Hi L.
No prob. PN is definitely not the abbreviation for poudre nitro.
As a caution, I've read about a bunch of recent and old designations of poudre vive pertaining to black powder - just very fine and rapid burning black powder. The opposite is poudre lente obviously. But, mostly, like you say poudre vive is meant to mean nitro - in Belgium all the time, in France much less, and Switzerland, like, never. Actually I think the mention of poudre without qualifying it of being a black powder means anything modern and smokeless and powerful.
Indeed it is the Belgians who have the French fries which are nowhere to be found in France. Nothing is simple while the Québécois make the unambiguous use of poudre nitro. Smarter.
And more,
L. you're absolutely right it is canon de sûreté (and don't I love those useless accents - I add them in directly with the ASCII code and numeric keypad - or copy and paste from a Google search - easy). There was also some mentions of poudre de sûreté in places I looked, however I don't really know what it means beyond a marketing gimmick. The surlie stuff only ever pertained to twist and Damascus - which is wholly not applicable with the gun in this post.
Thanks all for the learning opportunities.
