My homemade black powder

[Freightman]

Been reading above.I have some screened that I will put up to any HM corned at equal weights crono at fpm.

Fly

I have been getting the same results with my screened powder, it burns cleaner also than my Goex and beats it gr for gr in velocity not by much but 50/75 fps. I do weigh every load and compress it the same. With a blow tube I can shoot 20 straight from my 45/70, and by then am tired and finished anyhow.
PS. I haven't tried any charcoal other than willow so have no knowledge in that area

[Fly]

Sounds like you have it down.Black willow is really hard to beat.It is what
the army has used since the civil war.Are there faster powders, yes, but not
by much.

Like I said to Bob above it is soooooooooo close.Hell each day will give
different results.I like silver maple also.It like willow burns very clean.

No it is fun to try different coals, but I seem to always come back
to Black willow.

Fly

[Southron]

The part I like in the history of the Hazard Gunpowder Company went something like this: "...the operation was unusually safe, with only 67 deaths from explosions in 8 decades of operation."

HUH?
That doesn't sound very "safe" to me, with a death almost every year! But then again, the 19th Century wasn't noted for companies being concerned with the health and well being of their employees.

Geeze...I bet the company had a nice cemetery for its workers. Here is the link:

http://itstiggertime.blogspot.com/20...powder-co.html

[Wilkie]

So I have some Saltpeter and sulphur on the way. Looking to make a midnight raid on my neighbor's willow. This post has sucked me in! And I thought casting would be where the madness would stop!

[SchuetzenMiester]

Goex had a couple of explosions in the 90s before they moved south out of PA. T'is risky biz!

[Boz330]

So I have some Saltpeter and sulphur on the way. Looking to make a midnight raid on my neighbor's willow. This post has sucked me in! And I thought casting would be where the madness would stop!

Silly you! Using your own HM powder and experimenting with it just raises the fun. It went to another level for me when I took my first deer with a rifle I built from extra parts, HM powder and cast boolits from a mould designed for that purpose.

Bob

[Fly]

Silly you! Using your own HM powder and experimenting with it just raises the fun. It went to another level for me when I took my first deer with a rifle I built from extra parts, HM powder and cast boolits from a mould designed for that purpose.

Bob

I,m right there with Bob.We shoot these rifle & guns for a different reason then modern fire arms.
It is about getting all we can from them.But doing it with home cast ball or bullets,differant lubes,
patches & yes home made powder is just even more of a challenge.

Fly (join the fun)

[Freightman]

Driving a car on our streets is a risky business, I am not going to start walking because it is.

[Hickory]

Driving a car on our streets is a risky business, I am not going to start walking because it is.

Living a live as a free man can also have it's risks, but I'll take it as first choice.

[Wilkie]

Silly you! Using your own HM powder and experimenting with it just raises the fun. It went to another level for me when I took my first deer with a rifle I built from extra parts, HM powder and cast boolits from a mould designed for that purpose.

Bob

Absolutely my plan! Spend the next year perfecting this BP formula. Shoot a deer with it and a cast bullet. What a great country we live in!

[Boz330]

Absolutely my plan! Spend the next year perfecting this BP formula. Shoot a deer with it and a cast bullet. What a great country we live in!

I shot my first deer with the HM less than 3 months after making my first batch, it's not that difficult, just takes common sense safety practices.

Bob

[Boz330]

Nobade, I got a chance to shoot a few groups with the Tree of Heaven powder this weekend. The first group was 4 1/4" W X 4" Tall for 10 rounds at 100yrd. I used a blow tube between shots and clean up was 1-wet patch and 2 dry patches all turned once to use the clean side. This is the same as what I use with Swiss and Kik. The willow CC group was 6"X6" also blow tubing in between. The core group was 4" but there were 2 flyers, one called.
I was using a Marbel's tang sight with a big aperture and a white bead front which is what I use to hunt with. Had I swapped out for a globe and aperture front I believe the groups would be better but I'm trying to get ready for deer season and practice with what I will hunt with.

Bob

[Nobade]

Well that sounds promising. I have a bunch of the wood peeled and drying now, as soon as cooler weather comes I'm going to cook it into charcoal and make some new powder to play with. Sure does peel a lot easier than willow!

-Nobade

[LIMPINGJ]

Nobade how long are you drying before you cook? I have lots of Willow to work with so have cut and peeled some to dry. I just heve not seen anything about how long to let it dry.
Thanks

[Nobade]

Nobade how long are you drying before you cook? I have lots of Willow to work with so have cut and peeled some to dry. I just heve not seen anything about how long to let it dry.
Thanks

It really doesn't seem to matter. The dryer it is when you start the less fuel it takes to cook it down, but when you are done all the moisture is gone no matter what you started with. At least that's my theory.

-Nobade

[Boz330]

Well that sounds promising. I have a bunch of the wood peeled and drying now, as soon as cooler weather comes I'm going to cook it into charcoal and make some new powder to play with. Sure does peel a lot easier than willow!

-Nobade

The first willow I tried was called sandbar willow and it peeled real easy and made decent powder. I don't have any black willow around although I got some from Fly which is what I hunted with last year and am going to use this year. There is lots of TOH around here and it seems to give a little more velocity so I'll probably switch to that when I run out. I think I can get the velocities a little more consistent with some tweaking. I can walk 30 yds from the house and get all of the Tree of Heaven that anyone could use. I've been trying to kill it out for years with not much success, might as well use it.
ML deer season opens this weekend for 2 days.

Bob

[Faret]

What is the ideal rpm on the tumbler drum again?

[Fly]

65 RPM.If your making your own drum add a couple lift sticks in it.




Fly

[Faret]

Thanks Fly!

[Nobade]

I finished a batch of powder using the tree of heaven charcoal this weekend. Wow, that is some fast stuff! I flashed it on paper and it didn't burn holes in the paper, and left very light fouling. Just watching it, it's as fast as any commercial powder I have ever tried. Now I am looking forward to some range time to test it in guns! I did split open the charcoal sticks and scrape out the pithy center. I didn't think that would add to the powder, and it sure doesn't seem to hurt anything.

A good tip - I got myself a Hario Skereton coffee grinder. Ceramic burr type, it works beautifully to grind up my powder pucks after roughly breaking them up with a baseball bat. I knock them into chunks about a centimeter across and it grinds them nicely into a mixture of FF and FFF that I separate with screens.

Another good thing - we have a burn barrel at our range to keep us warm on cold mornings. So when I go to a match, I'll take my can full of wood and throw it in the fire. A little while later I have charcoal and didn't have to buy any fuel or smoke up the neighborhood. Living in an urban environment means sometimes getting creative...

-Nobade