My homemade black powder

[Fly]

PS, the reason tomorrow, it should be dry if you keep it in the house over night!

Later Fly

[Boz330]

Hey do this just for me.Tomorrow get a tea spoon & lay out a patch of your powder in
a line on a ole 2X4 & stay back & put a match to one end.If it goes poof you got some
good powder Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

Fly Post back

Yep, it went pooof pretty quick.
This batch is pretty crumbly when you crunch it between your fingers. I think the dextrin is going to be needed with this method for resilient grains. Probably not a problem in a ML but compressing it in a BP cartridge might be an issue for consistency.
For the compressed puck method, how do you break up your pucks into powder? On that one site the guy uses a ball bat to bust them up and then screens it for grade, just wondering if there might be a more efficient way to do it.

Bob

[Fly]

O yes you do need the dex to bind it or it will turn back to meal.Tell you what I did for the
first time yesterday.

I have always corned my cap & ball revolver powder because of the extra volume with none
corned powder.Well I have used all my corned powder up & was wanting to shoot my remy.

I went and & weighed out my 35 gains of none corned powder.I poured all I could get into
a cylinder & then took a dowl & pushed the powder down a little till it was all seated,not
much presure at all.

I then put the cylinder back on the gun & seated all the balls.I went to the back yard & checked the accuracy & it'shot the same.

WOO HOO!
Fly

[Fly]

how do you break up your pucks into powder? On that one site the guy uses a ball bat to bust them up and then screens it for grade, just wondering if there might be a more efficient way to do it.

Yea that's what do also.Corning kind of a pain that's why I been testing powder with
the differant binders & going by weights.Now you can crush it with your press but it's
no faster than busting it up the a dowl or bat.
Fly
Fly

[nanuk]

1.
KNO3,Charcoal & table sugar. A mix of 72/14/14 the yield of gas is 2.1 & solids is 0.35 per unit of weight.

2.
KNO3 & table sugar(normal white powder) the yield of gas is 2.25 & solids is 0.32 per unit of weight.


I don't have time to do more testing of the 1st one in the near future. I have a little more to do with primer compounds now & want to get back to DIY smokeless powders(my real interest). I might get some time to figure out a better ratio.

is there a tutorial on how these are made?

[perotter]

For #2 see this link:

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/june2007/imhv3.pdf

This is a US gov publication. I think DuPont came up with the process.

As for #1 I think there is one in German for a 75/15/10(?) mix. I'll have to check.

[zxcvbob]

I'm pretty sure with corned powder, the sulfur is the binder; it plasticly flows into the charcoal. (that's why it takes so much pressure to press the cakes)

[Charlie Sometimes]

Today is sulfur pulverization day for me- will start with the bucket and ball bat technique.
I've got a lot of big chunks of sulfur my uncle gave me over 25 years ago.
He got them from a place he worked that use anhydrous sulfur- at my request, for just this very purpose!
Back then (before computers and internet) the price of BP was beginning to climb- I was attempting to do research into this very topic, but it was much more difficult to find the info, and librarians weren't very cooperative in assistance.

In this case, thank God For the arrival of the internet! (Or maybe we should thank Al Gore- he invented it, right?)

[Longwood]

Do any of you guys use a blender for crushing up your charcoal?

[Fly]

The only problem with a blender is the charcoal will tear it up pretty fast.Now
my buddy's that make much more than me use a electric garbage distsposal.

You can buy a ole meat grinder for 10 bucks in second hand stores.

Fly

[Longwood]

The only problem with a blender is the charcoal will tear it up pretty fast.Now
my buddy's that make much more than me use a electric garbage distsposal.

You can buy a ole meat grinder for 10 bucks in second hand stores.

Fly

A meat grinder seems so labor intensive. An electric one would be nice though.
Me lazy.
I have seen blenders go for $5 at garage sales.

Creative adults are the kids that survived.

[Fly]

Why ask?Go for it!
Fly

[Charlie Sometimes]

So far, for me, the ball bat and bucket works great for busting any of the components into smaller pieces. (I used an old aluminum T-Ball bat, and a large plastic butter bowl.)

The ball mill works best for making the charcoal into "flour"; the ball bat and bucket seems to be enough for the sulfur, I guess becuase the sulfur is harder (ball milling the sulfur takes longer than using the substitute mortar/pestal).

I have sifted all components through my sifter after using the above methods, so I should have decent uniformity, and be good to make my first batch very soon. I have about 8 oz. of charcoal, a little over 1 lb. of sulfur, and exactly 1 lb. of KNO3 to begin my experimentation now. Individual components store very handily in plastic mayo jars, too!

I still need to rig my vise for pressing a puck or stick - probably the very next thing I am going to work on tomorrow.

I have decided to use denatured alcohol during the processing, as it is pure and more easily acquired than 90% isopropyl. Should I choose to experiment with a binder later on, this would give me one up for using shellac for that.

I still need to make other batches of charcoal from willow, cedar, etc. to add to the fun, and pick up some more stump remover to have sufficient future stock on hand.

This is just too much "primitive" fun!

[DrB]

Hi all. New on the forum, though I've read for years.

