Has anyone used this stuff?  I am kind of leary of these synthetics..the maker states Potassium Nitrate 40-60%, Potassium Perchlorate 20-40%, & 2% charcoal.  They claim it is completly non corrosive.
    Back in the mid 90"s, I purchased several cans of the new Goex Clear Shot.  Only gun I used it in was an old 3 band Snider-Enfield .577.  Since I only had 10 cases I had turned from solid brass, I loaded at range.  No fouling to speak of, just a very thin light grey smoke.  Bore did have some white collored spheres that looked like melted sugar?  I came across the old target and I got 3" group at 100yds. which I was quite pleased considering the sights.  I deprimed the cases & left them in loading block while I retrieved targets and packed up for the day..perhaps 20 min.  certainly less than 1/2 hour..when I gathered up the brass.
    It looked like someone had lightly sprayed water inside cases.  drops on sidewalls and actually puddling at case bottom!  They advertised it as non-corrosive...but it sure was hydroscopic!  I never did get around to using it again.  Write up in Handloader states fired rifle and revolver cyl. were left uncleaned 5 weeks with no rust..guy has more guts than I do!

Does anyone know anything about Alliant Black MZ? I have 4 or 5 lb of it.

Same 3 BS ingredients as the Shooters World powder on the SDS.  Probably very similar if not the same since both are made by APP.

Both companies are leaving out the details on what fuel the powder uses,  but the patent application says it’s an organic acid.   

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Specifically listed in the patent application is ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and erythorbic acid (also vitamin C, but the right hand version instead of the left hand version… makes sense to chemists)

FWIW, similar compositions were tried a decade ago in China when their patent expired as a substitute for black powder to lift fireworks shells.  It was an epic failure.  Cost double to make versus black powder and didn’t lift shells as efficiently.

60/40 potassium nitrate/ascorbic acid
Or the “ideal” recipe…

Potassium nitrate 64.3%
Ascorbic acid 32.1%
Charcoal 1.8%
Iron oxide 1.8%

It’s basically the homemade version of the above 2 powders.  Popular among guys who make fireworks shells at home, and don’t want to invest in a ball mill and press for making traditional black powder.  Difficult to control burn rate well enough for firearms applications, and it is a poor propellant when compared to traditional black powder.  Substitution of about 1/3 of the potassium nitrate with potassium perchlorate speeds up the burn rate.

60/40 nominal ingredients.

The optimized formula for the homemade stuff is what I gave as the “ideal” recipe.

APP’s “Golden Powder” recipe is still a trade secret, but is also nominally 60/40 just like their SDS says.

There’s a reason none of the ascorbic acid based black powder substitutes have taken over the market.  It’s because they are not as good as the other alternatives.

The Bulk Rifle and Shotgun powders were all smokeless using nitrocellulose.  Instead of being colloided with ether and alcohol, extruded and cut into rods and flakes (the process for modern “dense” powders), the nitrocellulose linters were boiled in a pot with an organic solvent under a layer of water.  This would fuse the linters into crumbly granules which were filtered, dried and sieved for further uses.

The Bulk Rifle powders, like DuPont Rifle Smokeless #1, could be loaded bulk-for-bulk using black powder scoop measures, for a certain narrow range of specified cartridges.  The Bulk Shotgun could be loaded bulk-for-bulk using the volume measures for black powder in shotgun shells of the standard gauges.

I came into a bunch of Bulk Shotgun a long ways back and used it in my Ithaca 16-gauge.  It looked like a huge amount of powder compared to modern dense powders, but worked fine, with low pressures.

following the advice in the old books, I sieved some of it and tried it in a few rifle cartridges. I never got the accuracy the ODGs said they got, and the stuff was extremely “twitchy;” tiny increases could cause  very high pressure excursions, sticky shells, flattened primers, etc.  It also wasn’t as good as SR-4759 as a duplexing powder with black powder.

Interesting stuff to play around with, just to see what it was like in the Good Old Days.  My copy of The Breech-Loading Single-Shot Match Rifle by Roberts&Waters was annotated in the Loading section by a previous owner with lines like “Every One Of These Loads Is Too D—n Hot!” and “Get RID of Shotgun Bulk!!”  So I guess other people had trouble with it, too.

Joe, I also got mine at Sportsman Warehouse when they were closing it out but, I haven't shot any of it.

Does it smoke like regular BP and how about the smell?

I bought mine, hoping to try it, as a duplex load, to get 100% load density, with the smokeless powders I use, like #9, rather than use a wad, near the powder. But, I've since quit shooting so, I don't know if I'll ever get round 2 it.