smokless equivelent loads

[neolithic hunter]

ok this may be a stupid question but why can't you shoot smokless equevelant loads in a cap and ball blackpowder pistols. for instance if you can shoot 3.0 to 3.2 grains of bullseye for 700 to 750 fps in a 38 special, which is a load that developes about 18,000 psi and 30 grains of black powder developes 25,000 psi in a 36 cal. cap and ball pistol at about the same fps. what would stop you from using smokless in a blackpowder gun????

[Gunfixr]

While you may not blow the gun up doing it carefully enough, the guns life would be woefully short. Blackpowder and smokeless powder develop their pressures in very different ways. Blackpowder explodes, and as the projectile leaves, the pressure is dropping. Smokeless powder, being a propellant, is burning while the projectile is moving, accelerating it down the bore. The pressure curve is longer, and has more of a snap to it. Since most original guns and modern replicas use softer steels and often are not hardened, this is too much for them to bear.

[neolithic hunter]

now i used bullseye powder on porpose. when it first came out it was touted as a replacement for blackpowder. it wasn't supposed to dirty up your gun as bad a blackpowder. they even went so far as to say that it was so much less corrosive than blackpowder that you didn't need to clean you guns as often. :cool: