Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Cordite powder?

i've shot a bunch of cordite loaded .303 british ammo. it does burn hot., and combined with corrosive primers, demanded that my no. 4 mark 1 be cleaned quickly after a range session. and it does have a interesting, lingering aroma ...

One of my favorites had the hero cutting an X in the nose of one of his bullets. He placed it in the magazine, inserted 6 more rounds in the magazine, then jacked the dumdum into the chamber.

Apparently that 5% or so that's petroleum jelly doesn't burn fully.

We now are left with what to call the smell of modern smokeless propellants. "Gunpowder" is defined in the dictionaries to be what we shooters call black powder. If neither Cordite nor Gunpowder is correct, what is an author to use? The average reader isn't going to understand "smokeless." I suppose "gunsmoke" would get the idea across, but there isn't really any smoke these days. Hmmm...

I have read about the lingering smell of black powder, too. And in a modern novel.

I read a lot--I can't afford to do anything else, and I have my favorite fiction writers. I think they read others' writing, and use examples from other novels.

You can count on, if one incident in a novel leaves the sent of cordite in the air, then the next group of novels by different writers is going to mention the 'familiar,' or 'lingering,' or 'stench,' of cordite, or blackpowder or whatever. Also, one of them is going to smell the muzzle to determine how recently the gun was fired, but only after picking up the empty cases ejected by the killer's revolver.

you guys are making me want to pull some of the bullets out of some mil-surp 303 rounds i got laying around........cant seem to find my bullet puller though.........figures