My homemade black powder

[Boz330]

My last test. This was from Facebook as I have not uploaded a video, to Youtube and this site will not let me copy it direct from my computer.
My test equipment is a five foot long piece of one inch by one half inch channel iron. I have a scrapper made from a cottage cheese container lid, which will make a uniform line of powder, about a quarter inch wide by one eighth of an inch high. This night the channel was supposed to set on the front porch but the wind was blowing and I had to lay it in the yard, on the grass. It takes a few seconds to light. This was one year old Sassafras powder, which I was shooting for three days and used the last of a pound, to just get rid of it. It is more than twice as fast, as commercial Swiss, which I use as a Benchmark. And, is cleaner. This burned 4 feet 6 inches in about 4/10's of a second. If you have not tried Sassafras, I highly recommend it. My next test is going to be Black Locust, which I think will make killer powder, and I lost four trees of it, in a tornado, one year ago. Interested in seeing how it does. Where the trees blew over, there are 12 foot tall sprouts, which were not there six months ago. It grows very fast and straight as an arrow.

Locust is a pretty fast growing wood but is very dense. I use to use it in my wood stove because logs would burn for a pretty long time. It will be interesting to see how it does.

Bob

[Boz330]

Bob, I use it in the stove, too. Yes, the large wood is very dense and I doubt it would be much good. What I'm thinking is using some of the young sprouts. They seem to be less dense and may be a little faster. I guess we'll see.

You might have something there, basically you are using the sap wood, not heart wood. If you have access get some Tree of Heaven, that has been my go to wood just because it is everywhere here.

Bob

[TheOutlawKid]

Mr.doubleduck, you say its twice as fast as swiss?! As in when you shoot it or just burning in a line? Id sure like to see what chrono readings you get comparing swiss and your honemade powder from sassafrass. Seems like its good stuff.

[Boz330]

Bob, that's the way the Sassafras has been, for me. Good and readily accessible. I've tried several other woods, but the two best have been it and Black Willow. Tree of Heaven, according to the State, 'may' be here. Thus far, I haven't found any. I am going to try the sprouts, the next batch I make.

According to the distribution map TOH is in AR. If you do a search you can find pictures of the plant. It is very invasive and tough to kill off. I know because I've been trying for years.
Besides the speed of burn I would think the lift time (from the buggywhip site) might be a better indicator of power under pressure. In my testing, which is by no means all that extensive, TOH gave me 50fps more velocity than Black willow and Sand bar willow out of a 40-65WCF. Now that isn't all that much more velocity but The TOH is all over my property and I have to hunt for Willow since there is none on my farm. More a matter of convenience than anything else.

Bob

[Hellgate]

DoubleBuck,
When you shoot does it smell like ROOTBEER?

[John McCorkle]

Anyone ever used paper mulberry? Grows ferociously fast and seems like it would be a good candidate

Sent from my moto g(7) power using Tapatalk

[Eddie2002]

I've a question about charcoal, I just finished cooking a batch of Brazilian Pepper down to charcoal and it came out really hard. Most of the wood like Carolina Willow and Red Cedar I've used for other batches cooked down into softer charcoal than this last batch. The Brazilian pepper was fresh cut and very wet and took about two hours to stop steaming and burning off the sap in a burn barrel. I stripped the bark off the 1/2 inch in diameter sticks before cutting them into six inch long pieces for my cookie tin charcoal retort. I was going to cook it some more tomorrow but was just wondering if some woods give harder charcoal than others. Planning on making about a 3/4 lb batch of screened just to try a different charcoal and use up an open container of stump remover.
Thanks Everybody.

[Eddie2002]

DoubleBuck, I tried harder charcoal with one batch early on which worked fine and gave some nice orange sparks when shot. Going to cook the Brazilian Pepper longer and see what happens. Still have some Willow charcoal but want to try something different.
I've used the Coor's 16oz aluminum bottles for home made black powder storage and found the local range officers didn't have a sense of humor when I started to crack one open on the firing line. When at the local range I now use a regular BP can to keep them happy.

[Vettepilot]

I would have just painted the can. Range officers. Perish the thought! Thankfully, I've always lived in or near wide open spaces to go shoot in. In 60 years of shooting, never once been to a "range" thank god.

Vettepilot

[Eddie2002]

You just don't know how good you have it. At least my local range is only 10 miles down the road.

[Vettepilot]

I suppose that might be true Indian Joe, but the freedom of shooting out in the wilds is very cool. The only time I've ever shot paper targets was when sighting a gun in. A target just needs to have SOME SORT of a reaction. And it's normally not that I'm "alone"; usually friends and/or family are along. Garbage dumps used to be WONDERFUL shooting sites that we dearly loved before the government shut all that down. Targets galore, and no cleanup after!!! Yes!!

Curious... Is it just in Arizona that you can no longer shoot at garbage dumps, or is that a federal thing??

