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Thread: My homemade black powder

  1. #3601
    Boolit Master
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    Well, I'm not worried about it myself. I think, using aluminum dies and hydraulic pressure, that it might even be physically impossible for it to go off.

    The pyro guys make rockets using fixtures having several pieces of metal, and they ram/compact the powder using a mallet!! That would worry me a bit, yet they've been doing it, (without dying), forever.

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  2. #3602
    Boolit Buddy
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    I make sure my powder is nice and damp. And I wipe my piston and puck die down between each press to try and eliminate crumbs ground between them during pressing.

    One thing I can tell you - dry puck chunks (I have not felt spendy enough to sacrifice an entire puck) burn vigorously. Almost as quick as regular corned powder.

    Still makes me nervous pumping away with a grenade under the ram. One day I'm going to make my HF press electro-hydraulically operated with a pressure cut-off switch. Then the pressing operation can be remote.

    Today I pressed out my first batch of willow-based powder. The pucks are now in the food dehydrator drying.



    Steve

  3. #3603
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    I still have not made my own yet but isn't drying the pucks in a dehydrator a bit risky in case of fire?
    Ron

  4. #3604
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    I have measured their temps and they are 145F. Auto-ignition temperature of black powder is 392F - 867F. Should be fine, barring a malfunction of the dehydrator.

    Steve

  5. #3605
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    Quote Originally Posted by maillemaker View Post
    I make sure my powder is nice and damp. And I wipe my piston and puck die down between each press to try and eliminate crumbs ground between them during pressing.

    One thing I can tell you - dry puck chunks (I have not felt spendy enough to sacrifice an entire puck) burn vigorously. Almost as quick as regular corned powder.

    Still makes me nervous pumping away with a grenade under the ram. One day I'm going to make my HF press electro-hydraulically operated with a pressure cut-off switch. Then the pressing operation can be remote.

    Today I pressed out my first batch of willow-based powder. The pucks are now in the food dehydrator drying.



    Steve
    Congrats on the first Willow powder!
    Yesterday I SHOT my own first batch of willow powder for the first time and it worked GREAT.
    4F was great in the .45 rifled percussion pistol,
    3F was fine in the .54 patch ball rifle!
    I recorded velocities and the groups are very satisfactory.

    I haven't participated in this thread before because I havent yet READ up to the end, but I figured it is time. 165 or so pages in...

    I get my willow branches by collecting deadfalls under the few willow trees in parks near me. My ball mill is designed for a pound of mix, and is made out of a tumble dryer. My pucks are made in 50mm dia white pipe, with resin and sand pistons, pressed with an 8 tonne jack in a home made press of steel slab and threaded rods. I bust the dried pucks with side cutters, then grind in one of those Amazon ceramic burr coffee grinders. Got a deck of sieves, 10, kitchen 17, 20, 40, 60, 100 to classify them. Only 10% of the pucks made it to fines through the 100 mesh sieve - that burr is doing very well!

    Sooo.. 640 fps in the .45 pistol! 1400 fps with 100gn by volume in the .54! Density? 88gn wt in 100gn volume measure.

  6. #3606
    Boolit Buddy
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    Sounds good.

    I am definitely a fan of this. I am convinced now that with a flintlock I can at least stay in a shooting sport (or put food on the table) no matter what gun laws come along or how expensive components get.

    It is quite easy to make very serviceable black powder and because the process can be ongoing (you can run your ball mill every day and collect quite a quantity of green meal) if you press cakes every weekend I am sure within a year you will hit your 50 pound federal limit on black powder storage.

    Another one of my side hobbies is playing with Arduino microcontrollers. I think it would be very easy to make a machine that would auto-feed green meal (in small batches of course) into the puck, stroke the press, wait 5 minutes under pressure, and eject the puck.

    Now wouldn't that be a hoot!? Semi-automated, 100% remote black powder production.

    Steve

  7. #3607
    Boolit Buddy
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    By the way, my latest willow pucks, one of them is 2" x .11" thick, and weighs 163 grains.

    That works out to 10.562 grams and a volume of 5.62 cm^3.

    That gives me a compressed puck density of 1.86 grams/cm^3.

    This falls in the range given here:

    https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a150455.pdf

    One control on black powder is it must conform to the density range of 1.72 to 1.80g/cm.
    This source:
    https://www.muzzleloadingforum.com/t...density.44034/

    In 1894 Capt. Ingalls of the US Army published a textbook "Interior Ballistics" intended to be used as a text at the US Army Artillery School, then at Fortress Monroe, Virginia.

    In this book Ingalls relates that the basic density of properly prepared blackpowder is approx 1.6 to 1.8 grams per centimeter cubed. Some more recent tecnical articles from the Army Ballistic Research Labs placed the maximum theoretical density at about 1.95 gm/cc with many powders being about 1.7 to 1.9.
    Looks like I am right on the money for puck density. As a refresher, I'm using a 12-ton Harbor Freight press pumped by hand until it "feels right", and the puck is left under pressure for 5 minutes. I give another pump before I release the pressure at the end of 5 minutes. It seems that the puck does "settle" enough to accept another pump usually after sitting 5 minutes.

