My homemade black powder

[shaman]

My ailanthus burn went optimally. BTW: the idea of the roofing nail was cool, except the whole thing got a bit energetic at one point and sent the nail sky high.

I recovered a 1-gallon bag full of charcoal sticks from the can. Thanks all for the help.

Now to my next step. Here's where I'm a bit foggy. I was thinking of using a ceramic coffee grinder to granulate the sticks. Fine or course grind? Exactly how fine does it need to be for combining with the other ingredients in the ball mill?

Next question, just a confirmation really. The ingredient ratio is by weight, not volume, Right?

Ball mill question: What size balls? I know that's a personal question. However, I have 50 , 54, 69, and 735 round ball molds.

What ratio would y'all suggest for a) a first timer using the ricing method b) the final product will be burned in a Brown Bess musket?

[HWooldridge]

Re the roofing nail method, the thru hole can be a bit larger than a slip fit for the shank. For example, if the shank is 1/8 and the head is 3/8, the hole in the lid can be 3/16, which allows the pressure to “burp” as the gases increase. You are primarily interested in minimizing the backflow of ambient air towards the end of the burn - not creating a pressure cooker.

[passgas55]

My ailanthus burn went optimally. BTW: the idea of the roofing nail was cool, except the whole thing got a bit energetic at one point and sent the nail sky high.

I recovered a 1-gallon bag full of charcoal sticks from the can. Thanks all for the help.

Now to my next step. Here's where I'm a bit foggy. I was thinking of using a ceramic coffee grinder to granulate the sticks. Fine or course grind? Exactly how fine does it need to be for combining with the other ingredients in the ball mill?

Next question, just a confirmation really. The ingredient ratio is by weight, not volume, Right?

Ball mill question: What size balls? I know that's a personal question. However, I have 50 , 54, 69, and 735 round ball molds.

What ratio would y'all suggest for a) a first timer using the ricing method b) the final product will be burned in a Brown Bess musket?

You match the lead balls to the inside dia of your mill. 10% of id is the rule. For example a 4" id jar would use 40 cal balls. A 6"id jar would use a 60 cal lead balls. Use what ever you have on hand that matches close to the jar id.
All measurements are by weight. Grind charcoal on fine. 75-15-10 ratio

[HighUintas]

You match the lead balls to the inside dia of your mill. 10% of id is the rule. For example a 4" id jar would use 40 cal balls. A 6"id jar would use a 60 cal lead balls. Use what ever you have on hand that matches close to the jar id.
All measurements are by weight. Grind charcoal on fine. 75-15-10 ratio

Where do you get that 10% rule? Most people go with 50-58 cal balls, if they use balls, regardless of mill size

[LAGS]

I too do not see how the size of your tumbling media will be related to the size of your mill.
It just seems that the size of weight of the tumbling media is more related to the hardness of the items you are grinding or polishing.
If your media is too fine , it is doing more polishing than crushing.
I prefer the tumbler to be at least 1/3 to 1/2 full of the larger media.
That weight too is in relation to the power your drive motor.
You want your drive system to be able to rotate your mill drum if it was close to totally full of media alone.
IE
My HF tumbler is rated at 3 lb capacity.
So I use 2 1/2 lb of .50 cal hard cast balls to the 1/2 lb of the batch of powder I am tumbling.
I had built a 8" tumbler out of PVC before.
I filled the drum almost full of .50 lead balls and made sure the drive motor would turn it with out lots of strain.
Then when I tumbled the powder or powder chemicals.
I only filled the drum 1/2 full of the lead balls, and 1/2 a drum of the powders.
That 8" PVC tumbler was great.
But just too large for the small amounts of powder that I was making at a time.
So I gave it to someone who did rock polishing.

[jmh54738]

More test results....
Having read that Swiss uses a "Sporting" powder recipe of 78-12-10, while the 75-15-10 is a blasting powder blend, I made a 1/2 pound batch of each, using the same batch of willow charcoal. Average velocities are....
75-15-10 1410fps
78-12-10 1378 fps Same T/C Seneca 45 with a 70 g weighed charge, using a Maxi Ball

Next, having read that other than the Carbon, the remaining components of a charcoal are contaminants, I sought a more pure carbon source. Cane sugar charcoal is almost pure carbon, which after processing is used with heat and pressure to produce synthetic diamonds. A batch of cane sugar charcoal was produced and used in a 1/2 pound batch of 75-15-10. The shooting results are.......
cane sugar 1363 fps
Goex fffg 1497 fps shot for control. All shooting was done yesterday.
John

[DoubleBuck]

Shaman;
On your charcoal; if you smash the charcoal chunks up with one of many methods, then grind it as small as you can get it. Then, I personally mill it until it is what is called airfloat. That is like baby powder or face powder consistency. Actually, all three of your ingredients need to be as fine grain as you can get them.
There are many methods for breaking up the charcoal to mill. I use a piece of 2 inch PVC pipe, with a rounded cap on the end. That pipe goes inside a piece of 3 inch PVC, with a rounded cap on the end. Pour a cup full or less of charcoal in the larger pipe and smash it with the smaller pipe. This works without a lot of airfloat dust to breathe and scatter all over you and everything in your area. That's just a suggestion, as I said; there are many methods for breaking the charcoal up.
If you are going to rice your powder, you will find it works excellently, but the grains will more than likely be rather soft. There are several binders that you can use during the ricing process, which will harden the grains. Dextrin is the only one I personally have used. You can make it yourself, or buy it. It is very inexpensive and easy to make, if you choose. Dextrin is nothing but corn starch which is baked in an oven or carefully over stove top. Bake at about 400°F in an oven until it turns brown, or on low heat on the stovetop, in a pan; stirring frequently to keep from burning, until it turns light brown. Recommended use is 3% by weight, of your powder. Others have used Soluble Glutinous Rice Starch, or SGRS; which they claim is even better than Dextrin. Again, 3% by weight. A binder will make grains much more hard, to maintain your screened grain sizes.
I would stick with the standard 75-15-10 ratios until you get comfortable with modifying it for something special. Good luck with that Brown Bess and your new venture into the Holy Black!

