Making a blackpowder primer

[Idz]

Since my blackpowder percussion caps worked so well I decided to apply the same methods to re-loading a large pistol primer for blackpowder cartridges. The key trick to not fumbling around with the old LPP is to drill a series of #3 (0.213") holes in a hardwood paint stirring stick. The stick holds the primer so the anvils are easy to pop out. Then the stick full of cups is placed over a flat steel plate and an 1/8" pin punch is used to flatten the dimple. Next a single rollcap (punched out with my 0.170 paper punch) is placed red side up in the cup. A 3/16" pin punch is used to seat the anvil. Then about 0.3 grains of 4Fg powder is poured into the cup and gently compressed with the 3/16" punch. Finally a light coating of aerosol hairspray glues the powder. Dry for about 15 minutes then push the primers out of the stick. After drying overnight the primers can be loaded.

I've tried these homemade primers with about 25 of my 45 LC and MH 577/450 blackpowder cartridges with 100% success. They don't work well with small (30% load density) charges of W231 smokeless but may be ok if the case is filled more.

The rollcap probably is Armstrong's mixture of potassium chlorate and phosporus and is 'corrosive' except the 0.023 grains of the mixture in a rollcap is totally buried in the residue from 1000 times more blackpowder.

Now if I start making my own BP I'm pretty independent of the insanity of the government regulators.

[Boz330]

Till they outlaw roll caps.

Bob

[BrentD]

Idz,
I'm impressed! Good thinking! You get an A in my book.

Thanks.

[GoodOlBoy]

did the anvils go back in at any point?

Richard

[bedbugbilly]

Sounds like you have it all figured out! I've never done the "tap a cap" but thought about it many years ago when Dixie sold them (back in the '60s). I never thought about doing primers - but you obviously got it figured out so it works! Congrats . . . and like Boz330 said . . . "till they outlaw the roll caps". I'm surprised they haven't already done it . . . after all, they make a noise and a little flame . . . amazing how we all survived our childhood . . back when we had cap guns, played cowboy and Indians, drank from water hoses and slid downhill on slides in the wintertime that didn't have "guards" on them so we wouldn't get hurt.

[Idz]

Same stuff in rollcaps can be found in matches, just harder to use. Re-loading primers has been around a long time. The trick to making reliable caps is using some of methods of holding and assembling primers that the manufacturers use.

[ofitg]

Sounds like you have it all figured out! I've never done the "tap a cap" but thought about it many years ago when Dixie sold them (back in the '60s). I never thought about doing primers - but you obviously got it figured out so it works! Congrats . . . and like Boz330 said . . . "till they outlaw the roll caps". I'm surprised they haven't already done it . . . after all, they make a noise and a little flame . . . amazing how we all survived our childhood . . back when we had cap guns, played cowboy and Indians, drank from water hoses and slid downhill on slides in the wintertime that didn't have "guards" on them so we wouldn't get hurt.

Bedbugbilly, do you remember this old ad from the 1960s?

http://i949.photobucket.com/albums/ad336/crawdads/12calML_zpsa9aca963.jpg (http://s949.photobucket.com/user/crawdads/media/12calML_zpsa9aca963.jpg.html)

The ad reveals that the toy caps in that era were loaded with 4.4 milligrams of Armstrong's mixture..... as IDZ noted, the best caps you can buy today contain 0.023 grains.

They haven't totally outlawed caps yet, but if I'm doing the math correctly, modern caps are only one-third as powerful as the ones we played with 50-some years ago.

[Boz330]

The tips off of strike anywhere matches would seem to be the best way to go but you can't get those anymore. There are some advertized as strike anywhere but they don't.

Bob

[oldred]

The tips off of strike anywhere matches would seem to be the best way to go but you can't get those anymore. There are some advertized as strike anywhere but they don't.

Bob


Unfortunately you are correct, while "strike anywhere" matches are easy to find (such as they are anyway) they are a far cry from the matches that could still be found only 3 or 4 years ago. Due to Government regulations the matches sold today have only a tiny speck of the compound needed to make a primer and to make matters worse some of the new ones have the tip colored to LOOK as if the striking tip is much larger than it really is making it all but impossible to separate the usable portion from that which is not. Even if someone can manage to get the tips separated into usable material there would be so little of it from a 250 ct box of the large matches it would be much to expensive to use for anything except an emergency, anyone priced a box of the nearly useless strike anywhere (sometimes!) matches?



IDZ, just for the record the tips of matches are not in anyway the same stuff that's found in roll caps that's a different mixture entirely and a lot more powerful.

[Idz]

Oldred, If you know, I'd be interested in knowing what the composition of the new 'green' matches is. Certainly the older matches consisted of potassium chlorate as the oxygen source, sulfur as fuel, red phosphorus as ignitor, + some glue and fillers. The phosphorus was provided as phospurus sulfide in the lighting strip of safety matches. I've successfully used match compounds to light BP.
Newer matches may have more inert filler material but there are numerous you-tube videos of folks using those matches and generating a nice bang and flash. That would be all that's needed to light off some BP packed around it.
Its hard to see how they could make a match that isn't friction or impact sensitive since it wouldn't light.

[oldred]

They are still the same thing just waaaay less of it on the business end. As of just a couple of years ago the real ones could still be found but since the new regs went in place the supply dried up and the manufacturers changed the amount of material in the friction/ignition portion of the match head, the very best brand of all "Ohio Blue Tip" simply went of business and can't be found at all anymore except for old stock going for obscene prices on Ebay. There is still a demand for the strike anywhere matches and the manufacturers have been trying to capitalize on this by using some shady sales gimmicks, there are the ones with the colored tips that APPEAR to be the same as the old ones but in reality the same tiny tip resides under the white (or whatever color they choose) portion of the tip that goes a lot father back than the actual ignition tip (the only usable part). This makes it virtually impossible to determine where the usable part ends and the useless part starts, for what other reason would they possibly do this except to make people think the matches are something they are not? Now recently I have noticed that Diamond brand (at least I think it's Diamond) has brought back the very sought after Ohio Blue tip matches but this too is another low life gimmick so don't fall for it! The box and logo are almost identical but these are simply strike on the box only types and are in no way similar to the real Ohio Blue Tip that brings such high prices on Ebay, obviously just a low life attempt to dupe people into thinking they are buying the real thing!

Once again, it is possible to harvest the tips of the newer strike anywhere types but there is just so little material on these things now it's very difficult to do and ridiculously expensive requiring many times as many matches to obtain a usable amount of material and a lot of difficulty extracting this material without contaminating it with too much of the unusable part. Basically to obtain as much usable material as a box of the real strike anywhere matches that cost about .79 cents a few years ago (that's the price on the box I have) you will need several times as many boxes at anywhere from $3 to as much as $5 a box for the kitchen size strike anywhere matches. The old stock real ones are sometimes going for $40 or more on Ebay!


An interesting read here,

http://kissurvival.com/strike-anywhere-matches/

That article is a couple of years old and now even the Pennly brand that he held out a bit of hope for has now disappeared only to be replaced by a nearly identical looking product that is simply the same anemic version as the rest of the brands. Not surprising since now DOT regulations make shipping the "dangerous" versions prohibitively expensive.

Also you might want to check the dates on some of those Youtube videos, I have not but I'm thinking they may be a couple of years old and as recently as two years ago real strike anywhere matches could still sometimes be found.