My homemade black powder

[Hotfxr]

Time to check in with some milling and screening results for discussion. With my trimmed down system, milling 12 to 18 hours, depending on how impatient I become, spritzing the powder with less than 1/2 ounce of water and compressing it with the 20 ton jack for about 4 hours, then letting it dry for a day or so out in the sun in a bowl of cat litter. I break up the pucks in a large mortar and pestle then grind them up in the spiffy ceramic coffee grinder, then dump it out on the screen stack. Since at this point in time I am more intent on making cannon powder than the smaller sizes I am making a pretty coarse grind and kind of rushing the process in favor of volume instead of quality. From what I have read, cannon powder is pretty forgiving and doesn't require the consistency of the smaller "f" grains need. When the screening is done I wind up with this:

Cannon size, 39%
2f, 14%
3f, 20%
4f and smaller, 27%

Since I don't use anything smaller than 3f (I use 3f for priming the flinters) anything smaller than 3f goes back into the tumbler to be run through again. In my thinking I am winding up with a lot of recycle powder, more than I think I should have. I can only wonder if I am using a smaller grind to make 2f and below that more than half of it will be put back into the next batch. When I get back to making rifle powder I do plan on milling at least 24 hours and drying for a week or more and hoping that the longer times will change the percentages. What do any of you think?

[Whiterabbit]

guys, any tips for making grading stacks? I made 12"x12" frames and affixed screens and connected all via magnet for my stack.

It works, but the 4F screen gets caked, it's hard to pour from, there's alot of room for improvement.

any ideas? If I could make a stack the size of an oversized pint glass or similar, it owuld be easier to pour, more robust, etc. How do you guys put together your screen stacks?

[Nobade]

I just use those round brass laboratory ones. They are made to stack.

-Nobade

[Texantothecore]

OK, so it looks like a good recipe for black powder is:

http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/recipe.html

100 parts potassium nitrate
18 parts charcoal
16 parts sulfur

So if you want to know how much of each ingredient to make, say, 10 pounds of black powder, this should do the trick:

10 lb = X saltpeter + .18(X) charcoal + .16(X) sulfur

10 lb = X(1 + .18 + .16)

10 lb = X(1.34)

X = 10/1.34

X = 7.46

So we can see then that for 10 pounds of black powder you would need:

7.46 pounds saltpeter

7.46(.18) pounds charcoal = 1.34 pounds charcoal

7.46(.16) pounds sulfur = 1.19 pounds sulfur

Sourcing materials as follows:

http://www.customcharcoal.com/willow-lump-charcoal.html

8 pounds of black willow charcoal shipped for $39.99. You can only buy it in 8 pound sacks so I am sourcing the other materials assuming you have 8 pounds of charcoal.

To consume 8 pounds of charcoal, you would need about 45 pounds of Potassium Nitrate and about 8 pounds of Sulfur (rounding up to nearest pound).

http://www.hobbychemicalsupply.com/potassium-nitrate/
http://www.hobbychemicalsupply.com/sulfur-powder/

45 pounds of Potassium Nitrate + 8 pounds of Sulfur shipped for $167.25

This works out to $207.24 for sufficient materials to manufacture about 61 pounds of black powder.

This works out to about $3.40 per pound.

I currently can purchase Goex from one local gun store that carries it for $26 per pound. 10 pounds of Goex from Powder Inc (https://www.powderinc.com/catalog/order.htm) will cost you $200.50, or $20.05 per pound, shipped. 25 pounds will cost you $405 or $16.20 per pound, shipped.

So you can manufacture your own for about 17% to 21% of the cost of buying it.

It would be interesting to see someone take one of the Harbor Freight drums and load it with a typical charge and rolling balls and deliberately ignite it electrically and video the results, so that everyone can see the explosion/damage potential. I don't know how much containment the tumbler will offer before it ruptures and just allows the powder to burn off. But it would be good to see this in a controlled and isolated experiment so that others could gauge the risk. I live in a residential neighborhood. I'd put my tumbler off along my back fence on my property, but would this send my back fence into the neighbor's house 50 yards away?

