Was the gunpowder black and shiny like crushed glass?
Brent, absent photos, I was looking for an apt description, and I think this 'crushed glass' will do. Yes, the powder has a high shine polish on it, almost like broken obsidian; the pieces are irregularly shaped; and what really got my eye is that the pieces are different sizes. There are bigger jagged pieces and smaller jagged pieces, all mixed together. When I read about what Curtis's & Harvey's #6 powder was, which this probably is, it was an aggregation or mix of different screen sizes of powder. It was not uniformly sized. I dumped out this Eley's powder (probably C&H #6) and then put a pile of Swiss FFG and a pile of Olde Eynsford 1.5G all lined up. The OE 1.5FG Was the closest to the Eley's/ C&H #6, and yet that was just in grain or kernel size. OE itself is highly uniform, but lacked the high polish of the Eley's. Swiss FFG had much smaller and totally uniform grains but is similarly highly polished like the Eley's / C&H #6.
If I had to pick a powder that to the eye appears close to C&H #6, I would say it is the Olde Eynsford 1.5FG.
