Crushing Pellet Powder

In an email, I asked Hodgdon VP, Chris Hodgdon if he could take some time and tell us why it's not a good idea to crush up a pellet and use it as loose powder. Most of us already know, but this is for the new guys that may have watched the video of a guy crushing a Blue MZ pellet and then saying you can then load the full pellet on top. Why you'd go through this process is beyond me! Plenty of loose powder out there to choose from that is accurate, consistent and cleans up easy. If the smell of good ol black powder bothers you, the hang fires that the sub black powders can create, will have you smiling as you load up with the stinky black powder.

That's a good topic with the crushing Pyrodex, Triple Seven and White Hot Pellets.

First of all we highly recommend to NOT crush Pellets.

There are two separate issues, one is crushing them intentionally and the other is accidentally crushing.

By crushing the Pellets intentionally (outside of the gun) the shooter could experience high pressure spikes (depends if the shooter is using a modern muzzleloading rifle or old rifle, cap and ball revolvers are also included). Intentional crushing causes the powder to be broken up in different sized particles thus causing inconsistent poor accuracy and possible high pressure.

By crushing Pellets by accident (inside the gun) this will most likely not cause high pressures, just terrible accuracy.

We recommend that the shooter mark their ramrod when the bullet/sabot is firmly seated on the Pellets. This way the next time the gun is loaded the shooter will know the proper length to properly seat the load (without crushing the Pellets).