Gunpowder Myth

A man who knows his gunpowder "busts" another Western Movie myth! Don't try this at home, especially if you live in the city in a subdivision or apartment! :-)

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• Gunpowder
• black
• powder
• smokeless
• Cowboy
• myth
• mythbuster

[masterofnotmuch]

if you put down a thinner line it will burn slower

[hickok45]

@masterofnotmuch , That's not what they do in the Westerns, so I was not interested in a thinner line. :-)

[oqiwelkanld]

mythbusters did this and they showed that you can in fact easily outrun a longer line of black powder, which I have also personally confirmed, both with homemade and store bought black powder

[hickok45]

@oqiwelkanld , Everybody is an expert. All this videos shows is that if you pour two lines of powder from a can in about the same amounts, the black powder will far out run the smokeless. I'm sure something can be done to change it. The lines they always pour in the Westerns are from a keg and burn in slow motion almost.

[richardelam100]

Don't forget cartoons. They always do this in cartoons too. Bugs Bunny...Tom & Jerry...the Coyote...

Richard

southeast Tennessee

[hotbegreturns]

@dachipchipboiz thats the point of the video, to disprove the myth of black powder being a slow burner as is seen in cowboy movies

[PinkOld]

Excellent demonstration and debunking.

My Dad about fifteen years ago made the terrible mistake of directly light a small pile of black powder with a lighter.

*POOF*

He badly scorched his hand in the process.

For those of you who don't already know, black powder burns at the same rate, whether out in the open or confined.

Smokeless burns slowly in the open, but considerably faster and with far more energy than an equivalent of black powder when confined.

[thercpoop]

RIP headphone users :'(

[heavyfuelv2]

@Airsoftpsyco1423 black powder is bi-polar compared to smokeless , unconfined ,a large enough pile of it will explode , it takes less than you would think for this to happen , contained or compressed within a gun barrel a cartridge or say a bottle rocket , its burn rate slows and it becomes a propellant , and it tends to burn at a controllable rate and pressure , with smokeless the higher the pressure the faster the burn rate until it reaches the point of detonation ..

[dachipchipboiz]

wait, I'm confused, I always thought that smokeless powder burned at a faster rate than BP. I thought that black powder was slower burning and therefor less efficient. If someone could explain where I'm wrong, it would be appreciated. Thanx in advance!

[Airsoftpsyco1423]

Does black powder's burn speed increase with pressure? B/c I'm pretty sure that's how smokeless powder works... Just curious.

[daddyoca69]

don't they mix them to get the speed they want...

[scprepper55]

ill take hicok 45 word over holly wood any day.movie props is one thing,realty is another.movies also showing john wayne wielding a .50 cal machine gun with perfect shots.any idea how heavy and how much recoil there? only in hollywood babe

[fastacker2]

OK, now do the one from Die hard where the plane is taking off and Bruce whips out his Zippo and lights a dribble of jet fuel coming out of the plane's fuel tank. The flame chases down the airplane while it is in the air. In the winter, at night, exploding it like a thousand suns. I'm guessing that one would not pass scrutiny either.