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I have read about the old gauge rifles, 8 gauge and so forth used in Africa a hundred or so years ago. Also Black Powder Express cartridges in .45 and larger.
I have heard about the terrible recoil of some of these rifles. I can understand that a rifle shooting a 2 ounce lead ball would have a lot of recoil, but my question is, everything else being the same, bullet weight, velocity, and gun weight, does black powder produce more recoil than modern smokeless powders?
Black powder velocities would be limited to about 1500 FPS.
Would a rifle, using black powder, have more recoil than a smokeless load firing a 2 ounce bullet at 1500 to 1700 FPS, or whatever velocities were normal for these large caliber rifles?
I am wondering about this because of the difference in burning charasteristics between black and smokeless.
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Campfire Ranger
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My BP experience is limited to muzzleloaders and BPCR. Both white and BP can deliver a good wallop, and I really see no disparities. Load up a 45-100 or 45-120, top it with 500 grain slug, and expect some repercussions. I don't have issues with white powder until I hit that 100+ gr powder mark too. The BP units generally toss some heavier lead, but the rifles are also heavier. My recently acquired 45-90 hits the scale at about 14.5 lbs. Difficult to carry, but a piece of cake to shoot. The 30-378, that digests around 120 gr of white powder per shot, weighs considerably less. The latter is not fun to shoot without the muzzle brake.
With slug velocity being the product of a time/pressure curve, loading a given cartridge and slug to identical velocities with either powder will likely come close to generating equivalent recoil. We can really really jack up pressures though with white powder, so in the end it certainly has more ability to hit back harder.
My experience in BPCR is limited to Shiloh products. They are fine with either powder in the 45-70's, but discourage it's use in the larger capacity cases (45 and 50-90, 100, 110 and 120's). Those using black powder typically compress their loads in all those cartridges to get the slug seated and still rarely stress the action.
1Minute
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For a given muzzle velocity black powder and smokeless recoil
the same. Black powder loadings use about thwice the powder weight, and typically heavier bullets.
Good Luck!
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"...my question is, everything else being the same, bullet weight, velocity, and gun weight, does black powder produce more recoil than modern smokeless powders?"
Newton's second law (which cannot be broken) states MV=mv, where M and V are the mass and velocity of the rifle and m and v are the mass and velocity of the "ejecta," the bullet and powder gases.
The recoil energy is 1/2MV^2.
If the powder weight is the same between black and smokeless, then under your conditions the recoil is the same.
However, as Hawkin points out, it takes more black powder to get the same velocity. So there is more "ejecta."
So the smokeless powder load will recoil more.
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My BP experience is limited to muzzleloaders and BPCR. Both white and BP can deliver a good wallop, and I really see no disparities. Load up a 45-100 or 45-120, top it with 500 grain slug, and expect some repercussions. I don't have issues with white powder until I hit that 100+ gr powder mark too. The BP units generally toss some heavier lead, but the rifles are also heavier. My recently acquired 45-90 hits the scale at about 14.5 lbs. Difficult to carry, but a piece of cake to shoot. The 30-378, that digests around 120 gr of white powder per shot, weighs considerably less. The latter is not fun to shoot without the muzzle brake.
With slug velocity being the product of a time/pressure curve, loading a given cartridge and slug to identical velocities with either powder will likely come close to generating equivalent recoil. We can really really jack up pressures though with white powder, so in the end it certainly has more ability to hit back harder.
My experience in BPCR is limited to Shiloh products. They are fine with either powder in the 45-70's, but discourage it's use in the larger capacity cases (45 and 50-90, 100, 110 and 120's). Those using black powder typically compress their loads in all those cartridges to get the slug seated and still rarely stress the action. By "white powder" do you mean modern "smokeless powder"?
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Since you'll need a greater weight of BP to get the same fps, you'll get slightly higher recoil. You'll likely get more muzzle blast as well.
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1Minute
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In the mathematical formula for recoil, the velocity and weight of the powder can be a significant part of the total recoil.
I don't know what the real numbers are for powder velocity; I have never seen where powder velocity was ever actually measured, but I do recall one formula that, for powder velocity, used 5,000 fps for smokeless powder velocity, and 4,000 fps for black powder velocity.
Also - a large percent of black powder doesn't burn. Much of it is deposited in the barrel as fouling. I wonder if that means you shuld only take a certain percentage of the black powder charge in the calculations?
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My original thinking was that since smokeless powder is a progressive burning powder, and since black powder acts and burns different, plus you are limited to the amount of muzzle velocity you can get with black powder, is there any difference in the way the recoil feels when comparing one to another.
I realize that, when using the formula for calculating recoil, the numbers would come out the same, but does anyone think there might be a difference because of the different burning charateristics of the two powders?
From what I have read, the recoil from some of those 2 and 4 gauge DG rifles was really bad.
I guess that if you loaded the same weight bullet to the same velocity with smokeless powder, recoil would be really bad with it, too. I just wonder if there would be any difference in the felt recoil between the two.
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Many years ago before they got so expensive I was buying double rifles at auction in England and importing them. I owned an 8 bore BP, I forget the make, and a .577 Nitro Westley Richards at the same time and took them to the range together. The 8 bore gave a huge push and I had to take a step back to keep my balance. In contrast the .577 definitely kicked harder and faster ... it was truly nasty. I later sold it to none other than Elmer Keith who wrote me that it was a pussycat. I was in my 20s and he in his 50s at least. They did make them tougher in his day.
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