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Thread: My homemade black powder

  1. #3781
    Boolit Buddy
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    Quote Originally Posted by Vettepilot View Post
    Did you use the Thumblers? When I said half pound would be max, I was thinking of the Harbor Freight mill...

    I believe I had your post mentally mixed up with the next fellow's.

    Vettepilot
    It might have been me on both counts! Yes I used the thumlers. It has the same size barrel as the harbor freight, but the sides are stepped rather than round. So if you think a half pound wouldn't be too much in the harbor freight, I'm sure this one did just fine.

    I'll bet the reason green meal doesn't burn as quickly if it is due to problems with flame propagation as you say, is that there is too much air trapped within the super fine powder.

    I will either screen it or corn it and see how it does.

  2. #3782
    Boolit Master
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    I make 1/2 lb batches in my HF single tumbler.
    For media I use .60 cal balls cast from Monotype

  3. #3783
    Boolit Bub
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    I have granulated a couple of batches when I first made powder. It burns MUCH faster than greenmeal. Enough so that when I showed the difference to a friend's mom, she said "Oh, WOW!" - And she's 78 years old. A quart-size ziploc bag and 70/30 isopropyl work well. Put your powder in the bag and squirt some alcohol in there. A nail hole in the protective foil makes a good size squirt nozzle. Mix it around, make a ball and look at it. If it's not shiny, give it another small squirt and repeat. Keep doing that until it JUST gets shiny. Then push it through a seive and let it drop on a paper plate. Put the plate on the dashboard of a car to dry. In Florida, it takes about an hour.

    I use the Harbor freight tumbler. I saw a video that said 100 grams is a perfect batch size and that it can get done in an hour at that size batch. I've always done 100 grams and never had a problem.

    Properly mixed and granulated/corned powder will burn a trail, the entire length of a paper plate, pretty much instantly. Fold the plate like a taco, put some powder in it, spread it out, unfold the plate, and have fun.

  4. #3784
    Boolit Master
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    I really feel it's going to be fine.

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

  5. #3785
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    Me too! I bet it will turn out great. Excited to try it! I bought a press this evening...

    I'm less worried about that and more worried about my boot gun rebarrel job I just picked up. I'm not too ecstatic about the fit and finish of the work. Hope it shoots

  6. #3786
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    A plate full of willow Danger Cookies!


  7. #3787
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    Quote Originally Posted by maillemaker View Post
    A plate full of willow Danger Cookies!

    Sweet!!! I love it. I out my press together last night and started to press a puck, but the jack wouldn't continue to move passed a certain point. When I opened the box there was some oil all over the jack, so I'm guessing it leaked and got air in there. Picked up some more hydraulic oil today and I'll see if I can get it going tonight.

    Strangely, my meal is very Gray colored, not as black as yours, MM

  8. #3788
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    I used my <100 mesh as priming and my 4F as 21gn charges in Flint Pistol yesterday. Shot passably well; all shots away in time, and good quick lock-time. Had a few flash in the pan for one shot, I think the patent breech is not well enough cleaned by my hot water.
    Fouling tightness was quite close to the breech, and I suspect it is burning very fast.

  9. #3789
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    Strangely, my meal is very Gray colored, not as black as yours, MM
    If you dig through the pages here you will find a similar comment by me when I first started.

    They turn blacker when wet and pressed. But the dry powder turns greyish again. I assume it's the graphite in commercial powder that gives it the blacker hue.

    Steve

  10. #3790
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    I assume it's the graphite in commercial powder that gives it the blacker hue.
    I wonder if the commercial powder is more strongly cleaned of the fines when it is polished before adding graphite; perhaps they use air blast as well as screening, and possibly the stickiness for adding the graphite may also bind a tiny remaining amount of fines back to the grains. So the surface reflection is the same as the rich black of your pucks, PLUS graphite!

  11. #3791
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    Quote Originally Posted by maillemaker View Post
    If you dig through the pages here you will find a similar comment by me when I first started.

    They turn blacker when wet and pressed. But the dry powder turns greyish again. I assume it's the graphite in commercial powder that gives it the blacker hue.

    Steve
    for comparison
    Chinese fireworks powder (graphited) darker than,
    goex ungraphited, which is a little darker than screened willow,
    which is noticeably darker than corned willow,
    none of which matters at all
    - graphited goex is way more shiney but not darker
    just comparisons from what I have on hand (the Goex is mid 1990's vintage)
    Some of the nicest powder I ever shot was very much paler colour Fireworks powder (Chinese not that referred above) we got cheap in the early / mid 1990's - no idea what it was - shot like curtiss and Harveys velocity and so clean burning. Never saw that stuff again!

  12. #3792
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    Gray, green, or blue... Doesn't matter to me as long as it will throw my bullet accurately with respectable velocity!

    I pressed a couple of pucks for the first time tonight!

    I took my jack through a few sessions of bleeding and added some oil. This thing will now crank.

