The Mexican gunpowder dilemma

yulzari · 31st August 2019, 08:28 PM

Tumbling gun powder granules in graphite is a detrimental practice when longer incorporation and tumbling will polish the grains quite adequately if they were made dense in the first place, It gives a polished look and was popular in the undiscerning sporting/hunting powder world but a true high quality sporting powder is made dense and polished by long tumbling.

However we are looking for good musket powder which is less critical. I have concerns, from the reported performances of period Mexican military powder, that they even pressed and corned their powder. My suspicion (and no more than that) is that they were given firework quality meal. What they could make may not be what the army received if either they bought cheap or corruption received the money for good powder, bought cheap and kept the difference.

Again we speculate but do not know what powder was actually sold to the Mexican Army. Only that it was very weak.

31st August 2019, 08:28 PM	#23
yulzari Member Join Date: Sep 2018 Location: Limousin France Posts: 19	Tumbling gun powder granules in graphite is a detrimental practice when longer incorporation and tumbling will polish the grains quite adequately if they were made dense in the first place, It gives a polished look and was popular in the undiscerning sporting/hunting powder world but a true high quality sporting powder is made dense and polished by long tumbling. However we are looking for good musket powder which is less critical. I have concerns, from the reported performances of period Mexican military powder, that they even pressed and corned their powder. My suspicion (and no more than that) is that they were given firework quality meal. What they could make may not be what the army received if either they bought cheap or corruption received the money for good powder, bought cheap and kept the difference. Again we speculate but do not know what powder was actually sold to the Mexican Army. Only that it was very weak.