Powder weights and measures

Skinny 1950

Skinny 1950

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I am shooting revolvers in .36 and .44 cal and have a Colt pattern powder flask with 2 spouts one 15 grain and one 25 grain (real BP). I am currently using a BP substitute (Jim Shockey's Yukon Gold) mainly because it was available at the time. The 15 grain spout gives me .71 grams which is 10.95 grains (1 gram = 15.4323 grains). The flask weighs 148.8 grams when empty and I added 77.9 grams to take to the range. I shot 84 rounds of .36 cal so 84 X .71 = 59.64 grams is the amount that I should have used, the actual amount that was used weighed out at 59.1 grams. The amount of error over 84 rounds is .54 grams or 8.33 grains so 8.33/84 = .099 grains which is slightly better than 1% overall.
I know that I should be using real BP and I will as soon as I can find some,for now I am going to use up the BP substitute.

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I am confused is there a problem with BP substitutes and why should you be using real BP why is it so important to you. I will only shoot BP substitutes because I believe that its just too dangerous to have it in my powder locker. I use triple seven because it does not smell like rotten eggs it is mostly non corrosive when compared to BP and very easy to clean up. I never worry about how much it weighs just how it shoots in my gun and how many shots I will get with a pound of powder. just curious about your thread sounded to me like you were saying sorry for using another powder other than real BP?
 
I would use real black powder to keep the shooting as authentic as possible and get a feel for the way things were back in the day. There are lots of people using substitutes who are getting good results, the powder I am using works pretty good but I have to use a lot of filler to seat the ball properly. If I used black powder I could fill the chamber with powder instead of filler (corn meal).
 
I see where you are coming from now. I too like the authentic concept but I can live with some modern stuff lol. I purchased wads from track of the wolf they work well and seal the powder in nicely. cost me about 8 bucks for a thousand of them. you can buy thicker wads to take up more space.
 
Forgive a newb response, but is black powder not measured only by volume? My understanding was that the substitutes gave you similar results to "real" black powder as long as the volumes used were the same. :confused: Now I'm close to pulling a muscle in my brain sorting out all the grams and grains and whatnot the op put up there! Please, somebody, tell me I can just throw some powder in the cylinder, pack a ball on top (if I've got the balls;)) and carry on Canada. Is it more complicated after all?
 
The substitute that I use is meant to be used as a volume for volume replacement of black powder. My original post was about how accurate the spout is and how I can determine how many shots are in the flask by weighing it. It is not complicated but it is nice to know how much shooting you can do with the amount of powder in the flask.
 
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