My homemade black powder

[dtknowles]

I use a 12 ton HF press. I apply pressure until it's nearly maxed out then let it dwell for 5 minutes. The powder settles as it solidifies. I usually do this 3 times.

To extract the pucks, I slip a coupling over the pipe, I've sanded the outside of the pipe slightly so it easily slips in and out of the coupling. I drive the column through the space in the coupling a few at a time on the press, that's usually enough that after this, the rest come out by simply pushing them out with a 1 1/2" diameter wood dowel by hand or at most little taps on the dowel with a rubber mallet. Clearing them is pretty quick.

How do you tell your press/jack is maxed out?

Tim

[DoubleBuck]

HamGunner;
That is a good report on the TP. And, was very similar to my results.
I hate to ask you to do this, but last week or so, when I shot my pistol, I went back to see if I could find your pistol test post and could not. After reading your post from yesterday, I went back again. You said you thought it was about a month ago. I couldn't find it just now, either. If you find that post, would you PM me or post the number, or date, here? Thanks for that. I want to refresh on your numbers versus what I got last week.
On the cleanliness of the powder, my results were the same as yours. The fouling was easy to clean up and I really thought there wasn't nearly as much, left behind. Every ball went down just like the first one. And, even though I was testing velocities, the balls grouped very well, with the TP as well.

[Brimstone]

I crank the lever until the back pressure on said is so stiff that my 260lb self can hang from it and it doesn't move.
If that's not maxed out I don't know what is.
I probably should have invested in the 20 ton but the 12 gets me to 1.7-2.0 g/cc so good enough.

[HamGunner]

DoubleBuck:
Looks like my first chronograph comparison of TP, Goex, and my Sassafras was on post #7852 back on 01/24/24.

Post #7852: First Chronograph test of TP

"Well, it got up to just over 50 degrees today and was overcast. Perfect day to do some chronograph tests of powder as my Chony likes bright cloudy skies the best. I tested Goex 3F, my Sassafras 3F, and my recent batch of 3F Great Value Toilet Paper.

I used my 1851 .36 Cal. Pietta Colt navy reproduction that was imported by Navy Arms in 1976. I fired six shots through the Chrony at about 15 ft. to make certain that it was going to work and also to foul the cylinder and bore so that all testing would be done with the revolver fouled. I then shot six shots of each powder twice, for 12 shots of each powder, but I shot one cylinder full of each of the three powders before testing each powder a second time. Below are the average of 12 shots of each powder.

Each test was loaded with a weighed charge of 22 gr. ignited by a Rem. #11 cap. I used my cast 80gr. .375 dia. Ball seated directly onto the powder with no card or wad. I used Lambs Tallow / Beeswax level with the throat of the cylinder for lube.

Sassafras 3F Average velocity 906 fps. ES 49 SD 16
TP 3F Average velocity 930 fps. ES 39 SD 14 (Great Value brand)
Goex 3F Average velocity 938 fps. ES 29 SD 10

The TP powder was cleaner burning than either of the other two. I think Goex probably had the most noticeable fouling."

Second chronograph test of TP - measuring charge by volume:

Post #7886: 02/06/24

"Nice day, so I done some more chronograph testing on all my home made powders. Sassafras, Wal-Mart Great Value Ultra Strength TP, Sam's Club Member Mark Ultra Premium TP. and my first batch of Golden Powder, which I will toss in here as well as on the Golden Powder thread.

All fired in my Pietta .36 cal. 1851 Navy pushing an 80gr. ball and ignited by my home made caps. Twelve rounds (two cylinders) of each fired for the test using a load of 22 gr. (measured, but not weighed) for all, except for the Golden Powder, which I did not measure as I just filled the cylinder with the Golden Powder, compressed with the ram, filled to the top again and seated the ball on top of that.

Sassafras 3F averaged 846 fps. with an ES of 61 fps. SD of 22.
Great Value TP 3F Ave. 869 fps. with an ES of 43 fps. SD of 15. Three rolls made charcoal for 1.5 lbs. of Black.
Sam's Club TP 3F Ave. 891 fps. with an ES of 42 fps. SD of 15. Three rolls only made enough for 1 lb of Black.This Sams Club TP was fluffier and weighed less than the Wal-Mart Great Value TP. The first cylinder full of this powder during the test gave an Ave. 908 fps. with 19 fps. ES and 07 fps. SD.

Golden Powder 3F Ave. 568 fps. with an ES of 56 fps. SD of 20 fps. Again, I topped off cylinders, compressed with ram, re-filled cylinders and seated ball. Did not weigh or measure the Golden Powder loads. This Golden Powder does shoot very clean. Might make some good plinking powder. The accuracy was noticeably decent.

Not much new info on the TP testing. They both seemed to be very close in results, but the one cylinder full of the Sam's Club TP powder did give probably the best ES and SD of any testing of this Pietta, ever. Maybe just a fluke, but perhaps this TP charcoal powder can be made to shoot. TP has once again beat out my Sassafras, which up until now had been my best so far."

