Gunpowder - Other Types of Gunpowder

Other Types of Gunpowder

Besides black powder, there are other historically important types of gunpowder. "Brown gunpowder" is cited as composed of 79% nitre, 3% sulphur, and 18% charcoal per 100 of dry powder, with about 2% moisture. Prismatic Brown Powder is a large-grained product the Rottweil Company introduced in 1884 in Germany, which was adopted by the British Royal Navy shortly thereafter. The French navy adopted a fine, 3.1 millimeter, not prismatic grained product called Slow Burning Cocoa (SBC) or "cocoa powder". These brown powders reduced burning rate even further by using as little as 2 percent sulfur and using charcoal made from rye straw that had not been completely charred, hence the brown color.

Lesmok powder was a product developed by DuPont in 1911 one of several semismokeless products in the industry containing a mixture of black and nitrocellulose powder. It was sold to Winchester and others primarily for .22 and .32 small calibres. Its advantage was that it was less corrosive than smokeless powders then in use as the bulkier load carried away more of the primer residue, and somewhat less fouling than straight black powder in that the bore did not require cleaning after every shot. It was last sold by Winchester in 1947.