Lafin & Rand Powder History

[4570guy]

I found this over on the Krag Collectors Association website. Looks interesting.

http://www.laflinandrand.com/page2.html


Lafin & Rand was one of the first (if not the first) powder used in the .30-40 Krag.

[Dutchman]

The only reason I was aware of this is due to some research I did recently for an archaeologist.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Powder_Works

California Powder Works began producing smokeless powder for firearms ammunition in the early 1890s.[1] Peyton Powder, prepared at Santa Cruz under the direction of assistant superintendent William Peyton, had an unusual addition of ammonium picrate to the conventional double-base formulation of nitrocellulose and nitroglycerine.[2] Peyton Powder was selected by the United States Army in 1893 for early cartridges for the new Krag-Jørgensen service rifle. The powder works also produced CPW Smokeless powder and loaded shotgun ammunition marketed as Native Son Cartridges[1] after the army adopted W.A. powder in 1896 to avoid cartridge case corrosion caused by picric acid in the Peyton Powder.

When dynamite was invented in 1867 and quickly became popular, a new dynamite plant was opened in 1869 near San Francisco in the area which later became Golden Gate Park. The danger of accidental explosions near a population center became unacceptable as San Francisco expanded; and land was purchased on Point Pinole in 1879 to shift manufacturing to the east side of San Francisco Bay.[1] After initial purchases in 1868, DuPont had obtained 43% interest in California Powder Works by 1876,[3] and financed Hercules Powder Company with Laflin & Rand Powder Company in 1882.[4] The city of Hercules was named after California Powder Works' blasting powder, known as Hercules Powder, which in turn was named for the powerful Greek demigod, Hercules. Guncotton and nitroglycerine manufactured at Hercules were shipped to the smokeless powder plant at Santa Cruz.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laflin_%26_Rand_Powder_Company

[Buckshot]

.............Another interesting explosive California story concerned the Central Pacific Railroad and Nitroglycerin :-) Blasting through the Sierra Nevada with black powder was tough, so the powers that be of the CPRR decided to try out the new Nitroglycerin explosive. It arrived by ship around the Horn, was unloaded onto a wagon and then parked out of the way off the warf.

After some time it exploded and showered parts of San Fransisco with bits and pieces of humanity, various animal parts, and bits and pieces of San Fransisco architecture :-) The California legislature hurridly outlawed it's importation, but NOT it's constituent parts. Leland Stanford, Collis Huntington, Charles Crocker, and Mark Hopkins, the owners of the CPRR imported the ingredients and had hired a chemist to then make it up, in situ. Hense skirting the new law.

..............Buckshot