As anybody ever made

[Limey]

....has anybody on here ever tried to make their own black powder?.....did the 'ol' feller's back in the good ol' days always buy their BP from trading posts/stores or did they attempt to make their own?

I know it is dangerous.....but so is life, none of us are going to get out of it alive!!!........

I am not encouraging anybody to try it but I just wondered if anybody had ever had a go at making their own and what success they had had........(and the fact that anybody replies to this and tried it means you must have survived the experience!)

Safe shooting

Limey

[Boz330]

When I was a kid. Shot it in a home made shot gun. Fortunately it wasn't very powerful or I wouldn't be telling about it.
There are some sites that tell how to make it and use it and it does work. I looked into it but the potassium nitrate was as much as I could buy Swiss BP for. It would still be fun to try.

Check this discussion; http://parallaxscurioandrelicfirearmsforums.yuku.com/topic/22770/t/Making-your-own-black-powder.html

Bob

[JCherry]

Limey,

I made some in the mid sixties when I was in grade school. It was low power but I used it with some success with small rockets.

A site you may find interesting is;

http://fogoforum.us/projects.php

All cautions apply. If you are not careful you can remove your eyebrows at the neck.

Have Fun,

JCherry

[Boz330]

More info; http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/history.html

http://www.wfvisser.dds.nl/EN/bp_making_EN.html

[Kraschenbirn]

Tried making some for science project model rockets back in the early 60's (under the supervision of my HS chemistry teacher) but the end product was something of a disappointment. Moved on to cast zinc-sulfur fuels and, later, to plasicized nitrocellulose...which is a story all in itself involving two (very!) naive HS kids, the FBI, and "possible national security issues."

Bill

[Boz330]

Tried making some for science project model rockets back in the early 60's (under the supervision of my HS chemistry teacher) but the end product was something of a disappointment. Moved on to cast zinc-sulfur fuels and, later, to plasicized nitrocellulose...which is a story all in itself involving two (very!) naive HS kids, the FBI, and "possible national security issues."

Bill

Whoa that beats the hell out my blowing up the local sewer system in my neighborhood. Durn sewer gas. [smilie=1:
Although at the time the FBI might have been easier on me than the old man was. He always felt obligated to keep his oldest in line:violin:


Bob

[NickSS]

In the old days most folks bought powder from powder makers. Very few if any ever made their own. There was a time in the 60s when the supply dried up where I lived due to Duponts plant blowing up. So I was desperate to feed my Zouave rifle. I got the ingreadients and as I had no scale I ground them up separately and mixed them by volume and moisened it with water. I ended up with a gray paiste that I spread over wax paper with a wood cement trawel. After it dried I carefully crumbled it up and put it in a can. I made about five pounds this way. The stuff worked but I needed about double charges to get the same point of impact and it was dirtyer than regular black powder. Had I weighed it and ground it more and used better charcoal (I used Charcoal brickettes) I would have ended up with more potent powder.

[imashooter2]

Yes. Followed instructions found in various Paladin Press publications. It worked well, but not as well as factory.

[Buckshot]

................Yup, my buddy and I did. We didn't know anything about corning so we just pulverized it and mixed it up. Basicly it WAS a powder. However we never tried it in a gun or pipe or anything :-) Trust me, it DID burn, and do so very lively too, while liberating tremdous quantities of acrid smoke and sparkes.

................Buckshot

[JeffinNZ]

Yeah, twas a yokel down the road used to make his own but now there is a just a big crater.................

Stick to buying BP I say. It is still WAY cheap in your part of the world and it's a good way to keep all you fingers etc.

[Boz330]

Yeh Jeff but there are some of us that JUST have to do it ourselves. Sort of like working on your own car or remodeling your house. Besides when I was 12 nobody would sell me BP so I had to be self sufficient.:roll:

Bob

[10-x]

Seems many of us had the same kind of childhood. Growing up in the country the chance to "make stuff" came up all the time. Recall a science project of how a cannon works. Made my BP by weight and volume and cant remember which was better as it was in the early 60's? Mixed the 3 parts with water and even gas, spreading it out to dry and grinding it to powder.
Also remember making other things that used BP that would get you a trip to the "grey bar motel" this day and age. Empty Co2 cartridges filled, fused and dropped on a ground bee nest worked wonders.[smilie=1:

[KCSO]

I have made both serpentine and corned powder in the past. The most dangerous part of powder making is when you tumble corned powder to glaze it. More later...

[KCSO]

Yes it is possible to make your own black powder, but it is not recommended and here is why...