    I did 60g into a 9-10" baking pan and shook it flat. Gave it two good mistings and mixed it up well. Put 30g into the puck die and cranked it until it wouldn't go anymore using two hands, but not my body weight. I'm a 155lb guy not super strong but not weak. Felt like it was as far as I should take it. The frame was certainly bending a bit in a few spots.

    Left it for 5 minutes, tried to give another pump but it hadn't let up one bit.

    Pulled it out and had a 1/4" puck! Easy!

    I didn't notice any water release at all, so I gave the remaining 30gr of meal a single spritz to see where the limit was. No water release on the second either and it might have been a little harder to compress.

    Both puck have a slight plastic sound when tapping on them and a slight tink when tapping with a spoon.

    I'll dry them out and see if they seem hard enough!

  13. #3793
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    This weekend I did a test on making my charcoal from wood I chipped up using my HF garden wood chipper.
    I took 1" dia tree branches.
    I clamped them in a vise and stripped the bark off using a Spokeshave and a draw knife.
    I then ran the stripped branches into the wood chipper.
    The chips came out good , but not consistent thickness or size.
    I packed a gallon paint can with the chips and cooked it on my gas burner.
    The charcoal came out good , but using the wood chipped up didn't come out consistent.
    The super thin prices looked like they were turning to ash rather than carbon chunks.
    But the charcoal cooked much faster being chipped up , and took lots less time to crush and grind up.
    I think using the chipper is a good fall back process.
    But I prefer cooking sticks of wood over doing the chips.
    But I did chip up some Mesquite branches to use on my Smoker.
    If you have access to a wood chipper , then give it a try sometime.
    But to me,
    It wouldn't be worth the cost , time or trouble to buy a chipper just to make your charcoal.

  14. #3794
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    Ha! Any time I can buy a tool for my gun hobby, and justify it in my mind by thinking I can also use it for other things; into the shopping cart it goes!! (Probably a throwback to having to justify expenditures to a money hawking (ex) wife--> I don't miss that!!)

    I very often make my own tools as well. I've got a big dead mesquite tree here that needs to disappear. (Too bad it's not a Willow!!) Been eye balling DIY chippers for ideas...

    As Tim Allen says, MORE POWER, AAARRGGHH!

    ;~)

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

  15. #3795
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    Just put the chipper on the back burner and start looking around at yard sales for one.
    That Mesquite tree will make good charcoal for Pyro stuff.
    And also like I said , chips for a barbeque smoker.
    Plus your tree will be gone over time.
    My chipper is the cheap electric one from HF.
    It will take up to a 1" dia. branch.
    The bigger branches are either used for my wood grill or campfires.
    But you can probably sell the smoking chips or even the wood at yard sales and recoup you investment in your chipper.

  16. #3796
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    I bought a ceramic coffee grinder on Amazon a few days ago. I decided to go with the Hario because the newer version has a burr stabilizing plate which is supposed to minimize runout.... My butt it does! The center burr is the wobbliest thing I've ever seen.

    I have a nice coffee hand grinder with conical burrs and minimal runout but they're steel, so that's a no go.

    The concentricity and stability of the burrs is super important for consistent grind size. Coffee people go nuts about grind size uniformity. I think the same probably applies to a grinder for BP pucks.

    One of you clever guys with more gadgets than I have needs to fabricate a stabilizing part for the burrs on these grinders we're using and see how much it decreases your grain size distribution after grinding. I bet it would increase the % staying on your target screen size to 75%

  17. #3797
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    I stayed home from work today so that I could work on troubleshooting a flooded basement. I took the opportunity while attending a couple of work meetings on my computer to cut out a few milk jug slip sheets for pressing multiple pucks at one time. I threw down 60 g of meal into my baking dish, gave it three spritzes instead of two, and put it all in the puck dye at once. Four 15 g pucks pressed in 5 or 6 minutes. That is slick!

  18. #3798
    Boolit Bub
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    You guys might try pressing pucks dry. I've never used water and, thus, never had to dry pucks.

  19. #3799
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    Quote Originally Posted by Paramax55 View Post
    You guys might try pressing pucks dry. I've never used water and, thus, never had to dry pucks.
    That was the first thing I tried. It didn't work for me.. they crumbled back into meal when I removed them from the die

  20. #3800
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    Has anyone tried putting the fines from grinding and seiving directly back into the puck press? I thought someone had, but I don't remember exactly.

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Abbreviations used in Reloading

BP Bronze Point IMR Improved Military Rifle PTD Pointed
BR Bench Rest M Magnum RN Round Nose
BT Boat Tail PL Power-Lokt SP Soft Point
C Compressed Charge PR Primer SPCL Soft Point "Core-Lokt"
HP Hollow Point PSPCL Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" C.O.L. Cartridge Overall Length
PSP Pointed Soft Point Spz Spitzer Point SBT Spitzer Boat Tail
LRN Lead Round Nose LWC Lead Wad Cutter LSWC Lead Semi Wad Cutter
GC Gas Check