Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders 209 Primers for BP?

Brand new to muzzle loading guns. Sort of by accident I now own a Traditions Nitrofire. It uses 209 primers, thus my question. I know what 209 shotgun primers are but I also see many brands of 209 primers marketed as for black powder/pyrodex ignition. Any reason to use a primer marketed as specifically for BP? Is there any real difference?

Thanx

RAS

What powder?

Nope, no reason at all to buy into the marketing scheme.

Grab whatever you want from the primer shelf and roll on. Holy Black, any substitute powder, will go boom with a 209 primer. That's from decades of experience with two sons who kill the hell out of deer with their inlines.

This inline uses Federal firesticks which appear to be loaded with Hodgdon Triple 8:

https://www.federalpremium.com/firestick.html

RAS

Special 209 primers were created when it was discovered that 777 and other propellants using that basic formulation left “crud rings” just forward of the combustion chamber. Lighter primers leave less residue, allowing more shots before that ring needed to be cleaned out. Along comes BH209 which needs a really hot primer flame and bore resistance from the projectile for proper ignition. Combine BH209 and the 777 primers and it’s the worst scenario for performance. The 777 primers may work well with real BP, but I never tried. Safest bet is to use standard 209s if you want to standardize and use different propellants; they should light everything. The Nitrofire charges are IIRC, one of the 777 variants, so the lighter primers may well work, but so should the standard or magnum 209s. Last time I looked, the special primers cost a lot more than standard 209s, but that was before “The Troubles”.

What does the Nitrofire manual recommend?

If you're shooting an inline enough to form a crud ring then you're just blasting for the sake of blasting. You're not swabbing between shots either which grants consistency for the rest of what's going on, and taketh away crud rings.

Inlines are primarily hunting tools, one shot and done. Don't need to fall for the marketing hype. 209's all go boom and they all provide enough accuracy within the working limitations of the average joe's inline rifle.

I use BH powder and IMR White Hots pellets. I swab after 5 to 6 shots with the white hots. I think they say you can go like 10 shots before swabbing using the white hots. I don't recall on the BH powder, because I use it in the 12ga turkey barrel and swab it after each firing. I use Remington and Winchester primers in the .50 cal barrel and CCI primers in the 12ga bp barrel. Never a problem. g/l