The original black powder as produced by the early alchemists, and used till about 1500 was called serpentine powder. This was a mixture of Sulphur, Charcoal and either potassium Nitrate or sodium nitrate. The exact mixture varied from maker to maker but 75-15-10 was a pretty common ratio. The Charcoal and the sulphur are the fuel and the nitrates are the oxidizer.

Serpenting powder was simply mixed together and then lit off. It worked in fire works and cannons but was woefully inefficient in small guns. It was commonly carried to the scene of the battle as seperate componants and mixed behind the lines as needed for safety sake. So you had some poor schnook just behind the battle mixing powder up for the cannons.

Then it was discovered that if the powder was dampened and caked and then broken up and tumbled the powder burned cleaner and gave more oomph. This was our modern??? glazed powder. After being mixed the powder was wetted with various things including wine or even urine. The powder was pressed into cakes and after drying the cakes were broken up and then corned or tumbled in a wooden barrel to put a glaze on the powder. Here is the most dangerous part of powder making as when breaking or tumbliing if you get ONE LITTLE SPARK, blooeee!

Now in comercial operations the tumbling barn was made to be blown apart! The walls were hinged and the wheel was breakaway. You load the wheel and statrt and stop the tumbling from a remote location. You sill have to creep in to the tumbling barn in your felt booties and carefully scoop out the power for screening but usually the barn din't explode more than once a year or so and usually only one or two of the low grade employee's were lost. In an attempt to reduce the risk most modern powder is glazed with the addition of graphite. This reduces the tumbling time and since there is less powder dust the operation is some safer. If I remember right it has been almost 6 years since GOEX had their last PRODUCT LOSS. And I believe this is what happened to Elephant a few years ago. The problem with this is that graphite doesn't burn as clean and the best powders are those tumbled for the longest time to the best glaze. OSHA does not like black powder, ergo most of our powders come from places OSHA aint!

Now to home powder making...

Serpentine powder for fireworks or cannon is relativly simple, you mix the ingrediants and go to town. BUT if you want good shooting powder you need to corn the powder. You need to cake it wet, then break the cakes, tumble the powder and then screen it for grade with brass screens. Do you see a problem here? Do you want to be the one to sit in the back yard busting up cakes of powder with your rubber mallet? How about tumbling? You going to put a couple pounds in your THUMBLER? Yes you can build a wooden tumbling drum and you can make screens and you can break the caked powder with a rubber mallet, but your results will be inferior to commercial powder and your neighbors will not love you, especially after the first oops. In addition modern society seems to favor hair and eyebrows and the breaking and tumbling process, even in small batches it not conducive to keeping those appendadges intact.

So there it is, you too can make black powder at home.

[Boz330]

Seems many of us had the same kind of childhood. Growing up in the country the chance to "make stuff" came up all the time. Recall a science project of how a cannon works. Made my BP by weight and volume and cant remember which was better as it was in the early 60's? Mixed the 3 parts with water and even gas, spreading it out to dry and grinding it to powder.
Also remember making other things that used BP that would get you a trip to the "grey bar motel" this day and age. Empty Co2 cartridges filled, fused and dropped on a ground bee nest worked wonders.[smilie=1:

Or farm ponds.:shock:

[carpetman]

I've made lots of smokless powder. All the ingredients in one can. Just open them up and add air. Some of it is labeled with names like Unique,and NOrma MRP but most has numbers like 2400,4064,4350.

[Hayfield]

Three feed scoops of willow charcoal, ground up in the feed mill. One scoop of dried chicken poop, same feed mill. About a 1/4 scoop of sulpher. Mix them together and hammer them down into an old pump pipe. Make a fuse with twisted straw and light it and run up to the barn so pap can give you a beaten when it goes off. I can't believe I'm still alive.

[Boz330]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who had a checkered youth.:drinks:

Bob

[DLCTEX]

Wow! Devine intervention must have kept the formulas hidden from me as a kid, else I probably wouldn't be here. What I would have given for such mysteries. DALE

[Nueces]

My Mother used to tell of watching TV with my Dad one evening, when there was a resounding boom in the near distance. Dad's comment - "Where's Mark?"

We had wrung out BP and rocket fuel and, that summer night, had tried filling a leaf bag with acetylene and oxygen. Let it float out onto the lake and torched her off with a cigarette butt and a short firecracker fuse. Holy crap! The whole lake lit up and we all felt our shirt buttons pop against our skin.

Yup, I was a teenage terrorist.

Mark

[Skipper]

http://home.bak.rr.com/jslayer/spectra.jpg

[flintlocknfur]

These guys are having pretty good results....

http://www.homegunsmith.com/cgi-bin/ib3/ikonboard.cgi?;act=ST;f=101;t=20596

[Limey]

..I sure like it on this Forum....it seems 'shooter's, and in particular, home reloaders, are all made from the same stuff......madness!!!!!!tee hee tee hee......

