Is it Black Powder?

By Chris De Francisci

At Fort Shenandoah we know that our original and reproduction Civil War-era firearms are required to use black powder. But how do we know

it’s really black powder we are using? After all, most powders are black in color.

Despite the color of gunpowder, there are some clear identifying characteristics that differentiate modern smokeless powder from black powder.

Substituting a modern smokeless powder in place of black powder can be very dangerous.

Burn rates between black powder and modern smokeless powders are significantly different. Whereas black powder is a true explosive, modern

smokeless powders are actually propellants and generate significantly more pressure than black powder. Hence, they are dangerous to put into

a black powder only firearm even in small quantities. A firearm designated only for black powder loaded with smokeless powder may rupture

the barrel or, in a worse case, explode, resulting in significant harm to the shooter and anyone nearby.

Here’s a hypothetical scenario illustrating a dangerous assumption. We are loading for musket competition. A friend gives us a can of powder

and says it’s black powder. We dump out some, it’s black, so, assuming it’s black powder, we load it in our musket. Not knowing the difference

between black powder and smokeless powder, we may have loaded smokeless powder instead. As an example, the powder weight for a .45

ACP cartridge may be 4.5 grains of smokeless powder. Our musket uses the standard 45 to 50 grain loads of black powder. This is 10 times the

load for that modern .45 ACP smokeless cartridge. So, without realizing that you have just loaded 45 or 50 grains of smokeless powder in your

musket, you have created a recipe for disaster.

Older (and newer) black powder arms cannot withstand the pressure of modern smokeless

powder. By pulling the trigger, you will set off a bomb! See the picture to the left.

Here are some examples of modern smokeless powder. Note that in ALL cases, the powder

is uniform, either flakes or extruded cylinders. Black powder is granular and not uniform.

Modern smokeless powders Note the uniformity of all granules. Black powder. Note the granular composition and non-uniformity of the individual granules.

Always make sure you are using black powder in a firearm designated as black powder only or in original or reproduction Civil War-era firearms.