Pine cone charcoal for black powder?

[GoodOlBoy]

ok I have seen other mention it on here. I have seen it mentioned as a reference to "an old book" on several other sites. Does ANYBODY know the title of any of the old books that mention using pine cones for the charcoal for black powder making?

Just curiosity, but it's drivin me up a wall and I wanna read about it.

Thanks

GoodOlBoy

[GhostHawk]

Can't say that I have seen that, but I have seen reference to "Oat Grass Charcoal" for powder making.

I suspect it is a pain to make, but gives a charcoal even lighter than Willow.

[chancho veloz]

I have a e book which explains that well, but I dont know how to send you. If you could give me your email addeess I can send it. It is in pdf format.

[GoodOlBoy]

pm sent Chancho! Thanks!

Richard

[Pilgrim Sojourner]

Chancho,
If you wouldn't mind, I would appreciate a copy too. Pm inbound.

[chancho veloz]

I'll be glad to send it to everyone who sends me his email.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The main obstacle to the use of hardwoods isn't the nature of the charcoal produced, but the difficult of reducing it to sufficiently microscopic particles. Pine cone scales are harder than pinewood. They also contain a substance very much like bark, which produces an undesirable tendency to lingering sparks.

[GoodOlBoy]

book had some great info in it, but on pine wood, not pine cones.

Oh well it mentioned plum wood, which is of interest since I have alot of wild plum on my place.

Ballistics I was kinda wonderin about that which is one of the reasons I am tryin to get more info. Wonder how much difference there would be in pine cone charcoal from "green" cones vs "dried" cones.

GoodOlBoy

[Texantothecore]

Bark and pine cones have chemicals which are a bit fire retardent and that is why they tend to make poor charcoal.

[andremajic]

Bark and pine cones have chemicals which are a bit fire retardent and that is why they tend to make poor charcoal.

Don't they extract turpentine from pine?

We used to make fire starters out of pine cones, so I'm wondering what is inside that would retard fire.

[Texantothecore]

Don't they extract turpentine from pine?

We used to make fire starters out of pine cones, so I'm wondering what is inside that would retard fire.

Turpentine is made or was made from the sap of pine trees. I am not sure how fire retardant the bark is. Most tree barks have some degree of it. I sort of remember some stories from my youth of seeds making it through major fires but it has been a long time since I lived in Wisc.

Just try it and see what happens. It just might work.

[GoodOlBoy]

I know if you make a collector for a charcoal kiln you can catch ALOT of "wood vinegar" off of green pine. Works well for treating wood that's going to be exposed to the weather.

GoodOlBoy

[CHeatermk3]

You could get a bag of lump charcoal and pulverise it--It'd be a mix of south american hardwoods if you got royal oak in the red bag--$11 for a pretty big bag like 17 pounds.

Or would that be cheating?

[Major Danger]

First real BP I used in my percussion revolver was a home made batch I made using charcoal from ailanthus, or tree of heaven. It worked well in my pistol. It made more recoil than the same volume of pyrodex anyway.

[GoodOlBoy]

Lump charcoal is almost impossible to get in my area, all we get is briquettes which have fillers. Then there is the money. $11 might not sound like much, but when you are on a very fixed limited income it is what it is. Particularly since I can already make my own charcoal in a can over a fire for the cost of my time.

GoodOlBoy

[docone31]

You are better off making from pine scraps than using hardwood charcoal.
Slice up a 2 X 4, stack it in a coffee can with a lid, punch an hole in the lid and put on a fire. When the smoke stops you have charcoal.
Tumble the pieces and you have charcoal powder.
Much faster than hardwood charcoal.

[Boz330]

First real BP I used in my percussion revolver was a home made batch I made using charcoal from ailanthus, or tree of heaven. It worked well in my pistol. It made more recoil than the same volume of pyrodex anyway.

Tree of Heaven gave me about 50fps more velocity Than Black Willow or Sandbar Willow in the same cartridge case full. The deer or what is left of it in my freezer was taken with it. I have way more TOH than I want on my farm and behind my shop so for me it is a no brainer.

Bob

[Southron]

The Confederate Powder Works at Augusta, GA initially used Willow to make their charcoal from and then later switched to Cotton Wood in 1863. Of course, all bark was stripped off the wood, then it was dried in a kiln and then converted into charcoal. When the Cotton Wood was substituted for the Willow, no difference in the quality of the powder was noted.

