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Mengioto · (This post was last modified: 05-30-2005 02:02 AM by Mengioto.)

hey guys, I know I havent posted anything in quite a long time, and I hope you don\'t hold it against me, but I have a question regarding an essay I have to make.

It\'s about gunpowder and I have a question, namely:

You have two kinds of gunpowder, black gunpowder (from the old ages) and the smokeless gunpowder (which is used at this time).

I have the pro\'s and cons of black gunpowder, but I also need the pro\'s and cons of the smokeless/weaksmoking gunpowder.

Do any of you know the pro\'s and cons of the mokeless/weak smoking gunpowder? If you do it would be veeeeeeeeeeeeeeery nice if I could have an answer before this wednesday, cause my essay\'s due to then. (two days, aaaaaaaaaah)

thanks in advance,

- meng -

*edit*
*begging voice* if you know anything concerning C4, NitroGlycerine and TNT you will be thanked a million times!!!! (if you post it here ofcourse Tongue

)

and any other information about these 4 substances would be welcome, thanks for your time

Yellowbelly · 05-30-2005, 02:01 AM

I thought smokeless powder was superior to black powder in every way.

Mengioto · 05-30-2005, 02:04 AM

well i wanted to get both pro\'s and cons of those four, and then explain to my teach which would be best and stuff

Yellowbelly · 05-30-2005, 02:14 AM

well pros of blackpowder is that you can actually make it out on a field. Mostly consists of sulfer and manuer and some other stuff. Black powder is pretty weak compared to newer powders. It\'s cheap I think. Used in muzzleloaders and black powder rifles.

cons are it makes so much smoke, you can\'t see who you\'re firing at after you shot. In the revolutionary war (american), guys would prettymuch fire into smoke. A lot less advanced than new smokeless powders. Messy.

Smokeless: can stay hidden without giving away your position after firing. US troops had a hard time finding the Spanish using smokeless during the Spanish American war. Probably more expensive. Only used in metallic cartridges and much better for it. I\'m pretty sure it\'s more powerful than black powder. Probably more consistant too.

Mengioto · (This post was last modified: 05-30-2005 02:32 AM by Mengioto.)

kewl thanks a lots! Big Grin

edit: what do you mean by \"more consistent\" ?

edit2: who won the spanish/american war?

Yellowbelly · 05-30-2005, 06:31 AM

More consistant- a better mixture, explodes more thoroughly, better explosive power, could contribute to better accuracy. With modern powders, shots can reach out to 1km accurately. There\'s not really any chance black powder could do that.

Also the .30-30 round was the first smokeless round (at least in America) and it\'s claimed more deer than any other cartridge. It\'s still in use today after about 110 years. I have a rifle chambered in one actually.

America won the war.

Actually it should hardly be called a war. It lasted like less than 3 months. Spain was taking over Cuba and the cubans were revolting for like 10 years. A new commander came and put them in concentration camps and some stories and pictures leaked out to the American public. A US battleship blew up by cuba and a letter was written insulting the president so that threw us into war so we could kick out European influence (comes from the monroe doctrine). Little story for ya.

Yellowbelly · 05-30-2005, 07:38 AM

here\'s a nice article from chuckhawks.com I found:
http://www.chuckhawks.com/difference_black_powders.htm

It should help a bit. There may be some other stuff from there too.

The_Punisher · 05-30-2005, 09:26 AM

At the time the switch was made to smokeless powder, it was only slightly better. Possibly it was on par with blackpowder. However, through technology and chemistry, we have gotten so much more power out of the current powder.

I.E. Comparing the .30-06 to the .762 nato round. The .762 Nato round is a good 12 mm shorter then the .30-06, yet it barely suffers any performance loss. This is due to modern powders and mixtures.

Another thing about consistancy is the fact that we have machines making the correct proportions nowadays. Just an exhaggeration, but a guy mixing stuff by spoons is not going to hold a candle (bad pun) to a computer measuring weights out to microns.

Jackeh · (This post was last modified: 05-31-2005 01:23 AM by Jackeh.)

smokeless powders were introduced in about the 1880\'s, cant remember exactly what they were made of, but its something like wood, nitric acid and alcohol. The main diferences between it and black powder is firstly smokeless powder in its early firm was actualy a solid explosive, and smokeless powder doesnt actualy \'explode\' like black powder does, it just burns rapidly which gives off alot of expanded gas in a short period of time. It didnt give the same range as black powder but when you can see the enemy and theyre all blinded by smoke, who cares.

(thank you history channel)

composite-4 (C4) is basicaly a plastic which is mixed with chemical explosives, RDX is most common, i forget what it stands for though. It takes quite an effort to explode some early C4, you could shoot at it, throw it into a fire, jump on it.. and it wont go off, it needs a seperate detonator charge, which is basicaly an explosive itself to set of the chemicals. apart from that all i can remember is it was first made towards the end of WW2.

Nitroglycerine and TNT i dont remember much about im afraid Sad