Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders Blackhorn 209 shelf life?

I'm shooting a Knight Disc Extreme MH with 120 grains of BH pushing a 300 grain 45-70 bullet in M&P orange sabots using Win 209 primers. I bought 4 bottles of blackhorn several years ago. Now, for no apparent reason, I'm getting hangfires and squibs on a regular basis. Tried the FPJ with concave plug and the NFPJ CONVEX plug -same results. Powder is stored in a unheated building. Black Mag and Triple 7 both clumped up, but the Blackhorn and Swiss FFFg looks normal. Any ideas?

Doubt its the powder, knights need the bare primer conversion to shoot it reliably.

Have you used a 1/8" drill bit to clean out the breech plugs flash channel? Got to cut that carbon out or else things like this happen.

What he said. I converted my Knight Disc elite with a lehigh plug and have had zero issues with BH209, as long as the flash channel is cleaned periodically.

I tried the Knight bare primer conversion. Everything is squeaky clean. I use a sonic cleaner and then use a small drill and torch tip cleaners on the plug. The bare 209 type has a very small flash hole in a convex face. I wonder if I should drill that tiny flash hole out. The disc plug is concave and has a much larger flash channel.

I'd shoot it before doing any drilling.

try the cci 209M primers and see how that goes.

Yep....

Stoney: We are not talking about the bare primer conversion with a convex face. We are talking about the Lehigh BH 209 conversion breechplug kit with the vent liner. Big difference

I will put my 2 cents in here .I don't think that little hole in some breach plugs an nipple . I drill all them out with a #55 drill No problem after this drill out cap or 209 .

With some assistance from a campfire member, I found a smith to alter my NFPJ breechplug to concave form using a Savage ventliner. I did send off E-mails to Knight and the powder manufacturer. Of course, Knight said the problem was my powder was old or wet, and the powder folks said my early issue NFPJ breech plug was the problem. I think the powder folks got it right and Knight is covering their behind on this one.

my buddy had to do the same thing with his new cva. He had to drill out the breach plug to accommodate the new style primer and powder. What a difference it made. I was so impressed with the blackhorn that I switched to it as well with shotgun primers and a 300 gr hornady . We are finding that 75 gr by weight not volume is the most accurate for us.