My homemade black powder

[Nobade]

But...but...it IS rocket science! But that's a topic for another forum....

And I want to personally thank you for getting all this started. I know I had an interest in making good BP since childhood. Your encouragement and help got the ball rolling and I very much enjoy the new skills I have learned from you and this forum - as well as being able to shoot a whole lot for not much money!

-Nobade

[Fly]

No thanks needed my friend.We are all in this together now, & have fun doing it.

Fly

[wicket]

My local source for willow is gone, but i've got ailanthus invading my yard and plenty of white cedar available at Home Depot, so my question is which of the two is the best second choice for charcoal making, and will a combustion test indicate the amount of fouling likely to be produced, all other things being equal?

[Boz330]

Tree of heaven works just fine, in fact I got a little more velocity out of it than my willow CC. It accounted for a 123lb field dressed Doe out of my 58cal Hawken during the early ML hunt.

Bob

[wicket]

That's good news Bob. Tree of heaven is a weed around here and i wasn't happy seeing it sprout up along my property line until i read this thread. Seemed almost too good to be true that it made decent powder, let alone that it could beat willow. Does it burn about as clean as willow?

[Boz330]

That's good news Bob. Tree of heaven is a weed around here and i wasn't happy seeing it sprout up along my property line until i read this thread. Seemed almost too good to be true that it made decent powder, let alone that it could beat willow. Does it burn about as clean as willow?

I can't tell any difference.
It is an invasive species here as well. The power line right of way that brings power into my farm is grown up with it and I've been trying to kill it out for years with practically no sucess. The more you kill of it twice that much replaces it.
Maybe I should start selling the CC made from it. It is stinky stuff to strip the bark off of though.

Bob

[Whiterabbit]

if you make charcoal from it, I'm game to try it. grinding chunks of willow charcoal to airfloat is the most time consuming part of my powder making right now.

[wicket]

I'm down to a couple pounds of willow charcoal, so i'm not gonna be too picky about how ailanthus smells if it means i can maintain my ammo independence.

[Boz330]

if you make charcoal from it, I'm game to try it. grinding chunks of willow charcoal to airfloat is the most time consuming part of my powder making right now.

I just run it through an old meat grinder. I throw everything together in the ball mill and let it do the work.

Bob

[wicket]

I fired more charcoal than i needed, gave it a good preliminary bashing in a plastic barrel, then took anything that passed through a window screen for making powder. I mill the three ingredients together over-night with brass media, comes out like talcum powder.

[18Z4X]

I know that Black Willow is recognized as the "best" charcoal wood, but beavers moved onto my land a few years ago, and they are ALL gone. I've read that "wild grape" will also make good charcoal for B.P. I have a woods full of wild Muscadines and Scuppernongs that are as thick as the grip on a softball bat. Does anyone here have any experience with them?

[Fly]

Well I still sell black willow for $6 LB.I really don't try to advertise it for I don't make
squat off it.But if any one of you want some just yell. It is air float also.I made a grinder
that grinds it into powder.
Fly

[18Z4X]

Thanks Fly. I'll PM to make arrangements.

[Hotfxr]

Hello all, it has been quite some time since I have visited these pages. Got distracted by fixing up and building rifles, pistols, I think I am up to ten rifles and 6 pistols, all with the lowest possible cost in mind. Add making an outfit proper to 1805, making bags, powder horns, tools etc. it took up most of my free time for the last several months. I forgot, I made up at least 100 throwing hawks and throwing knives just to figure out the best way to do it. Wound up giving most of the hawks and knives to local boy scout troops since they won't let scouts shoot firearms any more out here in CA. So I haven't spent that much time on forums but I am still into the powder. Actually the small local shooting club that I hooked up with named me "Powdermaker" since I always bring a supply with me (following all local and federal laws pertaining to the mystic BP arts and share it with the club, not selling it or giving it away). I wanted to share how I am producing powder and hopefully to get feedback and hints or advice on improving my methods. I bought several pounds of charcoal from Mr. Fly (His price is just too good to pass up, plus we have burn bans here it seems every other day) and was able to by a 50# bag of potassium nitrate from a local chemical company for $50. Made my own dextrin and found a good price on 99.85% pure sulfur on Amazon. So I have enough raw materials to make over 60 pounds of finished BP for right about $2 a pound. I make it 8oz at a time milling it in an old rock polisher (I have a 60's era Tumblr and a more modern Harbor Freight double tumbler) for 12-24 hours. (Dextrin for only the last few hours) Sift it into a large bowl and mist it with hot water and make it into a dry paste. Then press it into a puck fairly compact, squeezing most of the water out. Take the puck and immediately break it up into pieces and screed it through a screen, size depending on what size grains I want for the batch. Then it dries out between paper towels on a serving tray for a day or so. Once it's dry, it gets screened again to remove any clumps and whatever breaks up too small gets dumped back into the mill for the next batch. I have found that if I up my powder charges by 10% it seems to equal Goex as far as velocity goes. Lately I have been losing the integrity of the grains and I think I want to try some using gum arabic instead of the dextrin. I know this is a bit long, sorry, but I am looking for some feedback as I am always looking for ways to improve my methods. Thanks all and especially Fly, he is my BP guru.

