I just looked through some of my targets from 2016 comparing Swiss powder to Wano PP, which is Wano's premium 2f sold here.
60 gr 0f Wano PP under a 415 gr money bullet gave 1128 fps with an ES of 23 fps.
61 gr of Swiss 1.5, a coarser powder, gave 1230.4 fps and an ES of 10 fps, all that with just a different type of charcoal and one extra grain of powder, seems unlikely don't you think ?. 
Mike.

Rightly or wrongly I was under the impression that graphite was added to gunpowder to reduce the grinding affects of the powder upon itself during transport and not to slow the burn rate which is easily controlled by the size of the granules, ie, 1 f being slow burning and 4 f much faster, or "Null B", as used for flintlock priming.
As a matter of interest what would stop any manufacturer of powder from adding any chemical improvement to the powder, would that be illegal for some reason ?.
Goex powder has not been available here in Australia for many years, and Goex Cartridge had not been invented at that time so I have no experience with that product. 
I would be interested to see some comparisons between Goex Cartridge Vs a similar grade of Swiss if possible.
In conclusion you are stating that nothing whatsoever has contributed to the superiority of Swiss powder other than more careful manufacturing,is this correct ?.
Mike.

Vbull
Just out of curiosity if it was discovered at some point in time that Swiss powder did indeed have some chemical additive in it that was responsible for it's enhanced power, would you continue to use it after becoming aware of this fact ?.
Mike.

The primary consideration for mechanical mixtures is homogeneity.  Every sample of the mixture has to have exactly the same proportion of the ingredients, in the same configuration and relation to the other ingredients, as every other sample, no matter how large or small the sample is.

The gunpowder manufacturer achieves this by pulverizing the ingredients to sizes that offer the best chance for a homogeneous mixture, mixing them for the time necessary to achieve gross homogeneity, and then “incorporating” the mixture in a circular trough by means of a pair of heavy rollers that slowly go around and around.  Some dampening of the mixture with alcohol with a trace of water is done to assist in the incorporation of the soluble potassium nitrate into the charcoal, but the sulfur is insoluble, so must be physically pressed into the pores.  Eventually, every particle of sulfur is the same distance away from every other particle of sulfur, surrounded by the same amount of potassium nitrate, and pressed evenly and completely into the pores of the charcoal.  This crushing and filling of pores raises the density and energy of the mixture.

Obviously, every manufacturer has their own ideas on how to accomplish this process, based on their own experience, testing, and customer response.  These processes take time, and must be run and monitored by experts, which increases the cost.  If you can sell the product at $25/lb because it’s easy to load for accuracy, you can take the necessary time.  If your customers don’t mind a little finagling to get the powder to shoot well, you can take less time and sell it cheaper.  If all they want is a bang, cheaper still.

I very much doubt there are any “secret ingredients” in any of the black powder sold as such.  The manufacturers have centuries’ worth of data on the safety and shelf life of the mixtures they make.  Putting something new in there sets the data clock back to zero, in the most litigious era in human history.

Dan Pawlak got himself killed developing Pyrodex, black powder modified with potassium perchlorate and sodium benzoate, which raised the ignition temperature and retarded fouling buildup.  The regulators are always asking the explosives manufacturers to add “inert” taggants to their mixtures so they can see where the bomb came from.  But “inert” is a century of no problems, despite varying conditions of manufacture, storage and use.  Easy to demand someone else stick their neck out; uneasy for the stickee.

Mike,
Unless it was banned in the competitions I compete in, of course I'd use it.  Swiss has been available since 1999 or so and used by a lot of competitors.  If there was something out of the ordinary, someone would have "discovered" it long before now.
As an engineer, I've always said good manufacturing process using good materials = a good product.

Old-Win wrote on Jul 4^th, 2019 at 1:47pm:


Bill Knight was working with them advising on how to improve their product before the plant blew up.  I don't remember the dates.   When I was sendt some Elephant by surprise instead of the normal Goex, the most alarming discovery was my flintlock would not ignite it!