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So shooting Pyrodex next to the real thing I can tell you that outside of less smoke with Pyrodex there is very little difference in the crud factor as far as I can tell, actually some folks in the CAS community swear that Pyrodex is more corrosive than BP, I can't say since I've had no problem with either so far. Most of my Pyrodex shooting is just to get rid of my lifetime supply of the stuff I own since I now have a never ending source of real BP sooooo....
Now living in NV rust is pretty much a non-issue as far as having to immediately clean guns so a quick wipe-down with a rag with Ballistic on it keeps the guns going bang for a while and then a Ballistol cleanup at home takes care of the rest. It's not any more troublesome than anything else, just need a commitment to clean sooner than "whenever you remember to do so". I clean my guns when I get home or next day at the latest and zero issues.
BUT, the fun factor with real BP is off the chart!!! 350gr slugs out of my 45-60 are powder puffs and stupid accurate, almost like the cartridge was designed for BP
I watch a YouTube channel called Everything Black Powder. The guy makes his own BP and uses all kinds of different things for the charcoal and he's really honed in on it. Apparently Swiss is the best factory powder and Pyrodex is complete trash. He shows velocity, accuracy, how clean or dirty the cleaning patches are after firing groups and then extreme spread and standard deviation. He's actually exceeded Swiss by using toilet paper in making his charcoal . I personally learned that the absolute best and quickest way to clean a BP gun is to just rinse and flush it with hot water, blow out and lube. I worked with a guy that used to take his Mosin in the shower with him to clean it because of using corrosive ammo lol.
My SIL is experimenting with different charcoals and I’ll get some results here when we have bigger samples of data, but it does seem like charcoal source does make a difference. So far toilet paper is the cleanest and gives the most consistent velocities but apparently there are a lot of manufacturing variables that affect this including milling time so you can go nuts trying to figure it out. But it’s a hell of a lot of fun trying to
I've gotten little more done. Between work load and this GLP1 shot making me feel like I'm in the process of dying, its been a struggle just to keep my head above water on customer jobs. Ill get back to it eventually.
. I personally learned that the absolute best and quickest way to clean a BP gun is to just rinse and flush it with hot water, blow out and lube. I worked with a guy that used to take his Mosin in the shower with him to clean it because of using corrosive ammo lol.