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Recently, Hodgdon purchased Goex Black Powder, a move I couldn’t applaud more, for I am a blackpowder junkie. At a recent shooting session after which I emerged with blackened face and hands, begrimed shirt and scorched eyebrows, G&A editor and long-time friend Jim Bequette furrowed his brow, looked at me quizzically and asked, “Just why do you shoot blackpowder?” Seemed like a reasonable question—and an excellent excuse for an article—so here’s my epistle.

Now, before I get started, I’d like to make it clear that I love to shoot anything that goes boom, from hand cannons to the most modern polymer pistols and full autos. I even have been known to have a run or two at things that go twang. But, like everyone else, I do have preferences.

Most of my long-term associates humor me, believing that I’d be much happier living in the 18th or 19th century, which is something of an exaggeration, as I do appreciate the fact that hygiene and the state of medicine in those times left much to be desired. Had I developed the cancer that I recovered from some years ago in the 1850s, I would have, to quote Britain’s Poet Laureate of the time, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, most certainly “crossed the bar” much earlier than I would have wished—and pretty miserably at that. Still, there are things that are quite compelling and exciting about the periods, not the least of which was the rapid pace of technological development from 1800 to 1900 brought about by the Industrial Revolution—firearms included.

There was a zest for living that my studies have convinced me really existed—admittedly enjoyed more robustly if you were of the proper class and in the right place on Earth. Then, as now, there was plenty of poverty, disease, ignorance and misery to go around. But one just has to read Fielding, Defoe, Austen, Dickens, Thackeray, Irving, Whitman, Dumas, Conan Doyle, Burton or Twain to see what I’m talking about. Perhaps it was the realization that one’s time on Earth was limited, or possibly it was nothing more than just having to deal with the challenges, pleasures, mysteries and perils peculiar to the Georgian and Victorian eras. Never having to contend with these things on a daily basis myself (except when I lived in South Wales back in the 1960s for three years), I know I’m perhaps taking something of a romantic view, but I can’t shake off the nagging suspicion that there was a joie de vivre back then that is lacking in the 21^st century. Anyway, we’re waxing far more philosophically than I intended. Let’s get back on track.

In the great scheme of things, smokeless powder is a Johnny-come-lately. In fact, blackpowder wasn’t even called blackpowder (it was always “gunpowder”) until the French came out with their early smokeless propellant, “poudre B,” in the 1880s (“B” for “blanc,” or white) and then redesignated the older stuff “poudre N” (“N” for “noir,” or black) that gunpowder became “blackpowder.”

There now seems to be little doubt that gunpowder first appeared in the east—probably China—as early as the 11^th century. The Chinese generally used it for pyrotechnics and incendiaries, and there were some early attempts at expelling projectiles, though it is not entirely clear whether this came before or after the Europeans had achieved success in this area.

Blackpowder is made of three substances charcoal, potassium nitrate (though sodium nitrate could also be used in a pinch) and sulfur. To make something burn requires oxygen, fuel and heat, and gunpowder was a prime example. When the mixture was ignited, the potassium nitrate, or “saltpeter,” provided the oxygen and the sulfur and charcoal, the fuel.

It is a bit cloudy when gunpowder first came to the West, but alchemists, philosophers and tinkerers were messing around with it—and similar mixtures—certainly as early as the 13^th century. In fact, the English scholar Roger Bacon wrote about gunpowder in 1267, so it must be assumed that it had been around for a time prior to that.