My homemade black powder

[LAGS]

Fly
I am kind of Old School, and like working with things from the past.
I want to see what kind of results that I can get from local things that I can find, and do things the way they did 150 years ago.
To me, Keeping alive the roots of where this all started is interesting to me.
You can not know where you are going, if you don't know where you came from.
I just wish I had the time to experiment more.
But getting the Right or Best Materials from time to time, keeps the positive going for what i am doing , so I do not get discouraged.
And it sets the level of the bar I want to achieve.
This thread has been an eye opener, that others want to do similar things, even if they are not for the same reason.

[Boz330]

Thanks Bob,
How long are you letting the powder "dwell" in the press before taking it out to dry? And how are you comparing your densities to the Goax?

I leave it for about 10 minutes and tighten the handle every time I walk past the vice. I'm usually doing other stuff at the same time so it might be longer if I get distracted. As far as densities I just compare volume measurements by weighing them. I did all of this stuff when I first started making powder. I don't even fool with it anymore I just make it and use it. I've been using it mostly in hunting. Hawken rifle, trade gun, and several 40-65s. I have tried it at 300yd in my silhouette gun and 500yd in my Gibbs but results past 300 were too dicey to use for serious competition. I was actually pretty tickled with how well it shot at 300yd. Most use is 100yd or less and it works fine there.
Grain for grain my HM gives better velocity per grain than Swiss but I can't get near as much in a cartridge case, weight wise.

Bob

[Boz330]

Thanks Swamp.
I may PM you once I get back from California.
I was hoping to find a local supply of wood that I can use, but that doesn't seem possible out here in the desert ,without spending way too much time experimenting with local woods, or should I say Bushes.
We have plenty of Creasote bushes here, and Cotton fields just south of me.
But till I retire, time is the biggest factor in playing with all my other projects.
There are Apple wood chips available at Home depot also for smokers.
But for now, the maple and Alder is cheap, and will be my base comparison for my testing .
I have two Mesquite trees in my yard, and that goes in my smoker.
And I have a dying Jacaranda in my front yard that will soon be cut down.
For Giggles, I will give that wood a try.
It is kind of pulpy like soft maple.

There is tree of heaven in AZ according to this; http://www.arizonensis.org/sycamore/...ora/index.html but how close it may be to you is another story. I have had really good luck with TOH.

Bob

[LAGS]

Thank you Boz330 for the Botanical Update.
When I get back from Cali, I may try some Charcoal made from Palo Verde and Acacia trees.
We seem to have an abundance of them here.
Hay, it is worth a shot. (no pun intended)

[Boz330]

Thank you Boz330 for the Botanical Update.
When I get back from Cali, I may try some Charcoal made from Palo Verde and Acacia trees.
We seem to have an abundance of them here.
Hay, it is worth a shot. (no pun intended)

Fast growing trees seem to be the ticket, so if these ones you mentioned grow fast there should be a shot with them.

Bob

[mooman76]

I had a Shoe string Acacia tree in my yard. Mine grew fast but was very hard when I cut it down, in fact I had a hard time burning it in my fire pit even after it dried several years later. I would think this would not be a desirable quality.

[Fly]

Desert plants are much different than other parts of the country. Az is a very diverse state. In the north there is pine forest & very
cold winters in those mountains. It nothing to get snowed in up there. Farther south I reminds me of Oklahoma, then the desert from
there south. Even in Tucson which is not far from Mexico you can drive up mount Lemon & see snow & pine forest. That state has everything
but a coastline.
Fly

[Hotfxr]

I leave it for about 10 minutes and tighten the handle every time I walk past the vice. I'm usually doing other stuff at the same time so it might be longer if I get distracted. As far as densities I just compare volume measurements by weighing them. I did all of this stuff when I first started making powder. I don't even fool with it anymore I just make it and use it. I've been using it mostly in hunting. Hawken rifle, trade gun, and several 40-65s. I have tried it at 300yd in my silhouette gun and 500yd in my Gibbs but results past 300 were too dicey to use for serious competition. I was actually pretty tickled with how well it shot at 300yd. Most use is 100yd or less and it works fine there.
Grain for grain my HM gives better velocity per grain than Swiss but I can't get near as much in a cartridge case, weight wise.

Bob

That's how I do it, sometimes leaving it in longer only because I am easily distracted. My weight per volume is within 1/2% of Goes and at least 5% faster. Never tried Swiss, only because real black powder is hard to come by in CA. Either pick it up out of state or pay the big bucks and get it mail ordered. But with the results I am getting from the homemade, I may never buy commercial powder again.

