Thoughts on 209 primers?

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Dogfood

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Still fairly new to muzzleloading and I recently heard about and saw ML specific 209 primers. On the box they advertise that they're non-corrosive. Is that just marketing? Certainly no modern 209 primers on the market here are corrosive. a hundred years or so ago, sure, but not now. Anyway, is there some fundamental difference between these primers marketed for inlines and the run of the mill ones used in shotshells?
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. I'd hate to buy the wrong thing.
Cheers,
dgfd
 
From what I understand, muzzleloader specific 209 primers are probably the least powerful you can get. Regular shot shell primers like CCI 209M, Federal 209A, and Winchester primers are actually the better ones to use. Plus they are cheaper than the muzzleloader primers.
 
Thanks for replying. I had heard something that conventional ones are overpowered and push the powder from the force of the ignition before igniting the powder...that seems suspect to me.
 
It's possible. I haven't heard or read about that. I only have 1 inline gun, an Optima V2 pistol. I've been using whatever I can get at my local Walmart for primers. Plus I only use real black powder if that makes any difference.
 
Thanks for replying. I had heard something that conventional ones are overpowered and push the powder from the force of the ignition before igniting the powder...that seems suspect to me.

I have yet to see this proven in inline competition events. Plenty of guys have won at Friendship using real black and BH209 with 209 primers.
 
OP: Good questions. Here's My understanding of how we got reduced powered 209s... why they say non corrosive, yet you need to clean your muzzle loader soon after shooting to protect it from corrosion.... (for many here this is old hat... I'm sorta just summarizing, generalizing, and glazing over volumes of information you can find here and other forums):

First, yes modern primers have been non corrosive for years. Corrosive primers formerly used fulminates, like mercury fulminate: their residues were corrosive, but for quite some time most western countries have used other non corrosive stuff (like Lead Styphnate). The eastern block countries were slower to adopt non corrosive primers, which is why you are likely to run into old ammo from them that has corrosive primers. So today primers are still labeled corrosive or non corrosive... FYI corrosive primers that use Mercury Fulminate attack the brass and make it brittle. You want to avoid trying to reload any brass fired with corrosive primers... especially if it has had the residue on it for a while.

Black Powder and most substitutes produce corrosive residue (aka fouling). In the unique case of Blackhorn209 it's fouling is not corrosive, but it is hygroscopic (which coats the bore with water that promotes corrosion). So you need to clean any muzzle loader using BP or a substitute soon after firing. Some manufacturers responded to this by offering coatings, like cerakote, nickle, etc... others use stainless steel to protect the gun from the fouling. Regardless of steel or treatments that may slow the corrosion, cleaning after shooting is still required to protect the metal from the effects of these residues. Also breech plugs and their components (along with bolts in leaky breech setups) can be fused into the rifle by the fouling and its resulting corrosion if not properly cleaned after firing.

Further complicating things is that Black Powder and most of its substitutes' fouling builds with each shot, and tend to be sticky. Blackhorn209 is the exception here. It has no more fouling on the 500th shot than after the first. But I'll get into Blackhorn later.

Crud rings became a problem when 209's with so much more priming compound than percussion caps were introduced. The crud ring forms near the breech (with BP and all its substitutes... except Blackhorn209). It's caused by the organic residue of Black Powder (and its first substitutes) mixing with the inorganic residue of the priming compound.

The reduced powered inline muzzle loader 209's (Remington "Kleenbore", Winchester "777", CCI Inline muzzleloader, etc) were created to combat the "crud ring". The basic idea is to introduce less inorganic priming compounds because BP and most of its substitutes are reliably ignited by lower charges than a typical shotgun 209 produced. Reducing the inorganic contaminates makes less of a crud ring and makes it easier to clean the crud ring (when cleaning between shots). So that makes these muzzle loader primers hotter than a percussion/musket cap, but cooler than a standard 209 primer.

