My homemade black powder

[dtknowles]

It is not just the shooting or making powder it is making things with your hands out of real physical stuff. Get her to start a garden back home too.
You're a keeper too.

[Trapper-Jack]

I had a visit from a young man this morning. He is doing a senior project for high school. His dad asked me a couple weeks ago if I would be willing to mentor him making powder. His dad and his teacher were both good with the idea. This young man is working on finishing up a percussion pistol and his project will be to be able to load and fire it with all homemade materials. We started out cooking a can of charcoal. While that was cooking, we went took a half pound batch of powder out of the tumbler and weighed out the materials for another half pound. By the time we got the green meal pressed into pucks, the charcoal was about done smoking so I turned off the heat and plugged the hole. We took the freshly pucked powder in and put them in the dehydrator and took out the pucks that I had put in a couple days ago. By the time we got back out to the shop, the charcoal can was cool to the touch so we ground the newly made charcoal sticks into usable charcoal powder. I then broke up the pucks we had removed from the dehydrator and we ground them into some 2F powder. After the powder making I got a pot of lead hot and he made some 50 caliber ball. That was pretty straight foreword. The final process was making the percussion caps. I've got a punch from Reloader22. and we punched out some cups and primed them. When he left, he left with all homemade components for his school project.

[Swineherd]

I had a visit from a young man this morning. He is doing a senior project for high school. His dad asked me a couple weeks ago if I would be willing to mentor him making powder. His dad and his teacher were both good with the idea. This young man is working on finishing up a percussion pistol and his project will be to be able to load and fire it with all homemade materials. We started out cooking a can of charcoal. While that was cooking, we went took a half pound batch of powder out of the tumbler and weighed out the materials for another half pound. By the time we got the green meal pressed into pucks, the charcoal was about done smoking so I turned off the heat and plugged the hole. We took the freshly pucked powder in and put them in the dehydrator and took out the pucks that I had put in a couple days ago. By the time we got back out to the shop, the charcoal can was cool to the touch so we ground the newly made charcoal sticks into usable charcoal powder. I then broke up the pucks we had removed from the dehydrator and we ground them into some 2F powder. After the powder making I got a pot of lead hot and he made some 50 caliber ball. That was pretty straight foreword. The final process was making the percussion caps. I've got a punch from Reloader22. and we punched out some cups and primed them. When he left, he left with all homemade components for his school project.

That's excellent! Can't possibly be a public school this young guy is attending, could it?
You've got your system nicely streamlined, it sounds. I have some bits, bobs details and minutiae still to attend in order to move smoothly through the process as you've just described. Inspiring!

[Trapper-Jack]

This young man is going to a public school, however it is a very small rural community. Most of the families are farm or ranch people and haven't subscribed to the political attitude of the bigger towns.

[Swineherd]

There's hope yet.
Do you find it enjoyable? Sharing your knowledge with a young person who is willing and eager to learn? I like teaching.

[LAGS]

I too enjoy sharing my hobby stuff with other person's that are interested , especially young people.
That is why I had a friend help me do a post on the pistol I built out of spare parts and he did that video on me shooting it with homemade powder , primers and my cast lead balls.
I hope that inspired others of all ages

[Trapper-Jack]

I found it enjoyable and personally extremely rewarding. I planned it out for a week to have a batch of powder ready to grind, another batch ready to press and have a batch of wood ready to char. He took notes and a lot of pictures of every phase of the operation.

[Swineherd]

Very cool, fellows. I enjoy sharing what I know about blackpowder with anyone who shows the slightest interest. I've given a handful of people their first opportunity to experience shooting BP with my cap and ball revolver. It's always so much fun. Don't know of anyone who's been bitten by the bug as a result of my influence, but its bound to happen eventually.

[DoubleBuck]

Trapper-Jack;
You done good! That boy will have that memory forever. I think the whole story is awesome!

[shaman]

OK. I'm back. I had stuff to do around the farm and had to take off a few days. The ailanthus charcoal is all fly and I've mixed 1.5 oz of it with 7.5 oz of KN03 and 1 OZ of sulphur. How long should I run the combined batch in the ball mill?

EDIT: Also, I put in a 1/4 teaspoon of Quebracho.

[Trapper-Jack]

I'm sure you will get several different opinions, but I like to mill mine in my harbor freight tumbler about 20 to 24 hours.

[Swineherd]

It depends wether all your materials are milled to air float already. I saw an interesting YouTube in which a fellow mills several batches different lengths of time and tests the burn rates of the resulting meal. He started with all components as airfloat to begin and achieved the best results at ten hours, with no measurable improvement in the longer milled batches. Of course, most of us have "custom" milling setups, so I'm sure individual results will vary. FWIW, I milled my last few batches about 15 hours and they're significantly faster than GOEX, as measured by my calibrated eye.

[Trapper-Jack]

My routine is that I go out in the morning and take care of the livestock and then go to the shop about the same time every day. I'll take a half pound batch out of the tumbler and press it, and put in another. Then I go on to whatever the day holds. It makes a 24 hour cycle and is convenient.

[shaman]

All but the KN03 were air floating, and I checked after 6 hours and the ball mill had gotten it all down to the consistency of talcum powder and let it run another 3 hours. I put another batch in a little while ago, and letting it run all night.

Thanks for the comebacks.

[dondiego]

What are your thoughts on ceramic ball milling media? What is the ideal size? I have access to small stuff and I have a pound of trapezoidal 1 inch by 1.5 inch stuff. What is best?

[LAGS]

That media sounds to me as too large.
But that too depends on the weight.
I am not in favor of using ceramic media for milling your powder.
The size of your media also depends on the size of your mill.
I use a smaller mill , so that regulates what I can use.

[HighUintas]

I have looked into the yttria stabilized zirconia media. Non sparking, won't break and spark like the alumina ceramic is capable of doing, and it is much more dense.

However... Probably too expensive unless you're using a HF or similar size mill. Even then, still very very expensive

[Swineherd]

I use a 4 inch diameter pvc pipe mill jar. When I was doing research on the ideal diameter media, I found no shortage of confusing technical information, but at some point decided to use engineering data intended for mining operations. I don't remember the specific source of the equations, and definitely not the equations themselves, but they lead me to believe 3/4" diameter brass balls would be ideal. I ended up getting 1/2" instead because the cost was so prohibitive. If I were you, I wouldn't be afraid to use the large media on a small test batch just to see what you end up with.

[Swineherd]

I really like the lead into copper tube pinched off at each end hack. Thinking back, I should have saved myself about a hundred dollars on the brass balls and done that.

[LAGS]

I too found that using media near 3/4" is ideal especially if it is heavy like lead or brass.
Copper filled with lead was great.
I need to make more of them.
The ones I had I left back in California.
I do have copper and hard lead to make some more .