arcticap
Member
Winegar fires 6 shots of Pyrodex revolver pellets and then examines how consistent their velocity is.
Note the huge velocity increase for the 1st shot with the crushed pyrodex pellet. Pyrodex pellets are not pyrodex powder or black powder but some kind of rocket fuel like concoction with a tiny bit of black powder in the case of pistol pellets to aid ignition with percussion caps. If you crush those pellets dangerous pressure spikes can be generated when firing. Care must be taken not to crush them when loading the shape must remain intact for proper burning rate.
I have never done any chronograph test despite that I have always noted that pyrodex pellets sound, look, and feel significantly hotter than pyrodex powder when firing. I can figure out that pyrodex pellets generate more pressure.
1. Winegar speculates that the velocity difference is caused by a broken pellet without any real evidence.
Maybe the higher velocity was due to the barrel being clean and at a lower temperature from not being fired yet?
The first shot out of many BP guns can be a flyer even if not using pellets.
But 6 shots is not an extensive test.
If he had cleaned the bore and a chamber and loaded another pellet, then he could have verified his assumption that it was caused by the broken pellet.
Why have a Chrony and then speculate about the cause? [I realize that those pellets are expensive unless on clearance]
2. If there's room in the chamber for some filler like Cream of Wheat, then perhaps adding filler would act to cushion the pellet and help to prevent it from being broken.
3. Why not just make up some paper cartridges or figure out how to bind, glue or compress your own loose Pyrodex powder together to make "home style pellets."
Use some of that Duco "nitro-cellulose" Cement that others love so much.
I’m just now beginning to experiment with this in a more formal way. Sharps rifles can achieve impressive results with no compression at all. Why are our bp revolvers any different? So, if an old army for example, was set up in such a way as to limit seating depth to a couple hundredths below the cylinder face with the projectile in question and the powder charge was the only variable? I’m speaking here only about loose powder but careful measurement of the pellets, the projectile, and the ram could achieve close consistency.I’m a little curious just how hard one can seat the projectile without breaking the pellet.
I seat mine quite firmly as I don’t see a way to be consistent with some form of moderate or light pressure.
If a small paper straw was centered in the pellet you could use a smaller charge for target loads and still retain a longer pellet for shallower seating depth. Intuition says it would be better than seating deeper. Has anyone gone down that rabbit hole?I thought about trying to get a die set made that would press powder into pellets for use with my revolvers, and then make paper cartridges out of them. My 20 ton press makes fairly solid black powder pucks. But I then break them up to make my powder.
If I had a die that could press say 20 smaller pellets at a time, and then use those to make paper cartridges, I think they'd be fairly solid. But I wonder how being pressed would effect the burn rate using real black powder.
It cost me roughly $1.75-$2 to make 1 lb of black powder, and since I have around 100 lbs of free lead on hand, that'd make each round about a penny.
It might make the paper cartridge a bit more solid to handle. hmmmm....
I shot a bunch of pellets for this video but I will never use them again. They stink something awful and the fouling is harder to clean. Don't see the point myself.
Note: based on viewer feedback I repeated the test with loose Pyrodex P rather than pellets.