Bruce,

In all honesty, those MagTec BP shells I was loading and using
in the same dram of powder and shot load are much more violent in recoil
than these Federal rounds by a noticeable long shot.
I guess there’s always going to be the seen and unseen reality with
damascus and shotshells like many other things in life.

So glade I danced to dare the tide. :cool:

Mike, speaking from experience, I can say that achieving a given velocity produced much more recoil with black! I have an interesting chart showing actual recoil in foot pounds for various Winchester rifles, compiled by WRA Co themselves. The black powder loads always had more recoil. I loaded for 5 different 45-70s and can attest to WRA Co's study. Cheers!

That's because of the difference between black powder drams and smokeless powder dram equivalents. It takes more BP to achieve a given velocity than smokeless, dre is based upon velocity, and the recoil formula is based upon the ejecta, which is greater for BP.

So bottom line, going BP is not necessarily the best way to go? :corn:
Using black powder indeed keeps the chamber pressures way down.
BUT, at the cost of beating the gun and operator with recoil.

Depending on the year made, most of these damascus Parkers were probably never shot with black powder.
Some people like the smoke and the clean up. They enjoy the nostalgia of it. I've never had the inclination to try it through any of mine, but different strokes......

Dupont bulk smokeless first came in 1885 and at least turn of the century Parker flyers mention recommended loads with Dupont smokeless.

Interesting!! Is that same powder used today?

Not the same powder, but close to it. Austin Hogan did some analysis and I'm thinking that Dupont ( now IMR) PB had much the same slow burning characteristics as bulk smokeless. Note the name similarity PB to the original smokeless from France, Poudre B.

Austin?

Beyond that, I am old enough to remember an expression of old time shooters from when I was a kid " the greatest thing since smokeless powder". Black powder is much more dangerous and requires tedious clean up, but some folks like the nostalgia of it. I think many of our old Parker hammer guns have barrel pitting because of the use of black powder, which is hydroscopic. Smokeless powder was invented in France in 1884 and quickly caught on. It started being used in the US in 1885 and within a few years new rifles and handguns were being designed for it, such as the 1888 Mausers. The Parker hammerless guns came out in 1889 and its likely that many of them never saw the use of black powder , whether they were fluid steel or damascus barreled. Smokeless powder also reduced the market for the big bore shotguns because now you could get the same performance from much smaller cartridge cases.

Bruce most pitting around the chamber area was due to corrosive primers not BP

Eric, correct, and pitting on the standing breech face around the hammer nose hole. Further down the barrel, its due to powder residue attracting moisture, the sulphur compounds in black powder mixing with humidity to create acids, so acid and rusting. Smokeless powder residue also can cause it but not as bad. We get people writing in about loose chambers, e.g., a 12 ga shell fits loosely and they think they have an 11 ga. I suspect its because the chamber got reamed out to clean out pits and chamber pits are a primer issue.

The 'bulk smokeless' was supposed to be the greatest thing for handloading. You could use your blackpowder scoop to throw the same volume of 'bulk' for a given load. When powders like Infallible and Ballistite came onto the scene, charges had to be carefully measured/weighed. I have a few specimens in my collection with topwads citing grains of powder, rather than drams or drams equivalent. If you used the same scoop for Infallible as you did for bulk, a serious overload was made. I believe Infallible is the predecessor to Unique. I have WRA Co. catalogs that include lots of charts for the non-bulk powders. Cheers!