I thought BH 209 was non corrosive. I'd tell you from experience, but I'm not willing to pay $60/lb or whatever price they are charging these days!
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I thought BH 209 was non corrosive. I'd tell you from experience, but I'm not willing to pay $60/lb or whatever price they are charging these days!
im not sure its quite all that big, i mean, you can buy it in the store.Quote:
Originally Posted by waksupi
some say the non sulfur based powders are non corrosive. but seems noone can tell me definitivly
Very good reading and very interesting. Although I won't be trying this anytime soon, I appreciate the time you took to write the article. I will definitely bookmark it and come back to it in the future and give it a try.
Well looks like I'll be busy soon. Cast boolits and homemade BP to hunt? Yes please!
was just reading this and im sure the op is gone but i make my own black powder. the method he described would work decent but with proper equipment and whatnot you can produce black powder equal to or better than commercial geox. when i make it i ball mill it and then bind it with a 3% dextrin (all percent are by weight) after that its wet with 10% water and pressed into puck about 2" round by 1/4" thick on a hydraulic press. then allow it to dry and break it up and screen through proper screens for different grades. now the pressing and what not is not that important it just creates a uniform grain what is really important is the ball milling. if i have time when im on leave ill try to do a write-up on the process. also using willow as the op stated is better but other woods can suffice. also somebody mentioned pure graphite but personally ive never tried it i dont think it would work. also ive seen some crazy formulas for people who cant get sulfer but mot of them sound obscene like using rust and whatnot. i dont remember the ratio off the top of my head but just leaving sulfur out and using charcoal and potassium nitrate creates a powder almost as fast just slightly harder to light. and for those wondering it costs me about $3 a pound to make the black powder. but it is allot of labor throughout making charcoal, milling, and pressing but most of it is just waiting time. feel free to pm me but i prefer email if you need any help or suggestions.
Disclaimer: I did not read the entire thread!
I too have made black powder, but I did so in what I thought to be the easiest/cheapest way possible to see if it was feasible. There are great YouTube videos if you care to look, so I will not go into great detail.
I will begin by saying I only do small batches because I do not use large amounts of blackpowder and it limits potential damage if something goes wrong (unlikely but I don't like to gamble).
First make charcoal - I used a holiday popcorn tin and sawdust of no particular wood variety, but most likely cheap pine from plywood and 2x4's. Simply poke holes in the lid and put over a fire. Light the gas escaping from the holes, and when it goes out, your done. Pull it out and let it cool completely. I flipped it on its lid to cover the holes, so oxygen would not ignite the charcoal and turn it to ash.
Next get some potassium nitrate (KNO3). Lowe's stump remover is what I used, double check the msds to make sure your brand is KNO3.
In separate containers, grind the two ingredients into a fine powder. A cheap rock tumbler is what I used.
Next combine the ingredients, I used an 80/20 mix of KNO3 to charcoal. You may notice I have omitted sulfur. I did this for three reasons, 1) I did not want a lot of smoke 2) I did not want to buy sulfur 3) it is unneeded if your ignition temp is high enough, 209 primers will easily ignite this mix.
I again used a rock tumbler, and this is where the greatest danger of auto-ignition comes in. I used lead balls to mix the two powders - lead will not spark. I also put the rock tumbler on an extension cord so if things went wrong, no one was around to get hurt. After tumbling for a few hours, I unplugged the extension cord and let things settle for a few minutes, then opened the container wearing an apron, welding gloves, and a face shield.
The next step is to wet the powder until it is a hard clay-like consistency and pressed/grated it through an old window screen. Set the granules out to dry, then store it a safe place.
Since I did not compress it at all, this powder is probably only useful for cannon or rifle where space is not a concern. Also, you will need to weigh your desired charge, and note the volume - thereafter you can use that volumetric measurement in loading.
All in all, the process is quite easy and much cheaper than commercial black powder (which I could not find, hence my journey in homemade).
I tried making my own charcoal last night. I put some scraps of poplar wood into a 1 gallon paint can and set it on my propane BBQ stove burner. I let it go for nearly an hour. It smoked for a while, and the smoke would never ignite and stay lit but you could see it wanted to light. Then after a while it stopped smoking. I turned off the fire and let it cool and opened it up - the wood was still brown. I think too much heat was lost around the can. I'm going to try again tonight and make a baffle to contain the heat around the can.
I really admire you fellows that manufacture your own black powder. At 77 years of age I admit that I never even thought of this in my youth and powder making is entirely out of my realm of operations. I do cast my own bullets and most recently killed a small doe with a 230 gr. FN in one of my 38-55's. If needed I have always planned to have enough powder on hand to see me through whatever occurs. I know that I have enough lead, etc. Lets all pray that we will never need to practice these skills in order to save ourselves.
I also tried BP making when i was young,but twernt no good,for reasons I now know.But what did work,too good, was a mix of potassium bromate and icing mix,and bromate and flour.It was too good for a 2" cannon made from ammonia pipe,and my brother and I were **** lucky.And talk about corrosive,the smoke rusted anything it touched,tools bicycles ,mowers ,cars.And we had an endless supply of the bromate.But I think motor bikes were more dangerous,certainly in my case.
That was very informative. Good to know
go to post 135 make it easy or not. there is only 1 best way. To each his own.
Because all the threads to making black powder seem to be gone from Castboolits, I am trying to resurrect this old thread.
Sounds like a plan! My wife and I teach classes in pyrotechnics at the Pyrotechnics Guild International annual convention and make BP all the time for our own use as well. I estimate that we have gone through thousands of pounds of scratch made BP since we started.Quote:
Originally Posted by Traffer
Looking through this thread, I see a few fellow pyros who are making scratch BP too but most of what I see so far here is not durable nor truly FFG in size. I strongly recommend pucking and corning BP and saving what goes through a 16 mesh screen and sits on a 24 mesh screen for an analog to FFG. Then what passes the 24 mesh screen but sits on a 46 mesh screen would be FFFG.
Beware! All Black Powder commercially made has been made with hard wood charcoal, Pine, Red Cedar, balsa and others can DOUBLE chamber pressures due to the VOCs available in the airfloat charcoal.
Ballmilling the ingredients and adding water then running it through 1/4" screen is making pulverone, not Black Powder. In a rifle casing, it will 'powder' on you and you will get pressure spikes.
I am running a batch of "safety made BP" if anybody is interested in the formula and methodology behind a micro-grind method that is probably the safest way to make BP and still get hard grains that have a reliable burn pressure.
Question: I've seen a lot of people mention using lead balls for the ball mill, would there be any problem using bronze bearings?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Whiterabbit
I've shot more than a few pounds of BH 209. It is non-corrosive and non-water soluble. It requires a solvent similar to Hoppes 9 to clean the bore. I like it. I get better velocities and no fouling build up.
That sounds interesting
Very interesting, going to give it try.
I also am also learning about powdercoating bullets so the obvious question is will powder coating the lead balls in the tumbler help?
BTW, most of the aforementioned links still work despite how long ago they were posted.
Interesting thread. Didn’t know roll your own black powder was a thing...
I used to make some back in the late 70s after building a CVA colonial pistol kit in 45 cal, and casting my own balls. It was so much fun that I worked all summer to buy a Kentucky rifle kit by CVA, and still have them to this day.