Practical Comparison of Goex, KIK, and Elephant Powders.

[James Kelly]

Seems to me this comparison ought to include the Swiss powder, which is actually available. I added a few cans of Swiss to my ancient stock of duPont mostly because of what I've read from Evil Ogre/Mad Monk/Bill Knight. With respect to granulation, Ned Roberts seems to have preferred the coarse grain in his rifle, even Fg I believe.
Wish I could say I've shot enough to have formed an opinion of my own.
But, after 1/4 century away from black, its been enuff just to figure out how to load the Modern Shallow Groove barrels of my Pedersoli rifles.
Anyway I suspect a more appropriate comparison these days would be between GOEX and Swiss.

[vermontfreedom]

soon after I joined this forum, I made a couple of posts with a bunch of data from my .54-cal flintlock, 44-inch Rice barrel in 1:72 comparing velocities of 0.535 PRB using some loads of FF from Goex, Schuetzen, Elephant, and Swiss.

A more recent post including KIK is here http://www.traditionalmuzzleloadingasso ... php?t=8719

I can't seem to find the original posts even after a thorough search in the "search" box - I think the posts were before TMA migrated to a new host and maybe the posts didn't carry over??

Anyway, all my velocity testing is with an "F1 Shooting Chrony" placed 10 feet from my .54's muzzle so my data wouldn't apply to any other rifle, but perhaps the pattern is discernable.

I won't repost the data here, but if you or anyone would like that data, I can send it to you in an Excel sheet or a simple summary.

Bottom line from my testing for my gun: Swiss is the best powder for velocity at a given volume and least amount of fouling. Goex, Schuetzen, and KIK are about dead even in all respects: velocity, cost, fouling. Sometimes I'll shoot the non-swiss stuff just for kicks, but my hunting and 90% of my practicing is with Swiss. My wife uses the other stuff in her .50 so at least it gets used. I hope to get a smoothie some day "just to burn up all the FF I have laying around"...

Because my .54 is 1:72 and perhaps just because that's what it likes, I have to shoot hot loads for decent accuracy. That's why I shoot Swiss: 80 and even 90-grain FF Swiss loads are accurate, 70, 75, 60-grain loads are not as accurate. To get the same accuracy with Goex or other powder, I have to shoot 100-120 grains FF, which causes a lot of fouling.

My 90-grain Swiss loads were about 1820 fps. Recoil was a bit steep for me (I'm sure bigsmoke would call me a wuss   so I dropped to 80 grains, found no loss in accuracy, and save 10 grains and some pain each shot.

I can achieve velocities with Swiss comparable to Goex/Schuetzen/KIK using about 15% less powder with the Swiss loads. However, if you're a penny pincher, the volume savings is not enough to offset the price difference because Swiss is pretty dern expensive.

VF