However, the logic runs a bit circular when looked at retroactively... guns were designed to use 209s in order to leverage their hotter ignition and hence become more reliable (and of course they were marketed as such and the industry made money). Then more black powder substitutes that were easily ignited, but had organic chemistry were introduced (777 etc they were marketed as better than BP and the market made money). But the guns became harder to reload/clean because of the crud ring... so the manufactures created "Inline Muzzle loader 209" primer's that aren't as hot but works well enough to ignite most powders and reduce the crud ring (and are marketed as such and the industry makes money). This frequently confuses folks new to the sport... intuition and a general desire to always have the most powerful stuff says get the more powerful standard or magnum primer and use that.

But some folks found that if they were shooting easy loading projectiles (aka obturating projectiles that don't seal well or lodge tightly in the barrel until deformed by powder combustion), that they lost accuracy with full power primers, but grouped well with low power inline muzzle loader 209s... so they reasoned they were uncompacting the powder charge with the more powerful primer. There's so many factors, who knows what the cause is, but the remedy seemed to be using the low powered primer when full powered primers would not shoot accurately.

I always suggest folks try standard primers first. If they can't get a good group, --and they are not using BlackHorn209--, then try the primer with the name of the powder they are using or another muzzle loader specific primer (ie try full powered primers first; if you are shooting 777 and it won't group, try the Winchester 777 primer... or any other low powered muzzle loader 209 primer).

So now-a-days we have "muzzle loader" primers that are not hot enough to set off nitrocellulose powders (like typical shotgun shells use). And then Western Powders introduced BlackHorn209 (which is nitrocellulose based) and needs a standard or magnum 209 primer. Nitrocellulose is inorganic and cleans up with solvents that also dissolve priming compound residue... so no more soap and water/Windex, no more crud ring, no more fouling that builds up with each shot. With BlackHorn209 you clean at the end of a day with standard gun cleaning stuff like Hoppies etc. (standard gun cleaning stuff was made to clean up priming compound residue and nitrocellulose fouling, copper fouling, lead fouling, plastic fouling etc, but it does not work as well with Black Powder fouling along with most of its substitutes). BlackHorn209 tends to be more temperature stable than BP and its substitutes... ie it doesn't swing as high or low as they do with large temperature swings... (not saying it isn't affected by temperature... just saying it doesn't swing as much). And is generally regarded safer as its harder to detonate than black powder. Just look at its MSDS if you want the specifics.

This further gets hard for the novice as most stores typically stock muzzle loader only things in the muzzle loader section, but if they have a reloading section that is where they put the standard or magnum 209 primers. Then guys who just want to shoot, hear that BH209 is better, or see a new thing on the shelf, and buy some along with the 'Muzzle loader primer" in the same muzzle loader section. Then try to shoot it in a leaky breech or with a projectile that isn't sealed setup... (nitro cellulose needs to be sealed/fully contained to burn properly, the simple answer is sabots, but you can read here about other ways to achieve a seal).

Because the gun is leaky... and/or they didn't clean the flash channel and all the burning primer compound is getting clogged in the breech plug, and/or the breech plug wasn't made to shoot blackhorn209, and/or the weaker muzzle loader primer is used... and/or the projectile isn't sealed (like Bore lock MZ's or powerbelts in some rifles)... Blackhorn209 bloopers, misfires, or hang fires, and folks get upset and blame the powder... when they should be blaming themselves for not reading/following the instructions on the bottle of BH209, and/or walking over to the reloading section and grabbing full powered primers. Or googling it and finding a thread here where someone else tried it and failed/got it to work in that old gun that wasn't designed for BlackHorn209... or...

Then you get to today: where some of us make a living helping folks through the mess and getting them to simple effective sealed breech solutions. As most of the mistakes have been made, and most of the answers are in the product's instructions, or posted/explained somewhere on a dedicated muzzle loader forum like this one.

(mucho editing for clarity, typos, and poor choices of words)
 
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OP: Good questions. Here's My understanding of how we got reduced powered 209s...

Thank you for that very thorough and informative explanation. Really shows the cycle of invention of a solution to a problem that leads to another invention of a solutions to its problem and frolicking along down the fractal rabbit hole of solutions and problems.
 
I'll second Dogfood's well spoke. Good stuff BadgerRidge .. While I'm hunting my GPR .54 with roundball my granddaughter opted for a CVA Wolf with BH209 pushing a Sabot ..
 

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