Author Topic: American Pioneer Powder (Read 1667 times)

sparks70 · « **on:** December 06, 2004, 03:08:33 PM »

Have any of you folks tried this powder. I have seen Jim Shockey advertising the stuff on his shows. I am trying to get away from the 777 loose flake and the shockwave 250's. My encore absolutely loves both. They will shoot into one large hole at 100 but I am getting tired of breaking things trying to get them loaded. I have destroyed all three types of t-handles TC sells to go on your ramrod trying to get that second shot loaded.

DEPUTY · « **Reply #1 on:** December 06, 2004, 05:29:11 PM »

try spit patching more, or get an ashley power rod

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #2 on:** December 06, 2004, 07:22:39 PM »

I have tried it. It is better than 777. (In my opinion anything is better than 777). I tried everything to get rid of the crud ring with 777. Finally I found Black Mag3 powder and that is all I will use now. It allows multiple shots with my stainless Omega without a swab betweens shots and the accuracy does not suffer. One clean barrel shot and two more without a swab between grouped less than an inch at 100 yards from the bench with 90gr. of BM3 and a 300gr. bullet in Harvester sabot. Recoil is not as sharp as 777 and the velocity is higher than equal volume of ffg 777 out of my gun.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #3 on:** December 07, 2004, 02:25:28 AM »

I don't have a problem with triple7, I can load several shots without a problem in all my muzzleloaders.

jeff223 · « **Reply #4 on:** December 07, 2004, 04:49:40 AM »

after you clean your barrel i would try some JB bore cleaner in the bore.take your cleaning jag along with a patch and just stroke that bore with the JB.in and out about 50 times.this JB works wonders and i think it will help you out with the loading of your muzz loader.JB is great stuff

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #5 on:** December 07, 2004, 10:17:27 AM »

Redhawk: I bet you don't load multiple shots with 777 without a spit patch between shots as a minimum. Spit patch does not do it in my rifle and I ran JB bore paste to see if that made a difference. It does but not enough. 777 is too much trouble for me and Black Mag3 is so much easier to use and get higher velocity and less perceived recoil (at least in my rifle which is all I really care about). I know a lot of guys love 777 and for the manufacturer I am glad. Just isn't for me.

str8shooter48 · « **Reply #6 on:** December 07, 2004, 11:04:20 AM »

I started out with Clean Shot when I bought my Encore. I thought it worked pretty well for me. When they were sued by Hodgdon for the pellet patent infringement and went under it forced me to try 777. Don't get me wrong the stuff shoots great, but I didn't care to deal with the crud ring and swabbing between shots.

Along comes American Pioneer Powder after some research I found it was reincarnated Clean Shot. I was reluctant to try it because of all the bad rap it got on these forums. After dealing with the formentioned hassles of 777, I bought a pound . So far so good it does everything I expected. Accurate, clean and seems pretty consistant. I'm going to stick with it for now. As far as Black Mag3 goes right now its not available in my area and I'm not about to pay the Hazardous Material shipping charge. When its available here I'll give it a try. Till then I'll stick with American Pioneer.

jeff223 · « **Reply #7 on:** December 07, 2004, 11:38:48 AM »

fouling is just a fact of life with a muzz loader.for the best accuracy a person should spit patch between every shot regardless of powder,pyrodex,black powder or 777.i dont know about the rest.the JB will help your gun out some

i dont know about this crud rind thing?i dont seem to get it and my sons rifles dont get that either.all four of our rifles are Knight Rifles though.they get fouling that needs to be removed with a spit patch but no crud ring.the only place i ever heard of this is here and on the huntamerica muzz forum.alot of the same people on both forums so figure that out

upnorth · « **Reply #8 on:** December 07, 2004, 12:27:54 PM »

there should be no haz mat charge. not a regulated product.

raynor · « **Reply #9 on:** December 07, 2004, 12:46:31 PM »

You guys that are using the APP, you shooting 2 or 3 FFF in your rifles? I've seen the 2 FF and that stuff is course.

str8shooter48 · « **Reply #10 on:** December 07, 2004, 01:00:48 PM »

Quote from: raynor

You guys that are using the APP, you shooting 2 or 3 FFF in your rifles? I've seen the 2 FF and that stuff is course.

FFG. Thats all I can find around here. It seems to measure pretty decent even though it is coarse.

sparks70 · « **Reply #11 on:** December 07, 2004, 02:32:50 PM »

Thanks for the info. gentleman. I like the 777 Redhawk and as I said in my post it is really accurate in my encore. The problem comes in with the 250 grain shockwave. It is extremely tight in my gun. I am sure this is helping the accuracy but I cannot get the second one in from the muzzle down without breaking something. Shockwave + 777 too tight. I think I will try the american pioneer powder and some of the other bullets from precision muzzloader.

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #12 on:** December 07, 2004, 04:03:51 PM »

Upnorth: I argued that same thing with Midsouth and they said they have to charge the hazmat fee. Go figure???

upnorth · « **Reply #13 on:** December 09, 2004, 10:23:13 AM »

hmmm..... considering that it's a citrus based product and you can eat it, and you can ship by air or ups , I guess distributors are just lumping it in with all other propellants. It would probably taste better with a side dish though......