Steve

The last time I ignited green meal, the stuff in the mill drum, it burned at about 3 inches per second. Underwhelming, to say the least.

[maillemaker]

The last time I ignited green meal, the stuff in the mill drum, it burned at about 3 inches per second. Underwhelming, to say the least.

I'm wasn't talking about using green meal in my post. I'm talking about milling it wet and storing the resultant product wet until batched out for pressing, or, possibly, pouring it out like cake batter onto a cookie sheet and letting it dry out like a pressed puck. I don't think you'd want to press it wet as you would squeeze out the water and carry away potassium nitrate with the water.

Steve

[grullaguy]

I'm wasn't talking about using green meal in my post. I'm talking about milling it wet and storing the resultant product wet until batched out for pressing, or, possibly, pouring it out like cake batter onto a cookie sheet and letting it dry out like a pressed puck. I don't think you'd want to press it wet as you would squeeze out the water and carry away potassium nitrate with the water.

Steve

My experience is that the nitrate crystallizes out of the wet powder as it dries. Better quality is achieved with a dry mix, spritzed with a small amount of water and then corned.

[Whiterabbit]

Isn't there a precipitate method of making BP that involves heating the components in an aqueas suspension? That might be just what Steve is looking for.

His only concern is whether there is a way to process components into uncorned black in a way that allows for large batch processing such that the risk to ignition is lower than it would be if he just ball milled the same large batch and applied whatever safety mitigating factors he can think of to reduce ignition risk.

In short, ball milling a large batch with whatever mitigation strategy to improve safety you can imagine, vs some sort of large batch wet process (he is asking if we are aware of one and can share our experience): which has less risk of exploding on us?

[grullaguy]

I recommend that he experiment in small batches until he perfects something. I made the powder from a slurry and it worked very well. I had to continue working it as it dried as the potassium nitrate kept wanting to form crystals. Very labour intensive. When it was finally dried, it made a nice fast powder. However, after about a month the powder began to loose it's oomph as the ingredients began to separate. Later, I tried a batch with dextrin, but mixed it in the slurry. Do not ever do this. The dextrin bonds much better to the charcoal than the nitrate and the powder was ruined. In the future, I intend to corn, whether from a wet or dry mix.

[Hotfxr]

guys, any tips for making grading stacks? I made 12"x12" frames and affixed screens and connected all via magnet for my stack.

It works, but the 4F screen gets caked, it's hard to pour from, there's alot of room for improvement.

any ideas? If I could make a stack the size of an oversized pint glass or similar, it owuld be easier to pour, more robust, etc. How do you guys put together your screen stacks?

I have had great luck with 12" X 12" boxes with 1 1/2" tall sides. I made the first three a couple years ago with the little brackets on the sides to hold them together and made the top two a few weeks ago and just let them sit up there.





I break them up in the marble mortar and pour the chunks into the grinder then just empty the grinder into the to box. I use a chip brush to send them down to the next level. I am trying for just a few chunks left on top of the #6 screen then what ever is left after brushing on the #12 screen goes into cannon powder, and so on for the #20 (1f) and #30 (3f) and what is left on the bottom goes back into a tumbler to be run through again. It works out great to lift up a loaded box and just kind of shake the grains to a corner and pour them into a jar, keeping it over the stack and using the brush to knock off any dust down to the next level. I need to replace the #12 screen as I just used some metal window screen I had left over and I am adding another level with a #16 screen. The reason for the #16 escapes me at the moment but I must have had a good reason to order it. I do everything on top of a piece of white butcher paper and whatever decides to try and escape also goes back into the tumbler. This system is working very well and I got rid of a bunch of redundant stuff that was just getting in the way. Right now using an assembly line type of production with 8oz batches in the tumbler, press, drying kitty litter bowl, and grinder has me producing 7-8 ozs of powder every day or so with minimal time spent messing with everything. I do dump the screened grains into wide mouth containers so the square boxes work just fine. If I was pouring into something like the Goex cans, I would have to use a funnel but the square frames still work well for that. Hope this helps.

