Hello, I am having problems getting the weight right on my homemade black powder.
I made one batch using 5% dextrin as a binder and just compressing it by hand and then passing it through a screen while the powder was still wet and then allowing it to dry. The wight of this powder for 1/4 tsp was 17 grains.
I recently started trying to compress my powder to get a density closer to professional powder. I use a 20 ton press and a homemade powder die. I have pressed a puck putting as much pressure as I could on the press and then letting the puck dry for 24hours before granulating it. Once the puck is dry I use a mortar and pestle to break the puck into a 3fffg. I then weighed a 1/4 tsp of the compressed powder and am only getting 15 grains!! The compressed grains feel harder than the screened ones but it weighs less. So my question is, am I doing something wrong? Could the dextrin be messing up the weight? I weighed 1/4 tsp of professional powder and it weighed about 23 grains, Screened weighed 17 grains and Corned weighed 15 grains. The puck is rock hard before I try to granulate it so I'm having a hard time understanding why the weight isn't increasing.