Vettepilot

[LAGS]

It is probably federal restrictions.
They don't want you to contaminate their Trash with Lead.
Someone might get sick when they decide to build houses on the dump site later.

[Vettepilot]

I might partially be to blame for dumps getting shut down....

Many years ago there was a dump we used, both for trash and to shoot. This was back before burning trash was illegal, and half the time when we went part of the dump would be burning or smoldering.

So one weekend a friend and I were doing a cleanup job, and hauled about 15 full pickup loads to the dump. On the last trip, I loaded up a full 5 gallon can of gas, and a glass gallon jar of gas. Ya can see where this is going right? Yep!

After dumping the last load in the pit, I liberally sprinkled all five gallons of gas in among all the trash, and let it "stew" for a few minutes. Then I stuck a rag in the gallon glass jar of gas, set it on the edge of the pit, and lit the rag. I got back a safe distance, told my friend "here, hold my beer and WATCH THIS", and shot that glass jar with my 9mm.

OH MY GOD, IT WAS GLORIOUS!!! The fireball and explosion was bigger than a house!! Mushroom cloud of smoke ya had to see to believe!

My friend and I looked at each other in astonished wide eyed disbelief, and said simultaneously, "Let's get the hell out of here!!" The smoke could be seen from 10 miles away!

Ah, the good old days....

Vettepilot

[Eddie2002]

I used to borrow my brother's nylon 66 for vermin extermination at the local dump. Good times were had by all but the rats LOL. Not sure if not shooting at a dump is a federal or local law, probably local to protect from law suites. Tried to cook the Pepper charcoal for another 2 hours and it still came out hard so I smashed it up and put it in the tumbler. My thrift store blender gave up it's life and went out in a ball of sparks grinding my last batch of charcoal so I'm trying tumbling it this time.

[swamp]

For first grind I use an old bench mount hand grinder. Works well.
swamp

[Eddie2002]

I've tried a couple ways to grind charcoal, the blender was great for larger amounts but I always ended spitting out black boogers when done even with a dust mask. Tumbling seems the way to go for small quantities just because it's contained. Still have to deal with the dust when sifting it through a screen and weighing it. If it's not quite complete air float charcoal I just tumble the final mixture for another few hours, after all the longer it gets mixed the better the powder. I only make about a 1/3 of a pound per batch and there is no rush to get it done so the extra time tumbling isn't a factor. Stomping the raw charcoal between sheets of news paper is worth a try.

[Vettepilot]

Ah... the old Nylon 66. That was my very first gun. My father bought it for me when I was 12. (Once again, "The good old days")

I scored a meat grinder at a second hand store I'm going to use to grind my charcoal, and if that doesn't come out fine enough to be ground up in the blender, then I have a coffee bean grinder for the next step.

Got an order of supplies coming from Duda Diesel coming soon...

I'll get this going yet. I still have to finish casting up my 1/2" pipe tumbling media. Been waiting for cooler weather for that. Not a fun job when it's 125 degrees out!!

I have all the pieces rounded up to build a first class tumbler, but the other day I scored a treadmill for free. I'm thinking a variable speed tumbler could be cool, so that might change my tumbler design plans...

Vettepilot

[Vettepilot]

It doesn't really fit the bill of a fast growing, light wood, but has anyone ever tried Mesquite? (The hardwoods sometimes used don't fit the fast growing, lightweight wood formula either, really.) Seems like I read somewhere that Mesquite does pretty good.

Anyway, a hellacious windstorm blew down a bunch of big dead Mesquite branches/boughs here that I need to cut all up. Anyone ever try it?? I'm going to have a good bit of it here once it's all cut up.

I want to make some grips that actually fit my hands on my 1858 Remington. (I'm not worried about historical accuracy perfection.) I'm going to use some of this Mesquite for that. Man, that stuff is so hard a guy could nearly machine it like metal!.

Vettepilot

[LAGS]

I tried Mesquite.
It makes a good Pyro powder , but not a good shooting powder.
It leaves a lot of unburned crud in the barrel.
Jacaranda worked better., But not as good as Willow or TOH

[Eddie2002]

Well the tumbling worked pretty well and almost got the Pepper charcoal down to air float. I weighed out the rest of my potassium nitrate and had enough to start a 3/4 lb batch which is about the largest my setup can handle.
I've a home made tumbler made out of a 5 gallon plastic pail powdered by a geared down DC motor I stripped out of some medical equipment back when I was a Biomed technician. The thing is soo ugly that I haven't taken any pictures of it but it runs great. I made it for tumbling brass for my unmentionable guns and found that it works for making BP. I'm using a plastic one pound smokeless powder jar as a smaller retort that I place in the pail. As the pail turns the smaller jar rolls in the pail grinding the powder with a mix of different sized lead balls. Could change it to grind a lot larger quantity by using a larger plastic jar if I wanted but sometimes more isn't better when making an explosive.
I'll guess I will take a few pictures just because it's a different way to skin the cat and I have out of storage.