The Augusta powder was considered some of the finest black powder produced anywhere, North or South, during the Civil War.

[otter5555]

my very best bp is made with chinaberry charcoal. it's as hot as any you can buy.

[Rojelio]

my very best bp is made with chinaberry charcoal. it's as hot as any you can buy.

I've been thinking about trying chinaberry. It's kind of an invasive species around here. Always looking for ways to improve. I've had good luck with grapevine and better luck with black willow. I would like to try tree of heaven, but, I haven't located any.

[Fly]

I make white pine charcoal.But for fireworks. It burns so dirty it is not fit to shoot in a firearm.
For lift powder in fireworks I could care less how dirty it burns. This has been talked about many times.
Cotton wood is also fast, but to dirtier for muzzleloaders.

Fly

[Fly]

[QUOTE=Southron;3260107]The Confederate Powder Works at Augusta, GA initially used Willow to make their charcoal from and then later switched to Cotton Wood in 1863. Of course, all bark was stripped off the wood, then it was dried in a kiln and then converted into charcoal. When the Cotton Wood was substituted for the Willow, no difference in the quality of the powder was noted.To this very day Black willow
is the chose of the US Army & has been since before the civil war.


Yes I read that also & made some. It was fast but some of the dirtiest powder I ever shot.After one shot I could not get another ball down
the bore.Maybe why the south lost the war. Go ahead & try it & see if I,m right. The one thing with me I never wast powder, I just use
it as lift powder for my fire works. Also hard wood lump charcoal.If it made fast black powder we would all use it. I live in a hard
wood forest. We in fire works use hard wood coal for the spark affects that we get with it in the stars we make.
Have you ever sat around a campfire burning hard wood logs & seen the pretty sparks that come off when the wood pops?

Hard wood makes very slow powder. This stuff has all been talked about above in the making black powder thread at the top.
Everyone wants to reinvent the wheel when it comes to making charcoal for fire arms. Heck yea I have been down that road also, but black powder has been made for thousands of years & not saying they tried every wood but nearly all.

Oh well knock your self out, waste some time & chemicals & you will finally see what I,m saying.
Fly

[Ballistics in Scotland]

book had some great info in it, but on pine wood, not pine cones.

Oh well it mentioned plum wood, which is of interest since I have alot of wild plum on my place.

Ballistics I was kinda wonderin about that which is one of the reasons I am tryin to get more info. Wonder how much difference there would be in pine cone charcoal from "green" cones vs "dried" cones.

GoodOlBoy

Increased sparks (which you may never see unless you shoot in the dark) may be of little importance with cartridge firearms. But you do no want to use spark-projecting powder while someone next to you on a range is loading a muzzle-loader sloppily. People just lack understanding about that kind of thing.

I don't know whether green or seasoned cones would be best, but my guess would be seasoned. I may say, it is also just my guess that this might be more of a risk with pine-cone powder. But there are so many pine-trees about that there must have been some good reason why people didn't use pine wood, rather than chase around after dogwood and willow. Black powder was the combat avionics of the nineteenth century, and the government and private arsenals were extremely good at what they did.

I'm reminded of how they guillotined Levoisier, the scientist and régisseur des poudres, during the French Revolution, and the court said "the Revolution does not have need of scientists." The post was probably meant as a sinecure to give him an income - you know how it is - but he took it seriously, and made great improvements in the manufacture of powder. The revolutionary army had just beaten their far more professional enemies at the battle of Valmy, which was the first almost entirely artillery battle in history.

Buying bagged charcoal sounds like an attractive option for many, but it is only meant for barbecues, and may perfectly reasonably be made at high temperatures. The best charcoal for firearms powder is brown, and Greener says that when it is made at 500 degrees Fahrenheit it ignites at 640 degrees, but when made at 1800 it requires about double the ignition temperature. I don't believe that translates to superior energy once ignited. It probably matters more in flintlocks than percussion or breech-loaders. So if you burn your own charcoal, you might as well get some benefit from it.

You would think that barbecue enthusiasts would want to avoid difficult ignition as well. I've seen some that seem to enjoy it.

[GoodOlBoy]

Actually I can see why they (BBQ guys n girls) would want it Ballistics. Slower ignition means it will smolder. Smoldering makes more smoke. More smoke is more flavor from the smoker for the meat.

Not something I want stuffed down a smoke pole I might be shootin though.

GoodOlBoy