My homemade black powder

[almar]

Jeez Almar, you're work is amazing. You must be very jazzed and proud. Guess there are "New things under the sun!"

Congrats again!

Vettepilot

Thank you vette! would not have been possible without you guys and this thread. There is still more to be done as long as the promise of breaking new ground still exists.

[Vettepilot]

And it seems like, at least regards the home making of black powder, you quite truly are "blazing new ground"! Excellent!!

Vettepilot

[almar]

ok more news tomorrow or monday, I am currently preparing for another batch tomorrow. Thank you to my wife who allows me so much time for my projects, god bless her. The next batch is with the fully brown charcoal, 77-13-10 ratio and will be milled for 9.5 -10 hours. I may not be able to corn it tomorrow but will try, if not...Monday. after the results I posted from my last batch, you can bet i'm going to focus on more milling time from now on.

Look how brown this stuff is

[Vettepilot]

Almar, if you want to research more, my understanding is there were experiments done along these lines around the turn of the century; right about the time smokeless was coming out. Research kind of fizzled out as smokeless took over. You might pick up a few hints/ideas. I think they actually called it "brown powder".

Vettepilot

[mmb617]

I suppose that might be true Indian Joe, but the freedom of shooting out in the wilds is very cool. The only time I've ever shot paper targets was when sighting a gun in. A target just needs to have SOME SORT of a reaction. And it's normally not that I'm "alone"; usually friends and/or family are along. Garbage dumps used to be WONDERFUL shooting sites that we dearly loved before the government shut all that down. Targets galore, and no cleanup after!!! Yes!!

Curious... Is it just in Arizona that you can no longer shoot at garbage dumps, or is that a federal thing??

Vettepilot

In working my way through this entire thread I came across this gem from a year ago and it reminded me of my first times shooting with my dad some 60 years ago. He had an old single shot .22 rifle and he'd take me to the town dump to shoot at rats. That was a common practice in those days. I can still remember him showing me how to clean the rifle afterwards and how he'd emphasize that you always cleaned your gun after you shot it. Certainly advice black powder guys understand.

Willow charcoal production went perfectly today. I made just under a pound and all it took was 1/4 bag of briquette charcoal as fuel. I used a large canning pot with a smaller 12L pot inside. Large pot got many holes drilled underneath and inside pot got one hole at the top, although it didn't really need it since the lid stays on very loosely. I put two layers of charcoal on the bottom along with the canning rack. It burned for about 1.5h then I had to refill it because it wasn't quite done. Another 45 minutes of cook time and it was done. Charcoal was cooked all the way through. I ground it using a combination of an electric coffee grinder for the larger bits and a manual grinder for the smaller bits.

It was good timing for me to find this post right now. I tried to make charcoal today from a cut up cedar fence picket using an empty paint can on my propane grill. I drilled a 3/8" hole in the lid and made a sheet metal flap I could close the hole off with when it was done cooking. I turned the grill on high and it cooked for 2 hours. At first there was a fair amount of smoke coming out of the hole although not as much as I expected. After two hours the smoke had almost stopped so I took it off, closed the hole and let it cool.

But when I opened the can instead of charcoal all I found was some darker brown wood. I think about all I did was dry it good. My grill probably doesn't get hot enough.

I have one of those round charcoal grills up in one of my sheds so tomorrow I'll get it out and fill it up with briquettes, surround the can with them, and fire that baby up. That should be pretty close to what you did so I'll see what results I get from that.

I ordered 8 lbs of willow lump charcoal a week ago but I haven't even got a tracking number yet so I have no idea when that's coming and I'm anxious to make my first test batch of powder.

I don't have my potassium nitrate yet either but at least I know it's on it's way as tracking shows it's been in FedEx limbo in Memphis for the last couple days. When that happens the product usually arrives within a few more days. So I look for it early this coming week.

I can't remember a time when supply chains were so messed up on virtually everything.

[almar]

Almar, if you want to research more, my understanding is there were experiments done along these lines around the turn of the century; right about the time smokeless was coming out. Research kind of fizzled out as smokeless took over. You might pick up a few hints/ideas. I think they actually called it "brown powder".

Vettepilot

hummm...interesting...I remember reading about that sometime. I'll look into it.

[almar]

"Between 1890 and 1900, a type of powder called 'cocoa' or 'brown powder' appeared. This was made by substituting semi-burned charcoal for the regular charcoal. This probably represents the highest development of black powder."

This will take some digging but quite interesting. I may have to play with the ratios again...

[rfd]

"Between 1890 and 1900, a type of powder called 'cocoa' or 'brown powder' appeared. This was made by substituting semi-burned charcoal for the regular charcoal. This probably represents the highest development of black powder."

This will take some digging but quite interesting. I may have to play with the ratios again...

Now THAT got my attention! Any more scoop on "brown powder"?

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...er-1886-06-26/

[almar]

Any body know of data on this brown powder?

[DoubleBuck]

Almar;
You must surely be doing something right!
One question, what is 'StdDev' Standard Deviation? I thought deviation was the difference between highest and lowest speed, but they're calling that Spread.
That wood and the charcoal it made looks awesome! So, is it harder to break up than regular charcoal sticks or is it even softer, being cooked so long?
I guess I had two questions, not one.

[DoubleBuck]

VettePilot;
On your 'diminishing returns' post; I saw the same info, and yes, that was a insanely deep study, on about everything related to black powder and it's production. They have the equipment to test every aspect and we pay for it. I'm glad they at least shared the results! I'm surprised they didn't call it secret and keep it to themselves.

[almar]

Almar;
You must surely be doing something right!
One question, what is 'StdDev' Standard Deviation? I thought deviation was the difference between highest and lowest speed, but they're calling that Spread.
That wood and the charcoal it made looks awesome! So, is it harder to break up than regular charcoal sticks or is it even softer, being cooked so long?
I guess I had two questions, not one.

Its the measure of dispersion of the data points, it gives a more specific idea of consistency than just the spread in case you have a unusually high or low value.

Its about the same maybe a bit harder to snap pieces in 2..

[SeaMonkey]

According to the old literature there were a few powder makers in old England who made Brown Powder for those who preferred it.

But it was especially popular with the Big Guns used on ships.

The Brown or Cocoa Powder had a short life because it was quickly replaced by the Smokeless Powders which were being developed at the same time.

A couple of links which make reference to it:

Gunpowder

Definitions and Information About Naval Guns

[almar]

not a very useful video below...I should watch first then post it...

[almar]

brown powder:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3F9ir0GfZyI

[almar]

I'm not going to mess around with lowering the Sulphur content for now, I use my BP in percussion revolvers so it needs to be fast. I may go to 78-12-10 like the swiss powder though. Ill just see what this does and go from there.

[SeaMonkey]

Yes, for small arms the higher Sulfur content is a necessity.

It was only for the Big Guns that the reduced Sulfur resulted in the best slow burning performance.

The powder charge on the Big Guns was several hundred pounds and a powder that burned too quickly produced dangerously high barrel pressure spikes.

[SeaMonkey]

Wow, something very strange just happened.

The page hung-up with some sort of glitch which prevented the normal response to "Post Quick Reply" and a double post resulted.

I've never seen anything like that before...

In the video that Almar linked apparently they made a Brown Powder without Sulfur.

The video did show that Brown Powder has somewhat different characteristics than Black Powder and that it is quite powerful in a cannon.

Perhaps one day someone will do a comparison video where muzzle velocities are recorded for Black and Brown powders.

[almar]

I had the same weird problems with the page.

[DoubleBuck]

SeaMonkey;
You post some cool stuff, bud! Those were both a couple of good reads.