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What is semi-smokeless?
mowart
Member Posts: 1,392 ✭✭✭✭✭
My older 'Cartridges of the World' says that the 22 Long Rife has been available at one time or another, in blackpowder, semi-smokeless and smokeless. What is semi-smokeless?
Comments
This is from a descriptive source on the history of gunpowder:
Semi-Smokeless Powder:
There was for years an intermediate type of powder known as Semi-smokeless, which was a mixture of blackpowder and smokeless. Lesmok powder was a mixture of guncotton and blackpowder. This was very accurate in .22 rimfire caliber loads. While it produced much more smoke and fouling than the modern smokeless loads, the fouling was of such a nature that it did not cake or harden in the barrel, and firing did not have to be interrupted for cleaning as it did with straight blackpowder. In the days before the use of non-corrosive primers, the Lesmok powder was much less corrosive than were the straight smokeless loads. The powder charges were bulkier, and tended to carry away more of the primer residue. However, after the non-corrosive primer came into general use in .22 rimfire caliber ammunition, the tables were turned, and the potassium salts left by the blackpowder component of the Lesmok powder made it necessary to clean the bore soon after firing, regardless of the kind of primers used. The greatest disadvantage of the Lesmok powder was the extreme hazard to life involved in its manufacturing. As of February 1947, Winchester has just completed the last lot of Lesmok powder was loaded for .22 rimfire caliber cartridges; this marks the end of Lesmok powder.