by Seismic Sam on Wed Jun 02, 2010 9:22 am
Once again, I just don't really have the urge to go "UHHHHHHUUUUUUUUNNNNNNHHHHHH!!! and produce a full grown cow on the spot. SASS is as far as I know is shooting ALL original black powder cartridges, WITH loads that replicate the power that you got with black powder. The point here is that ALL those old black powder cases WERE designed to be filled up with black powder to begin with. So coming out with a smokeless powder thast mimics the volume of Black powder is probably a pretty good idea from a product standpoint, and smokeless powder is a hell of a lot less dangerous than black powder to work with.
About the only quibble I would have, and Hodgdon has probably covered this base, is what happens if you DO compress a load slightly or a lot. Black powder is VERY different from smokeless, because it has a fixed burning rate of about 1,000 FPS and that's it. Smokeless powder has a burning rate that is dependent on pressure, so a load can go critical and blow the gun. With black powder you could overload 45-70 loads a bit, but all that would do is make the rifle kick more, and the powder didn't burn any faster as a result of the overload.
So, apart from that, it looks like an interesting product. As far as the yahoo and noob factor is concerned, the home base for this powder is the SASS group, who can probably recite the velocities of their reloads to you from memory, and newcomers there are already hardened black powder gun enthusiasts or they wouldn't be shelling out all that money for the replica clothing. And if you get a REAL noob (like one who CAN make me have a cow on the spot), how much more likely is it that they will load up a 45LC case with Bullseye rather than Trail Boss, as compared to loading up a 45LC case with Bullseye rather than black powder?? Don't have an answer for that, but I doubt there's much of a difference. Blind ignorance tends to be pretty generic.
And finally, SASS loads are ALL low pressure, so it's not like we're talking about 500 Smith factory loads, and as far as I know, the guns are all modern replicas that are quite strong. You could shoot SASS with an original Colt post-Civil War revolver, but who is going to want to risk or put more wear on a $25,000 museum piece?? At this point, all of the originals are just too freaking expensive to be used for weekend shooting.
So: Strong guns, weak loads, veteran shooters and reloaders who like the old cartridges. Compared to some of the lethal junk floating around on the internet, Trail Boss and its instructions seem relatively mild.