Originally Posted by
Nobade
Yesterday I made a batch of crimson powder with charcoal, and got some interesting results. It flashed super fast, so I figured I'm good to go. I loaded up 10 rounds of 32 H&R mag for my little rolling block rifle, and not one of them worked correctly. Two stuck bullets in the bore, and the rest were very weak. Quite similar to the results I got with CP in my 32 cal Cherokee rifle. Hmmm.... So, maybe it needs to age a bit? The CP worked great in the 30-30. So I spread it out on a tray on top of the refrigerator to age or dry or whatever it needed to do. Just now, about 32 hours later, I tried it again in the cartridges and it worked great. Lots of power, very similar to black powder. So I guess the lesson is to not get in too big a hurry to test your powder?
I did modify my grinding technique. I had tried previously to make pucks with this stuff. That wasn't much fun, the puck stuck in the die and when I went to break it up it crumbled. But what did work well was keep stirring it after it's cooked, so you end up with maybe 1/4 inch clumps. Looks like Grape Nuts cereal. Then run that through my grain grinder like I do for black powder, and it comes out nicely granulated. It could be screened at that point, but I haven't done that yet.
It looks like we're really on to something here with this stuff, a viable black powder substitute that is easy to make and not terribly expensive at about $5/lb.