Muzzleloader and Black Powder Information

What, exactly, is a blunderbuss? Generally speaking, it's a smoothbore firearm with a flared or belled muzzle...

How to Load a Black Powder Pistol With Blanks - reenactors and other folks like to shoot blanks in their black powder cap and ball revolvers and/or single-shot pistols. This article provides some suggestions for how to load blanks in a muzzle loading handgun, and I believe they would work with rifles also.

Definition of Black Powder

Definition of Muzzleloading

This is a more detailed review of the Savage 10 ML-II muzzleloading rifle, which is the only widely-available muzzleloading rifle that will safely shoot smokeless powder loads. The rifle is 50 caliber and does well with black powder as well as several smokeless powder I have tried in it.

This is an awesome rifle. Savage is the one and only manufacturer making a rifle that can handle smokeless powder. That means DO NOT SHOOT SMOKELESS POWDER in any other muzzleloading rifle unless it is expressly marked as such (a few custom rifles will handle it). I love this rifle and what it's capable of, especially since the price is lower than other inlines that lack its flexibility. This rifle shoots black powder very well, and will also burn smokeless, Pyrodex, and 777. Me, I'm hooked.

Load information for Thompson/Center Seneca, Renegade, & Hawken black powder muzzleloading rifles. This data is straight from T/C, compiled more than two decades ago when sidelock rifles ruled the muzzleloading world.

How to load a traditional muzzleloading black powder rifle. These older-style poppers are losing ground to inline rifles, and info is getting harder to find. Here is a step-by-step instructional text on how to load those rifles.

Bullet starters are great tools, and are easy to build. Most commercialy-available starters fall short of being as useful as they could be. The solution? Make your own!

Smoke(less)pole - I have finally come around on the subject of inline muzzleloading rifles. For many years, I stuck with my trusty old-fashioned sidelock muzzleloaders, but I have seen the light at the end of the in-line barrel.

Some Thoughts on Black Powder Hunting - Modern vs. Traditional Muzzleloaders, by Russ Chastain

I've always liked building, and guns. So why not combine the two? Well, that's just what I've done! Check out this how-I-did-it article on the building of a CVA Hawken Rifle from a Kit. Seventeen pages full of info and pics, and 92 pages of larger images. The article was more work than building the rifle! Hope you find it interesting.

Modern vs. Traditional Muzzleloaders. My views have tempered a bit since I wrote this one.

CVA makes both traditional and inline muzzleloaders, bullets and accessories.

This company has been around for years. These folks are "specialists in muzzleloading & rare antique gun supplies."

How at least one old-timer made his own black powder...

Knight makes inline muzzleloaders and accessories.

A black-powder shooters' group.

This company offers quality parts for building muzzleloading rifles of many types - literally lock, stock, and barrel.

These folks offer an extensive line of impressive-sonding custom muzzleloader bullets.

A muzzleloading propellant which was, for many years, the only alternative to black powder.

"M.D. Smith's Reloading Pages." This site has a lot of great info on reloading smokeless cartridges, he also has some black powder stuff. Scroll down to the "black powder muzzle loading" section near the bottom, he has three pages on BP.

These folks make Swiss black powder and Schuetzen Black Powder.

Thompson/Center's home page. From flintlocks to caplocks to inlines, T/C offers a little bit of everything related to muzzleloading.

Traditions makes both inline muzzleloaders and breech-loading guns.

A nice site featuring some of Uberti's fine reproduction black powder and modern-cartridge guns.

Both sidelock and inline muzzleloading rifles.