've never shot it much simply because it's just to darn long (32" barrels). From the old family photo's I've seen you could probably fill a box car with all the pheasant, rabbits and ducks taken with it. More than just couple of foxes never made it to the henhouse,
I'm just curious as to whether there was a substantial pressure differance between semi-smokeless and smokeless rounds. Morever I can't understand why semi-smokeless powder was even ever used in the first place. I HAVE NO INTENTION OF RELOADING FOR IT! THANKS
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Quote:
Originally Posted by
kcw
I'm just curious as to whether there was a substantial pressure differance between semi-smokeless and smokeless rounds. Morever I can't understand why semi-smokeless powder was even ever used in the first place.
Sorry for bringing this old, dead thread back to life [ZOMBIESZZZ! ARRRGGHH... :lol:] but stumbled across it while looking for info on the transition from BP to smokeless myself and thought I'd answer this.
Prior to the advent of non-corrosive primers, BP residues diluted & carried away a lot of the corrosive priming salts, so semi-smokeless had some "best of both worlds" attributes: you didn't have to stop shooting to clean BP fouling mid-string, & were condemned to cleaning your firearm immediately after use regardless, and true smokeless was more expensive than BP [my, how that has changed!]
As to pressure concerns, I just read that Annie Oakley preferred Schultze powder over black in the period prior to the invention of true smokeless. Accroding to one contemporary report, Schultze was rated at approximately 3x the power of BP by charge weight [but was apparently much bulkier, so you ended up w/ only slightly more power when equivalent volumes were utilized.]
True smokeless powders [by Vielle, Nobel, Abel] were both MUCH faster burning than BP and produced much higher pressures and more dense, making it impossible to load by volume in the old BP manner.
Also, early smokeless powders were notorious for various negative attributes. One of the worst of these was running hot & "burning barrels" [this was one of the downsides that led to abandoning the 6mm Lee Navy, fwiw.] So until smokeless powder manufacture matured in product consistency, etc. and primer formulations changed, semi-smokeless had a lot going for it.