....long may it continue and all power to everybodies elbows and enjoyment......

....just do it carefully,


Safe shooting and mucking about!....life's far too short to take it...or yourself.....seriously!


Limey

[10-x]

Crude rocket fuel was fun, its either 6 parts potasium nitrate and 4 parts regular sugar or the other way around.....another early 60's play thing.
I remember using an old sauce pan snuck out of the kitchen and melting both over a small fire.....yea my buddy and I were extreemly careful, never had an oops[smilie=1:

[KCSO]

My First muzzleloader was a matchlock made from the steering rod from an old Ford and a breech plug made from a 5/8" bolt. all nicely strapped with scrap copper into the fork of a hickory limb. When i couldn't make serpentine i used ground up match heads.

[Boz330]

My First muzzleloader was a matchlock made from the steering rod from an old Ford and a breech plug made from a 5/8" bolt. all nicely strapped with scrap copper into the fork of a hickory limb. When i couldn't make serpentine i used ground up match heads.

I think maybe I have a twin brother my folks never told me about.:bigsmyl2:

Bob

[Linstrum]

Making powder using BBQ charcoal briquets as the source of charcoal has very likely saved more mailboxes as well as untold fingers, eyes, and more lives in general than any lecture given in high school chemistry class to not to screw around with making the stuff. BBQ briquets are about a fourth sand and Portland cement mixed with charred sawdust and just about prevents black powder made with it from burning.

With good light structured charcoal made from aged willow wood, avocado wood, fennel weed stems, clean dead grape vine, or even clean yellow pine, and then tested and adjusted in amount to compensate for the ash content that can range up to 10% by weight of the carbon content of the charcoal, the homemade powder made from it is potent enough to give very satisfactory results in all muzzle loaders. Corning the stuff is far, far too dangerous to do by hand. In commercial powder mills corning is done by remote control since it is the most dangerous part of powder manufacture. Back in the early 1960s if one wanted to shoot muzzle loaders, making crude serpentine powder was the only way to get powder since the stuff was not generally available until the late 1960s when replica BP guns began to be popular.

Many years ago I did some extensive research and experimentation using ammonpulver, the last major development beyond standard black powder. The stuff is typically 85% ammonium nitrate and 15% dead burnt charcoal and has the same energy content as the double base smokeless powders, which in other words is pretty darned powerful! Ammonpulver is also totally smokeless if the charcoal used has no ash in it and unlike black powder it has no residue at all, making it very desirable. It is also flashless and cool burning, making it easy on bores. Historically it was used mainly by the Austrians as their prefered cannon powder from 1885 through World War One and was used during World War Two by the Germans at the end when they ran out of resources in 1945. The down side of ammonpulver is that the ammonium nitrate changes crystal shape at 86°F causing the ammonpulver powder grains to crumble into a finer granulation that increases burning speed, causing high pressure excursions. If made and used in a very fine granulation below 86°F it works just about as good as IMR4350 in a .30-06. It is quite insensitive and is extremely difficult to ignite. In practice I used IMR4895 over the flash hole as 25% of the powder charge weight and got complete combustion in .30-06 using 180 grain cast wheel weigt boolits. Its burn rate was like IMR4350 as such. Ammonpulver and homemade black powder are now just footnotes in U.S. history since the ingredients have been totally yanked of the market in the name of homeland security. Years ago when I was experimenting with the stuff, though, I found I had to completely wash and then dry my rifle with hot water to get any miniscule traces of ammonpulver off the steel since ammonium nitrate causes severe and rapid rusting of steel. I knew that about ammonium nitrate before I ever started and used an old beater rifle that it wouldn't matter of it had cosmetic rusting damage to its finish.

[Ricochet]

I have seen mentioned a safer way of "corning" BP by forcing a moist paste of the incorporated ingredients through a screen, then drying.

[grinstead]

hi limey ,
yes i have been experimenting with home made b/p
using (ebay available) a/n of high quality and high quality sulphur
the key to making good product is clearly in the charcoal quality which in my case was right out of the fire place and although it was ok ( full case under 170g hard cast .308 in a 1925 hex receiver mosin nagant 91 ) it did not feel as powerful as pyrodax p or goex ffg .
i,m a limey too been in california 10 years and just coming back to uk or somewhere else in europe in a couple of weeks . i like doing all this stuff myself
always trying a new experiment
when i restart experimenting i,ll keep you informed on progress