Homemade BP

[Arcangel]

Longtime BP hunter. I make my own caps with a TAP O CAP. Kust started making black powder from Salt Peter, sulfur and activated charcoal. Before the nay sayers kick in... Activated charcoal works fine. I did some homework. Pure activated charcoal has no chemicals that inhibit burning. Some of the stuff sold for teeth and stomach issues do. Mine is pure. Anyway I have tested it ground fine with good results. However I am seeing recommendations to wet homemade BP with water or alcohol and then dry. As I said I have achieved good results without doing this but was wondering, what, if any advantage is there to wetting ang drying homemade BP? I buy finely powdered ingredients and routinely grind them further. Thank You.

[bruce381]

I think wetting reduces the chance of as the Glock guys say a "kaboom" or in your case a fire during grinding.
I have ground the ingredients separately but I think when mixed they get more twichy. So its a fire burn your face off thing also wet you may get a finner grind.

[rancher1913]

boy oh boy, there is a thread on this you might want to read, that is if you got a few weeks to get through it.

[Harter66]

Do not take this post as a suggestion that there is no danger in the process of deriving propellant at home .

The wetting of dry mill technique is for corning and screening . Obviously wet powder won't burn , but if the components aren't added together until the last 30 min blend you should be good to go .

Lead balls , grounded mills , and drums , with a little good sense and small batches will keep it reasonably safe .

[indian joe]

Longtime BP hunter. I make my own caps with a TAP O CAP. Kust started making black powder from Salt Peter, sulfur and activated charcoal. Before the nay sayers kick in... Activated charcoal works fine. I did some homework. Pure activated charcoal has no chemicals that inhibit burning. Some of the stuff sold for teeth and stomach issues do. Mine is pure. Anyway I have tested it ground fine with good results. However I am seeing recommendations to wet homemade BP with water or alcohol and then dry. As I said I have achieved good results without doing this but was wondering, what, if any advantage is there to wetting ang drying homemade BP? I buy finely powdered ingredients and routinely grind them further. Thank You.

forget the alcohol idea - waste of time and money and does nothing beneficial

[YippyKiYay]

I made some years ago using a recipe from Foxfire, I was a teen, got the chemicals from the rexall drug store. I think foxfire said use stale urine. It burned, but not well. I mixed it 50/50 with goex and it helped.
I've considered trying again...will watch this thread

[HamGunner]

I make my own.
I managed to read most of the posted thread on the muzzle loading forum about producing ones own powder and there is plenty of information there to make it plain as day how to make your own Black Powder. My powder works very well and actually shows a bit more velocity by weight than Goex. My end product looks very much like the Goex or Elephant powder that I have had and used for years except that it is lighter colored since I do not graphite coat mine. Comparison tests for weight show that mine is slightly lighter per volume, but when compared to weight, mine actually produces more velocity than the commercial powders. I start with grinding and screening (40 mesh) all the ingredients separately until they are a very fine flour. The high grade potassium nitrate I buy in prill form as it is fairly cheap to buy and it does take a bit to grind it down, but the really pure sulfur is fairly fine to begin with and I buy it in 5 lb. bags. The charcoal I make myself out of dried and debarked Black Willow branches. I tried commercial fireworks grade air float charcoal, but it is not the quality of Black Willow. It is dirtier and the velocity is lower. Fine for fireworks, but not for burning in firearms. I use a 20 lb. Lee furnace with a couple of pounds of lead in the the bottom to make the charcoal. A 1 lb. coffee can fits inside just fine and with one 8 penny nail sized hole in the center of the resealable lid I can produce some high grade charcoal out of finely chopped up and dried Black Willow branches. I heat it until the escaping smoke gas becomes flammable and then light the gas. I try to keep the heat under 750 degrees while charring. When the flame goes out from the lack of escaping flammable gas, the char is done. I grind the char in a small hand meat grinder and screen. Any larger granules that will not pass a 40 mesh screen I grind in an electric coffee grinder and screen again. Next, after all the ingredients are screened, I blend them together and place in my rubber lined brass tumbler along with a good amount of 12 gauge lead ball as well as some 36 cal. ball and mill for 5-6 hours. I run the mill outside, but the likely hood of an explosion is very slight as long as one does not place anything in the mill that will spark, no matter what the naysayers will tell you, this is fairly safe. It is done like this by thousands of people and I have never heard about a mishap. Next up is the compression of the black powder flour after sifting out the lead milling balls. I have a 3" diameter by about 2 1/2'' steel die and an aluminum mandrel to compress the powder into thin wafers. The flour is moistened very slightly with a spray bottle until it will just start to form into a ball with hand pressure. Not much moisture is needed. The slightly dampened flour is placed in the compression die in three layers with thin plastic discs separating the layers. Under 12 tons of pressure in my hydraulic press (requires at least 3K lb. pressure psi, which is a bit over 10 tons for a 3" die) the three layers of flour are compressed down from 2 1/2" into thin wafers or (pucks) that are each perhaps 1/4" thick. They are allowed to dry for a few days and then I bust them up with a ball peen hammer into small pieces so that I can grind them in a (CERAMIC BURR) coffee grinder for screening. Steel burr grinders are not to be used. I use a 20 mesh screen to separate out the larger granules and anything that does not pass through the 40 mesh is just right at FFFG size. The larger granules can be ground again or used for FFG. The flour that passes through the 40 mesh can be moistened and compressed again for another run through the ceramic burr grinder. I find that about 60% can be used as proper sized granules per grind. Not actually a simple process, but not all that complicated either. I have not actually worked out my cost down to the Penney, but I think I can produce 1 lb. for around $6. Since the granules are not coated with graphite, they are slightly lighter colored and perhaps a slight amount softer than commercial powder and may perhaps absorb moisture more readily, but that does not seem to create a problem and I have not noticed all that much of a difference except that my powder does have a very slight amount of dust in it. Just enough dust to notice. I suspect that the dust is lost from commercial powder during their coating of the graphite. As for moisture absorption, I really doubt it is a problem at all if stored properly. Like the old pioneers always said, Keep Your Powder Dry.

Edit: Oh, and I also make my own caps out of .004 thick aluminum soda cans with a Tap O Cap type tool and although I have had mixed results in an attempt to produce my own percussion material, toy pop gun caps work really well, especially if you can find any that were not produced in China. I use a paper puncher to cut out the little discs of percussion material from the roll caps and I press TWO discs into my aluminum caps with the end of a small chainsaw file. I have seldom had any that did not fire a load of BP in either rifle or revolver. I make my own paper cartridges for my revolver out of beautician perm papers and they ignite just fine using the toy pop gun caps as well. I can shoot all day, heck all week, for virtually a few pennies.

[Abert Rim]

Rick, great post and thank you.

[LAGS]

I found that the F42 priming compound works even better than the H 48.
It is very similar but does not have the ground glass in the mix.
When mixing either priming compound , make sure you do the percentages by Weight.
Not by Volume like the prime all mix comes with instructions.

[HamGunner]

Edit to my above Post #7:

Char your charcoal at no more than 600 degrees F.