Primitive Archer
Main Discussion Area => Muzzleloaders => Topic started by: mullet on January 08, 2017, 12:15:46 pm
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I had a very good friend give me this last weekend. 5 lbs of 3F. He said a very old gentleman gave him 5 of these.
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That should last you a while unless you have plans for something special. ;)
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Bet that put a smile on your face Eddie.
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Curtis and Harvey was an English powder that got rave reviews until the early seventies when the quality went down from earlier productions. Some say it was repurposed blasting powder at this point and was imported from Spain instead of being produced in England like it had been for about 100 years.
The bottom line it will go bang just fine but might shoot a little dirty.
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The best I can tell, Eric, is this batch is from the mid Twenties. I was reading it got inconsistent when Nobel and then DuPont bought it out and like you said was repurposed Blasting Powder. And I thought all BP was dirty. :)
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If it is from the mid twenties it is what was considered the best off the best, great gift!
I haven't shot any Swiss but they say it burns much cleaner than all the others. I think Elephant was the dirtiest of all the black powders produced.
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great! What is nice, it was a gift from the man that introduced me to muzzleloading 40+ years ago.
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That's cool ! Bob
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Wow, just bloody danged wow!
And black powder that is kept properly dry does not deteriorate like modern smokeless. I am insamely jealous. My teeth ache for just a single horn of this good stuff!
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If the granules are diamond shaped it is ever better. A quote I found;
Curtis's & Harvey was my great,great grandfather's Company. There is no great secrecy about the ingredients, the superiority was down to meticulousness, purity of materials, and a deep understanding of the production and nature of the charcoal combined with a long incorporation time under the edge runners. Modern production costs would make powder of this quality prohibitively expensive even if anyone could be found who could replicate the charcoal.
Back in the 1950s, I used lots of this powder in the superior "Diamond Grain" series, manufactured around about a hundred years ago, and I have never yet seen anything to come near it for lack of fouling and relative absence of smoke compared to modern powders. We shall never see its like again. Of course, they also made every other grade of black powder and blasting powders. When Bickford invented Safety Fuse around 1830/40, C&H bought him out very quickly.
You must remember that when this was the only propellant, no expense was spared and only the finest was acceptable to the likes of Sir Henry Halford, Metford, Lord Bury, and the grandees of the National Rifle Association, not to mention the even grander aristocracy of the grouse moors. This attention to detail, combined with financial acumen, meant that C&H from its inception in 1820 when C.B.Curtis's father, Sir William Curtis, purchased the old failing partnership of Harvey & Grueber at Hounslow (to the west of London) by the end of the 19th Century had become the sole commercial manufacturers of black powder in the entire British Empire. They had bought out every other maker. The end of the Company's independence was brought about by World War One after which every commercial manufacturer of explosives and ammunition of all kinds amalgamated into Explosives Trades Limited which morphed into Imperial Chemical Industries Limited (ICI) of which C&H were a component Company.
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I haven't opened the container yet. But when I shake it it slides and shakes pretty evenly. I'll bring my Lupe home from work tomorrow and get a good up close look at the grains. Whether good or bad, I'm still shooting it. :)
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Hope it meets or exceeds all expectations. At the very least, it's got a certain level of "cool" to it.
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Have fun!
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That would last me a loonnng time! That is an exceptionally nice gift! Josh