Pardon if already mentioned and I missed it, but I've always understood one should use the hardest lead balls available in milling. The soft cast ones supposedly wear away and you end up with lead infused bp. Powder -> smoke -> your nose and lungs, with much of that ending up in your GI.

I've never seen wear rates vs. hardness for milling though. Be neat if anyone who happens to be using soft lead balls actually reported weight of cleaned balls before and after, ball hardness (mill load, type of mill, and duration of run). I think that would be a start to give folks an idea as to the reality of any risk.

I like a good science project, but wonder if anyone else has already checked the wear on their balls?


With all the old salts around I figure someone may already have checked.

Best regards,
DrB

[Fly]

They will wear away, for sure after a while.What I have done is this.I bought some thin
wall stainless steel 3/4 ID tubing & cut it up in 1" long sec,s.

I then melted my lead & filled each one.Then I peened the ends to hold the lead in.
The stainless is no spark, & works great.
Fly

[Charlie Sometimes]

Pardon if already mentioned and I missed it, but I've always understood one should use the hardest lead balls available in milling. The soft cast ones supposedly wear away and you end up with lead infused bp. Powder -> smoke -> your nose and lungs, with much of that ending up in your GI.

I've never seen wear rates vs. hardness for milling though. Be neat if anyone who happens to be using soft lead balls actually reported weight of cleaned balls before and after, ball hardness (mill load, type of mill, and duration of run). I think that would be a start to give folks an idea as to the reality of any risk.

I like a good science project, but wonder if anyone else has already checked the wear on their balls?

I am using 680 dia. RB in my Thumbler's Tumbler "ball mill". They are 682 diameter and 465 gr., as cast.

I have used 30 new balls in each batch- the pounding of the charcoal into flour also rounds out the sprue on the RB, killing two birds in the process. It takes a little longer to completely round them out, than it takes to crush the charcoal.

I put 40 into the sulfur, so now I have abused 100 RB- I can check the weight of these to see if there is any change from the original casting weight.

After a few extra hours in the mill, they have no sprue now, and are very round- they roll perfectly across the bench top, but do have a somewhat rough surface.

Will be removing the sulfur batch shortly, and can see how they look, etc.

[PatMarlin]

West coast pines will be pitchy if they are young.

The old growth pines I mill and use for CFF is not pitchy. When the trees are large, the wood is completely different from young growth. Takes on a magical form. I can't explain it to well, but it just is special for everything I've compared it with and used it for.

I'm interested in what our old growth manzanita would do for your powder. This wood has horse power. I've got some of the oldest here I've ever seen. Let me know if someone would like to try some.

[DrB]

Charlie, thanks!

Those .682"s are dead soft? Have you some that you've used to mill with nitrate, too?

[Fly]

DrB I cast all my ball's from pure lead.I mill KNO-3 sulfur & coal together.

Fly

[Charlie Sometimes]

Well, here is what I learned today. :groaner:

I will never mill sulfur again in my ball mill!
I left it on all night- when I opened it the balls were coated like a shell with fine sulfur (looked like malted milk balls with out the chocolate) and there was one big ball of sulfur (formed from the flour and caked up) the harder grains had not been pulverized, and I had to pound them with my bat and bucket mortar/pestal then sift. I just rubbed the cake out through a screen and got it back to powder.
The mortar/pestal is the way to go with the sulfur, IMHO.

It was warm over night, and the temperature reached 85 in my shop today, so the humidity is on the increase- that must be why it caked over night. Looked pretty neat, though- about the size of a tennis ball.

Not going to mill KNO3- it is fine enough as received in the stump remover bottle, and it is water soluble, too. I am going to look for a formula for supersaturation of KNO3 in water so I know how much to use and not waste any, too.

I am milling all of my components separately for stocking purposes so I can combine them in the necessary quantities as needed in developing my powder- when I combine them it will probably be as in the early posts made by Fly, IIRC.

The balls used in milling the charcoal have not lost any weight, so far. The ones used in the sulfur gained weight! (Have to figure out how to get the coating off them now.) I think it would take quite a long time for that to happen, and they would loose effectiveness before they got too small, IMO.

The RB's are nearly pure lead- I use a slight amount of tin in mine to aid casting.

Charcoal is a lot harder than you might imagine it to be, especially the larger pieces- it can tear up a blender, so might as well be rocks, which is what sulfur and KNO3 are. I guess you could use large steel ball bearings in this part of the process- that might increase the speed of milling the charcoal.

My sulfur started life as anyhydrous sulfur, and was gather from leaking pipes in a manufacturing process. It has been sitting for many years in a large plastic mayo jar and was very hard and brittle when I broke it with the ball bat. I ended up with 3 pounds of sulfur after getting things straightened out.

Headed to Wal-Mart tomorrow to get a kitchen strainer, and maybe another sifter. Will also stop by Lowes and get more alcohol and stump remover!

Did not get around to make my powder press today. I still need to go back and finsh rereading this entire thread, but what is everyone else finding to use for a press?

Pat Marlin has an excellent offer on the table. One of you more experienced powder makers should take him up on it. I'm not far enough along yet to go there.