[Eddie2002]

Finally got a chance to try my home grown BP today. Nothing special, just a couple shots at a pine cone sitting on the ground about 5 yards away. I used my Traditions Kentucky flinter pistol in .50 caliber with a PRB, bore butter and a pillow ticking patch. Weight wise for my powder I'm only about at 75% density when compared to store bought which seems to be about the best I can achieve with my setup. My powder charge was 40 grains by volume and after cleaning oil out of the vent hole ignition was reliable and the recoil was comparable to 30 grains of store bought. In other words it worked great.
My recipe is 15% red cedar charcoal, 75% stump remover, 11% 90% sulfur powder and 1.5% dextrin. I ground the charcoal in a 5 dollar thrift store mixer till fine and then sifted it through window screen. The rest was added to the ball mill as bought and run for 6 hours. I added 80 drops of water per 100 grams of final mix and compressed 50 grams each time in a vice. After that the puck was sifted through a kitchen strainer while damp and then dried under glass in the direct sun. The solar drier is just a cookie sheet covered with some newspaper that has the corned, damp BP on it and is covered by a piece of glass. The glass has one end lifted up by about a 1/4 inch for ventilation to let the moisture out. Works well enough to dry about 1/4 lb in two hours as long as I stir it.
This first batch was a proof of theory experiment which I used mainly to develop the equipment and experience for continuing making my own BP. Thanks Fly, Indian Joe and everybody else who helps out with this thread, I learned a lot and plan to continue making and shooting my own BP. Need to get to the range and really test it.

[Speedo66]

My recipe is 15% red cedar charcoal, 75% stump remover, 11% 90% sulfur powder and 1.5% dextrin.

Your recipe comes out to over 100%, am I missing something?

[Eddie2002]

It totals 102.5% because of the 90% sulfur and dextrin that I'm using. I had to increase the sulfur by 1 % to get the correct proportions because 10% of the weight is inert. The dextrin is added into the final mix as a binder and is not part of the actual black powder chemical reaction but will also add to the final weight of the powder.
In other words there are inert ingredients in the mix that don't contribute to the actual explosive reaction that occurs when the BP goes off. If I were to include these inert ingredients in the total 100% weight the mix would be incorrect.

[Speedo66]

Got it, thanks.

[Kiwi Dave]

Hi guys, I’m brand new here but have been having some of the same ‘problems’ with my home baked powder. I have made 4 small batches so far, using the ‘CIA method’ - wet mixing the finely powdered ingredients and salting out with alcohol. My powder comes out about half the density of commercial powder regardless of whether I press it or not. I’m only using a pvc tube and a 6 tonne car jack but I’d have thought I’d see a difference between that and no pressing. The cakes are brittle but not what I’d call hard to break. Here’s my main concern - my powder is way, and I mean WAY! more powerful than commercial. I’m thinking it is behaving more like 4f. I have a miniature cannon that I use as a test rig - basically see how far the projectile flies. 50 gr 2f commercial will send it 100 yds. 50 gr homebake ( twice the volume) sent it 250 yds and over the hill. 25 gr yields about 100 yd. I’m a little scared to try this stuff in a rifle as I suspect it’s burning way too fast even though the granulation is about the same.

[fishingsetx]

Sounds like you are measuring by weight and not by volume. From what I know, that can be a bad deal when dealing with black powder. By your post, it appears that if you measured by volume, your homade would be pretty close to the power of comercial even though they may weigh quite a bit different.

Guns have only two enemies: rust and politicians!

[Kiwi Dave]

Well yeah, I kind of weigh by both. From a chemistry point of view, if there’s more weight in a given volume, you’ve got more product in there. And if there’s more product then you should get more energy. If I compress two Twinkies into the size of one, I’m gonna get twice the calories per mouthful. So, why is mine different? I can only assume it burns very rapidly to create a very high pressure in a very small time.( compared to commercial). Like 4f. Apparently a pound of dynamite has the same number of calories of stored energy as a large chocolate bar but releases it all in about 6 milliseconds.
So... do I dumb down the recipe by increasing the carbon ratio so it doesn’t burn so quick, or add dextrin ( tried that once but only 1% and it only made the kernels fractionally harder not denser). Or get a better press system. And after all that, how do we know that aiming for the same characteristics as commercial powder is the right thing to do? Is there some kind of international standards that manufacturers adhere to in terms of density and hardness and burn rate and pressure curves etc etc?
Anyway, I think I need to slow my powder down somehow preferably without changing the volume or it won’t fit in a cartridge.

[Kiwi Dave]

Another factor which I don’t think has been discussed is kernel size. In theory, the finer the faster due to increased surface area for the flame to attack. But as I understand it, old time blasting powder was very coarse - surely when blasting something, you’d want the stuff to burn as fast as possible to give max pressure???

[Kiwi Dave]

Any idea why it was so coarse? Surely it would be better fine ground?

[Tracy]

Sounds like you are measuring by weight and not by volume. From what I know, that can be a bad deal when dealing with black powder.

Weight is the correct way to measure black powder. Especially homemade.
With black powder, volume measurements are done out of convenience, not necessity. Smokeless too, for that matter. BP substitutes are the only powders that are intended to be measured by volume.

[Kiwi Dave]

Makes sense when you consider how variable the volume of a charge can be, depending on how it settles in the dipper / case or whatever vessel you happen to be jiggling.

[Kiwi Dave]

I suspect that the practice of measuring by volume came about via a couple paths. Firstly the convenience of loading in the field especially when in a hurry. And secondly, when loading cartridges, the importance of keeping the case full and free of voids.