Hi folks. New to this forum. I hope this topic is in compliance with all terms of this site. I’m a retired Electrical Engineer with two passions, shooting and shooting … guns and cameras. For years, I’ve seen forums with posts going something like this … “Does anyone know where I can get photos of various gunpowder for comparison?”
It’s bothered me that the standard answer is “Why? You can’t use them to identify powder”. That of course is the correct answer but I believe that answer is incomplete. I set out to prove there is value in (good) images. All images must be magnified by the same amount to allow side-by-side on-screen comparison. They must also be equally illuminated with a properly color balanced camera.
Magnification is an issue the powder manufacturers could/would never agree on.
I’ve done what I think is needed to make the images useful. I’ve 100+ powders and counting. To make the images even more useful, I took two shots of each powder, the highly magnified detail shot and a sizing shot that includes a ruler (scale) allowing measurement of single powder grain to within about 0.002" tolerance.
If you ever wanted to compare Hodgdon H4831 to H4831SC or wanted to find a powder that will meter well for that skinny mouth.223, these images should be of interest to you. They are free for personal use, download, viewing and even printing. The copyright release is included in the _readme.pdf file.
I hope you find these useful. The link below takes you to my Dropbox folder containing Smokeless Gunpowder Images. Expect to see 4 pdf files followed by over 200 images. Again, read the readme file first because it explains how to determine which powder is which, the image filename convention, the copyright release and a disclaimer.
I hope these images are helpful to all re-loaders. Total zip file if downlaoded to local disk or memory currently ~ 150 MB. A wifi connection is recommended for download to cell phones.
Best regards, John Perry