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #14 on:** December 09, 2004, 11:02:08 AM »

Where did you get the "you can eat it" part. Apparently I missed that in all the stuff I read. That might be important if I ever get lost for days and all I have is powder and no animals.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #15 on:** December 09, 2004, 11:28:43 AM »

Quote from: Keith Lewis

Redhawk: I bet you don't load multiple shots with 777 without a spit patch between shots as a minimum. Spit patch does not do it in my rifle and I ran JB bore paste to see if that made a difference. It does but not enough. 777 is too much trouble for me and Black Mag3 is so much easier to use and get higher velocity and less perceived recoil (at least in my rifle which is all I really care about). I know a lot of guys love 777 and for the manufacturer I am glad. Just isn't for me.

Matter of fact I was shooting yesterday with 2 different 50 cal. Encores. Both have 25ACP breech plugs and both shoot triple7. I was doing a product review for Graybeard and tried different things. I did 6 shots in a row without running a spit patch between shots and was able to load all 6 Hornady quick loads with little effort. Yes the bullets were a bit harder to load, but I did not break a ram rod doing so. Also with power belts I have shot 10 shots without spit patches in my Encores. I am not just saying this to support triple7, but I know from hands on it worked for me.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #16 on:** December 09, 2004, 11:36:03 AM »

Quote from: sparks70

Thanks for the info. gentleman. I like the 777 Redhawk and as I said in my post it is really accurate in my encore. The problem comes in with the 250 grain shockwave. It is extremely tight in my gun. I am sure this is helping the accuracy but I cannot get the second one in from the muzzle down without breaking something. Shockwave + 777 too tight. I think I will try the american pioneer powder and some of the other bullets from precision muzzloader.

What primer are you using, 209 or 25ACP? Also have you tried bore butter on the sabot?

Also you may want to try the power belts, I had great success with them and they were not as tight as most of the sabot out there.

I have currently switched to precision rifles 195gr. DC sabots. They load very well and I can load 3 shots without a spit patch between shots. I have shot one deer with them and the deer dropped in it's tracks and I was able to load a second with very little effort. Again I am using the 25ACP breech plug.

Hope this helps.

sparks70 · « **Reply #17 on:** December 09, 2004, 03:38:40 PM »

Redhawk, What grain was the powerbelts you used? I tried them once and I tried the XTP's. The shockwave just shot better. I was using the pellets when I tried them both. When I first saw the improved difference with the shockwaves I was changing to them and flake 777 at the same time. I was initially impressed so much that I never questioned which one made the difference or if it was the combo. that did it.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #18 on:** December 09, 2004, 04:30:53 PM »

Quote from: sparks70

Redhawk, What grain was the powerbelts you used? I tried them once and I tried the XTP's. The shockwave just shot better. I was using the pellets when I tried them both. When I first saw the improved difference with the shockwaves I was changing to them and flake 777 at the same time. I was initially impressed so much that I never questioned which one made the difference or if it was the combo. that did it.

I was using the 295 gr. power belts. I was also using the triple7 pellets.

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #19 on:** December 09, 2004, 06:18:58 PM »

Redhawk: You must have a very large bore or have shot it a lot to be able to load the way you say. I switched my Omega to the .25ACP also but even with that I still get a lot of 777 crud ring after the first shot. I did not try bore butter on the sabots however. I could load Powerbelts two or maybe three times without a spit patch but only sometimes. I was using flake 777 in ffg granulation. Possibly pellets or fffg might have made a difference. I think relative humidity may have an effect also. I am in Arizona and we don't have much moisture in the air. I decided it was not worth spending more time on 777 since BM3 works better for me. I will shoot up the rest of the other powders I have just for fun.

Redhawk1 · « **Reply #20 on:** December 10, 2004, 01:24:10 AM »

Keith Lewis, you might have something there. Delaware is a humid state. I know from shooting my Shiloh Sharps with black powder 45-70 loads that I use a blow tube to keep the fouling moist.

Keith Lewis · « **Reply #21 on:** December 10, 2004, 05:57:04 AM »

Redhawk: I got the idea from the same thing with my Remington "Roller" that I shoot 40-65 BP cartridges. It takes a lot of blow tube when it is hot and dry. I shoot some smokeless in the 40-65 when I am lazy. This crud ring thing is really bad for some and not so bad for others. I have noticed however that the guys that seem to not have the problem live mostly in humid states (could be a coincidence but maybe something there)

Lane · « **Reply #22 on:** December 11, 2004, 04:13:36 AM »

I've used APP for about 4 years. Please go here to get The Rest Of The Story!

http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=006408;p=3#000032

and here:

http://www.ngpc.state.ne.us/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=007159;p=1#000001

APP is great, just use the FFFg loose powder!

Here's a good pic of 777 crud ring on Omega:

http://www.gunsnet.net/album/data//500/5378OmegaCrud.JPG

In His Service,

Lane

Birddog1 · « **Reply #23 on:** December 21, 2004, 01:27:55 PM »

I just tried the American pioneer Powder for the first time today. I was shooting my new Encore 209x50 using 100 grains of APP -ffg, 295 & 245 grain powerbelts with a Winchester 209 primer. The gun was boresighted when I bought it, but this was the first time I've shot it. I started with the 245 PB's at 50 yards and my 1st 3 shots were within 1 inch, with cleaning after each shot. I then switched to 295 grain PB's with the same results. I had 2 different groups of 3 shots with all 3 shots touching. Next I tried 100 yards and got the same accuracy, however I was 3 inches low. I tried 120 grains of powder but it didn't make any difference other than me getting whacked on the bridge of my nose. Finally I decided to sight in 1.5 inches high at 50 yards which puts my 1.5 inches low at 100 yards. This stuff was a breeze to clean, much better accuracy than I expected.

Scott