[Fly]

Thanks for the nice things you said. But lets talk binders real quick. I,m a little mixed up?
Are you corning your powder (pressing in to pucks)? If so you don't need a binder.

If that's not the case, gum Arabic is a better binder than dextrin. At least I like it better. Just
cost more.
Fly PS Thanks for the nice words (your checks in the mail) Wink

[Whizzer]

Thanks for the nice things you said. But lets talk binders real quick. I,m a little mixed up?
Are you corning your powder (pressing in to pucks)? If so you don't need a binder.

If that's not the case, gum Arabic is a better binder than dextrin. At least I like it better. Just
cost more.
Fly PS Thanks for the nice words (your checks in the mail) Wink

I dislike dextrin also, but I've been told the kind you can buy from a supplier is better than what one can make from cornstarch. I can't say, since I've never bought any. I know the pyros use gum arabic but I personally have no experience. I do know my homemade dextrin slows down my powder in a "strand test", but without it...I get too many "fines" with my method. Corning would reduce that, no doubt...

I've never corned any....YET.

I wish I had a hydraulic press. I just use misting sprayers like seen in brushhippe's YouTube videos.

I like Red Cedar chips from Walmart, marketed as lizard bedding. I use a TLUD cooker. It shouldn't really work like a Retort Charcoal Cooker without any oxygen...but it does. It stands for Top Lit Upward Draft Cooker and Google Image Search will show how to make one. Gallon paint can, 6" to 3" single wall sheetmetal reducer and a short 3" exhaust stack works. My BP is pretty fast but I didn't have a chrony until recently to do a proper velocity test between white pine, willow, and Eastern Red Cedar chips...and Retort Cooker VS TLUD.

My one hesitancy in using chips over hand selected splits and twigs in a retort, is safety in the ball milling process. ANY FOREIGN MATTER WHATSOEVER in the cedar chips that might go unnoticed from cooker to mill introduces a possible source of ignition. Sand, metal, dunno, in your ball mill and you could have an....um....."anomaly" on your hands. MILL REMOTELY AND IN SMALL QUANTITIES, PEOPLE!

Too busy trying to stay ahead of the IRS, to play as much as I want.

[Hotfxr]

I do corn it with my homemade press (there are pictures of it about 15 pages back), but as I said above, I press it to the point that the moisture weeps out then I immediately break it into damp chunks and screed it over a 2FF sized screen. Then I let it dry out in the sun on paper plates and paper towels until it feels nice and dry. After that I screed the granules over 2FF then 3FFF sized screens to get the amounts of each that I want. I have a smaller screen that catches the smaller close to 4FFFF size for flintlock primer and the dust at the bottom of my screen contraption gets put back into the tumbler for the next batch. It just seems that lately after bouncing around in the tubs I keep it in before it goes into the powder horns it reverts back to float. I have no intention of letting the pucks dry and grinding them down. I have used up 8 of my 9 lives and too many of my universal credits to put powder into a grinder. All it would take is the stars lining up just right and no matter how many precautions I would take, the grinding experience would most likely end up with a loud bang and a cloud of smoke.

[Fly]

This small press works great for corning. It only stands 3 ft tall, so it can be stored in a closet.
I know several guys using this press for corning. Cheap also. http://www.harborfreight.com/6-ton-a...ress-1666.html

Fly

[Whiterabbit]

By God, I think you guys are on to something here.



And by my standards, this was poor shooting for the day. I think the windage difference was all me. that is darn cool. It's almost parity ballistically with 120 grains of my own powder down the pipe. Comparing to the load I use for the shoots, 90 grains GOEX.

Way too cool.

Only problem is that no matter what brand you use, 120 grains of anything down any pipe gets SUPER dirty, super quick.

[Fly]

Yea your right on. Hell it,s cheaper & more fun shooting your home made. Now if I,m shooting comps
Swizz is the way to go. But I truly think we can make our powder as good. I,m just to dam lazy to go
that extra mile. I will explain later. But ours shoots as good as Goex & the rest.

God I love this hobby, Fly