Quoted:
Quoted:
I'm not sure, but are you trying to use smokeless powder in a black powder gun?
No............Nothing like that
Just me and a friend were discussing different powders,
and he said he had always heard smokeless was more powerful per volume.
I asked how much more and he said he didn't know.
So, off to google and a search agrees that smokeless is more powerful.
I just can't find an answer on how much more.
I haven't reloaded in many years, so I'm talking in generalities. I also strictly followed reloading books at the time, so I didn't experiment with powders not suitable for a specific application.
You'll need to define what you mean by more powerful. Yes, smokeless is more energetic in general.
For example, a 45/70 round holds roughly 60-65 grains of 2f BP, while about 1/3 of that using IMR 4759 gives equivalent velocity. If you use the same amount of Bullseye as 4759, you'll probably blow up your gun.
In a 45 colt, I used 5.2-5.5gr of 231, I think it holds about 35 gr. 3f BP. Many of the slow smokeless powders are too slow for decent performance in a handgun round.
Black powder has only a handful of granulation/burn rates. Smokeless has many times that and there is the stick vs. ball powder. Then you have the various coatings to control the speed of the burn.Very few of those are suitable for use in a black powder cartridge gun. That's probably why you can only find general statements about smokeless being more powerful, too many variables in that equation.
ETA: Another consideration. BP is classified as an explosive. It doesn't need to be confined to create a pressure wave. Smokeless is a flammable and will not detonate when unconfined, it just burns really fast. So, unconfined, BP is more powerful. Confine the powders in a gun's chamber and you change the results.