[Whiterabbit]

That's exactly what I have now. I like the surface area, but not the pour-ability. I want to change things up for rev 2.

[Hotfxr]

That's exactly what I have now. I like the surface area, but not the pour-ability. I want to change things up for rev 2.

Have you seen these?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Piece-8-In...sAAOSwv0tVal5t

It would be easy to attach screens to the bottoms of the rings from the inside or staple them on the bottom, and they are stackable. For easier pouring you could use a paint can clip on spout. This is the first thing that came to mind when I started thinking about it.

[wicket]

I don't stack my screens, just use them one at a time over a clean sheet of paper, dusting the powder through with a cheap brush from Harbor freight. I use carbide tile nippers to nibble my pucks into chunks that will fit the grinder.

Wicket

[Texantothecore]

I don't stack my screens, just use them one at a time over a clean sheet of paper, dusting the powder through with a cheap brush from Harbor freight. I use carbide tile nippers to nibble my pucks into chunks that will fit the grinder.

Wicket

Time to head on down to Harbor Freight. The tile nipper is a great idea. I have a decent dehydrator coming in shortly and it should make short work of drying the puck out.

[Hotfxr]

Time to head on down to Harbor Freight. The tile nipper is a great idea. I have a decent dehydrator coming in shortly and it should make short work of drying the puck out.

What kind of dehydrator are you getting? I have an old undercounter wine refrigerator that doesn't have any of the refrigeration parts that I keep my sand paper in (been storing sandpaper in old refrigerators or freezers for the last 40 years, works like a charm keeping the paper drya and flat) that has all the racks and am contemplating storing all my powder and raw materials in it. I was going to get one of those rod types that go in safes, but have heard that they just heat up the air and don't really remove any moisture. I store the different grain sizes in large plastic jars that will each hold 3 to 4 pounds and worry about moisture absorption. Right now I have a desiccant pack in each jar hoping it will continue to draw moisture out of the powder and ordered a couple of rechargeable desiccant canisters to put in the little fridge, but I would much rather have a dehumidifier instead.

[Texantothecore]

I ordered a Nesco Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator FD-75A and it should be in today. It is highly rated by users and will produce beef jerky in six hours or so which is a heck of a lot of water removed. It will operate at 160f and I suspect that it will remove the water very quickly from the pucks.

The normal price on Amazon is 89 bucks but they have a number of them with cosmetic damage for $56 so I got one of those because it is going to be a garage tool.

Can't wait to try it. When I do I will report back. I am hoping that water removal will be an overnight operation at worst.

[wicket]

I dried my latest batch of pucks in a plastic container of silica gel cat litter. Next batch I'll weigh and time though, to get some idea of how fast the gel works.

[Fly]

What I us when the suns not out. http://www.amazon.com/Ronco-Dehydrator-Yogurt-Maker-Machine/dp/B000059L4A

Fly

[Hotfxr]

I ordered a Nesco Snackmaster Pro Food Dehydrator FD-75A and it should be in today. It is highly rated by users and will produce beef jerky in six hours or so which is a heck of a lot of water removed. It will operate at 160f and I suspect that it will remove the water very quickly from the pucks.

The normal price on Amazon is 89 bucks but they have a number of them with cosmetic damage for $56 so I got one of those because it is going to be a garage tool.
Can't wait to try it. When I do I will report back. I am hoping that water removal will be an overnight operation at worst.

That is such a good idea that I just ordered one myself. It doesn't solve my storage humidity situation at all, other than to give the powder a leg up by being dryer to start, but I think the rechargable desiccant canisters will do the trick. Ha, honest honey, I'm just trying to keep my powder dry. Nah, she will never believe me anyway.

[Texantothecore]

Where are you getting rechargeable desiccant canisters?

[Hotfxr]

Where are you getting rechargeable desiccant canisters?

From Amazon. I am waiting for a larger flat metal tray type canister, but everyone that had them were out of stock. In the mean time, this works great for many things that need to stay dry.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...ilpage_o01_s00