[DoubleBuck]

Ham;
Thanks very much. I'm going to study on this a bit. I wasn't looking back near far enough, for your post. My how time flies, right? Or, my how time's fun, when your having flies.

[dtknowles]

I crank the lever until the back pressure on said is so stiff that my 260lb self can hang from it and it doesn't move.
If that's not maxed out I don't know what is.
I probably should have invested in the 20 ton but the 12 gets me to 1.7-2.0 g/cc so good enough.

Well, hum. Maxed out could be you hanging on a lever twice as long. I wonder how they rate these jacks.

I am imagining you are getting more than 12 tons on your ram but who knows.

Since the jack is hydraulic, I expect it is linear. 200 pounds on a one foot lever would be the same as 100 pounds on a two foot lever. I wonder what the jack's breaking point is and how it fails.

I wonder how flat 12 tons would make a 0.490" diameter soft lead round ball or 6 tons or 18 tons.

I will run some tests with my jack when I get my frame welded up.

Tim

[Nobade]

Most jacks have a bypass valve that will eventually activate to prevent destroying the jack. I can cycle mine until I feel it start to bypass, and that's all I get. That does happen about the same time I'm hanging all my bodyweight on the handle.

[HWooldridge]

FWIW, I have a 50 ton commercial press and can see no discernible difference between compressing pucks at 15 or 30 tons (so I never saw any sense going higher). I suspect anything above 9 or 10 tons is probably sufficient for our purposes - now we have another thing to test...

[2TM101]

I think once you get past the point where the Sulfur "Plasticizes" which I think is 3500 PSI, that its rapidly diminishing returns after that.

However I HAVE found a significant gain by using my crappy 6 ton Chinese press twice. I re-press my unusable fines in my Woodys press which is too large to get to plasticize pressure with my 6 ton - its just pressing it all back into a puck shape again. But it does let me get everything into a usable size a lot faster than the original 40mm die I have to use to get enough pressure for the Sulfur to work

[HamGunner]

When I was using a 12 ton jack, I could put enough force on the handle to cause it to bypass. The cheap Chinese jack shortly shot craps by doing so on a steady basis, so I beefed up my press and got a 20 ton jack. I am not able to cause my 20 ton jack to reach bypass pressure apparently, as it gets too hard for me to pull down on the handle before the bypass valve is opened.

I know I was likely just barely reaching the vicinity of the needed pressure for my 3" die using my 12 ton jack, even though it was hitting the bypass pressure. I was never able to achieve more than the high 80's in percentage of density compared to Goex. Now, with the 20 ton jack, I am achieving an average of about 94 % density of the Goex.

I went back and looked up what most consider the needed pressure to plasticize the meal and it seems like 3.5 Kpsi is about right. A 1.5" puck die would need 3.10 ton pressure, a 2.0" puck die would need 5.50 ton pressure, a 2.5" puck die would need 8.60 ton pressure, and a 3.0" puck die would need at least a 12.25 ton pressure to reach that point.

I imagine that there is also a bit of spring back in many of our die set ups so that one likely needs a bit more pressure than the above calculations in order to actually achieve full plasticizing of the meal.

[Brimstone]

Hmm a bypass valve...yeah mine doesn't do that. I wonder why? It's listed as a 12 ton not 20 ton.
Odd.

[2TM101]

I went back and looked up what most consider the needed pressure to plasticize the meal and it seems like 3.5 Kpsi is about right. A 1.5" puck die would need 3.10 ton pressure, a 2.0" puck die would need 5.50 ton pressure, a 2.5" puck die would need 8.60 ton pressure, and a 3.0" puck die would need at least a 12.25 ton pressure to reach that point.

The 40mm "DabPress" die that I use works out to 2 Sq In. My 6 ton press is barely enough.

The Woody's die is 3"". A 12 ton press is barely not enough.

Its kind of aggravating that the most commonly used die and the most commonly available size jack just barely do not work. In my case I can use it for the second go around of re-pressing the fines left over from the first run as the sulfur has already done its job.

[HamGunner]

Hmm a bypass valve...yeah mine doesn't do that. I wonder why? It's listed as a 12 ton not 20 ton.
Odd.

My 12 ton was a cheap Chinese Jack and most likely, it was not even achieving 12 ton before it's bypass valve was opening. I would think that a good jack would give you what it claims on the label before it stopped forward pressure. My 20 ton is also made in china as well. I could not find an American made Jack. There might be some available, but not locally.

[DoubleBuck]

2TM101;
I just looked up your 40mm 'dab press' and actually a 2" die is 50.8 mm. That's almost 11 mm larger than your die. And that drops the required total poundage from 11,000 psi, for 2"; down to just 6,817 PSI that you would need for 40 mm. Or, 3.41 tons. I'm amazed that it drops that much. But a 39mm die would just need 6482 pounds or 3.24 tons. That's a large drop for just one millimeter. By the way, all those figures are based on 3,500 pounds per sq. in. needed to do the job. That should make your 6 ton jack more than sufficient, on that particular die. This is a handy calculator, and you can just plug units of several measurements and convert to any of those measurements, using the unit of measure blue down arrows to select the desired type of measurement. https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/area-of-a-circle Good luck!