    Steve

  8. #3608
    Boolit Buddy
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    I'm on page 26 of this huge thread. Have people been able to produce their own BP consistently that meets the quality and speed of a Swiss or OE powder without spending a ton of money?

    I'd like to give it a go, but don't want to start if I can't make high quality BP without spending a lot of money on equipment. I'm the type that needs to do something very well once I start, unfortunately haha. That has led to me spending too much money on hobbies through the years!

    Stuff I have on hand...

    My kid has a thumblers tumbler. The canister is probably 7x5 or so
    I have a large vice and a canister style hydraulic jack
    I have a food dehydrator

  9. #3609
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by HighUintas View Post
    I'm on page 26 of this huge thread. Have people been able to produce their own BP consistently that meets the quality and speed of a Swiss or OE powder without spending a ton of money?

    I'd like to give it a go, but don't want to start if I can't make high quality BP without spending a lot of money on equipment. I'm the type that needs to do something very well once I start, unfortunately haha. That has led to me spending too much money on hobbies through the years!

    Stuff I have on hand...

    My kid has a thumblers tumbler. The canister is probably 7x5 or so
    I have a large vice and a canister style hydraulic jack
    I have a food dehydrator
    I have only made one batch of charcoal myself. I made it using a paint can retort. It produced results about 100 fps slower than an equivalent charge of Goex. But, it was noticeably dirtier. I would not want to use it in N-SSA competition due to the fouling effect on number of shots I'd be able to load. However, for something like a patched round ball gun, or just plinking, it would be fine.

    I have just been given some willow charcoal and am making up my first batch of powder from it. I'll have to see how it does.

    The Thumbler should be fine for a ball mill. You will need some non-sparking media.

    You'll want a hydraulic press.

    You'll need a puck die.

    Steve

  10. #3610
    Boolit Buddy
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    Previously, I had been busting up my pucks using a piece of wood. But bits tend to fly away. So, I designed and 3D printed a little "puck buster" tool. Basically it has a waffle pattern in the base, and dimples on the top piece, and when you smack it, it fractures the puck and contains almost all the bits.

    Puck busting used to be one of the more tedious aspects of making BP but now it only takes 10 minutes or so to bust up a bunch of pucks.

    After that I ground up the bits using my new coffee grinder holder. Man it makes easy work of operating the grinder.

    Sent it all through the screens and once again I get about 1/3rd 2F, 1/3rd 3F and 1/3rd fines.

    This is my first batch using willow charcoal that a fellow poster here sent me. I hope to shoot some this weekend.

    Full-size pictures here:

    https://imgur.com/a/iUuIrbZ








  11. #3611
    Boolit Master
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    Man, you certainly are an enterprising character! I really admire that. Nice work, and good shooting tomorrow!

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  12. #3612
    Boolit Master
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    I don't have a 3d printer, but thanks to you I now have an idea for making a puck buster by milling something similar on the end of some aluminum bar stock. Cool!

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  13. #3613
    Boolit Buddy
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    That puck buster is great! I was thinking of making pistons and pressing pucks that had patterns like that, but this is better.

    My solution was side-cutters. I took about 20 minutes to snip up the batch, and had about 0.5% fines which I thought was cool, after the hammer and bag on concrete method gave maybe 40% fines.

  14. #3614
    Boolit Buddy
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    I used nippers the first time around when I made my pucks too thick. It worked, but was tedious. I like this method because 2-3 whacks per puck and it's done.

    Steve

  15. #3615
    Boolit Master
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    Every time I hear about people busting up pucks "in a bag on concrete", it worries me. Too easy for possible bits of rock, sand, etc., to punch through the bag and possibly create sparks...

    Not to mention that grit in your powder wouldn't play nice with your gun bore.

    Better to use a large 5 gal. plastic paint bucket. A couple of bucks from Lowe's, etc. Even then, it doesn't hurt to put one of those tough plastic flexible veggie cutting boards in the bottom of the bucket to reinforce the bucket bottom. Those flexible cutting boards are also ideal to cut up to use as separators in the pressing die.

    I got several of those from my sis who used to be a gourmet cook, and I keep finding uses for that tough, but flexible plastic.

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  16. #3616
    Boolit Master
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    Crap, my last post made me sound like one of the dreaded and all too common "safety cop" PITA's.

    Oh well... better safe than sorry with BP.

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  17. #3617
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vettepilot View Post
    Oh well... better safe than sorry with BP.

    Vettepilot
    This!

  18. #3618
    Boolit Master

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    Quote Originally Posted by Vettepilot View Post
    my sis used to be a gourmet cook
    Vettepilot
    What happened?

  19. #3619
    Boolit Master
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    She passed away here a little while back. I had been taking care of her the last few years. Terminal cancer. It's ok, she's not in pain now...

    :~(

    Vettepilot
    "Those who sacrifice freedom for security, have neither."
    Benjamin Franklin. (A very wise man!)

  20. #3620
    Boolit Grand Master In Remembrance
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    Would hexagonal puck busters be an improvement over rectangular? Either is a darn good idea!

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