[HWooldridge]

I only tried this once, which was pureeing the charcoal in a blender with enough water to make a slurry. This was after an initial rough grind in a coffee mill. I just poured the mud onto a paper lined pan and let it dry naturally over a couple days. I was using the CIA method at that time, and made decent powder - but I never ran it over a chronograph.

[DoubleBuck]

JMH54738;
Your results show what others have found. The higher the fixed carbon content, the slower the powder. Charcoal cooked above 600°F bakes more and more volatiles out of it; and volatiles are what makes the powder lively. Manufacturers have used sugar and never got good results with it. And, it is very dirty.
Not to argue the point, but whatever you read that anything other than carbon in charcoal is contaminates, is wrong. Ash is the only 'contaminate'. In the burn process, some sulfur and Nitrate chemical residues are undesirable, but also unavoidable.
Graphite is nearly pure carbon, but will not make powder worth making. Carbon Black has been tried, with the same results. Diamonds are basically pure carbon, but ground diamonds have been tested and will not even make a viable powder. None of the three have any volatiles left in them.
Waltham Abbey in England discovered the 'brown' powder formulation and made some of the world's finest powder, for small arms, in the mid to late 1800's. Slow cooked wood at low temperature (<600°f) maintains the most volatiles, and makes the least undesirable fowling.
Thanks for posting your results! Hopefully, others will read your post and save themselves some frustration. Excellent test and results!

[DoubleBuck]

HWooldridge;
When you posted that pureeing method, I thought it sounded very viable. It would surely take out the mess of airfloat. I don't know what it may do to the charcoal itself, if it changes anything. I would think it would have to be heated to drive off all moisture, to get accurate weight of the charcoal in the recipe, but is something worth testing, to see if it changes the burn rate, better or worse.

[HighUintas]

I have been trying to figure out how to put together my charcoal retort to be the next best after a kiln like Almar's with minimal cost.

I have a quart can, gallon can, and 2 gallon pot with lid. Lava rocks and wire. Some 2 inch ceramic fiber insulation. A propane burner. A multimeter with a probe that should go much higher than 600F.

I'm thinking I could do a can in a can (to make a sort of oven), put the inner cannon the lava rocks inside the outer can, wrap my wood in wire to keep it from touching the inner can sides providing uniform temp of wood inside, wrap the outer can with ceramic insulation, out the outer can directly on the burner stand, monitor temp of outer can with probe either through whole in the lid or leave the lid slightly ajar trying to keep temp around 600, also monitor temp in the retort to ensure it doesn't go above 600, hold it at final temp for how long?

Thoughts?

[DoubleBuck]

HighUintas;
That's how I do my charcoal, for about a year now. I have a 20" Oil Field casing BBQ/smoker I built about 41 years ago. It has cooked food for five hours on one bed of coals of hickory, plum or peach wood. I have two analog thermometers on it to probe above the coals and one on the smoke pole. I get that half inch steel between 500 and 600° before starting.
I have quart paint can inside a gallon paint can, and insulate the two with broken fire brick. Each can has a hole in it, and I put the inner can down and the outer can up. When it begins to smoke more than the haze of the smoke off the coals, I start checking mine about every 5 minutes to see if the smoke above HW's roofing nail in the outer can will ignite. When it does, I light a propane torch and leave it burning a very small flame. When I wave that propane torch through the smoke, and it turns the flame from blue, to a light purple (violet is what Waltham Abbey called it), I remove the outer can and run a hose around the can, to cool it down quickly. I let it set sealed up for several minutes and then crack it open, to see how things turned out. You can see the violet flame but it's hard to see in the daytime, in bright sunlight. That's where I came up with the propane torch deal.
Making charcoal in the wood stove in my living room in the winter time worked well, and was where I first saw Waltham Abbey's violet flame. I didn't know until I read the book, that was where they stopped the cook and removed the retorts into larger sealed steal containers, to cool for three days. Of course they were making I think 300 pounds of charcoal in each of four or five cookers, at a time.
Your question as to time, I think you'll find it varies and three batches ago, I didn't let it quite go long enough. A couple of sticks were still more wood than charcoal, in the middle. A quart can of Sassafras will do about three pounds of powder give or take. Packed full to the gills and the largest diameter pieces of wood outside smaller pieces in the middle. That Violet flame deal works, if you get the hang of it.
Off the top of my head I think the wood decomposition starts at about 535°F. A used gas oven with a broken oven thermocouple could get perfect temp, manually controlling it. I'm thinking if you can control an oven above that temp, you could cook charcoal all day. A junk electric oven with a good heating coil should do the same thing.
If you can build that rifle you made, I guarantee you will be able to cook low temp charcoal. ha. Good luck, man.

[HamGunner]

Once the temperature of the wood is reading over 500 degrees, one has to watch it closely as it will suddenly develop a runaway. The temperature will want to spike out of control so you have to anticipate this flare up and be prepared to back off the heat in time to prevent the “runaway”.

It becomes difficult to control the wood temperature as the wood itself starts to combust more and more, the closer it gets to the prime charring temperature. It can quickly go from 550 degrees to over 700 degrees in just a few minutes time if not monitored closely at the end.

[DoubleBuck]

Yes, and a quart can will 'run away' more quickly and with less control than a gallon can, in my experience. That last five minutes is the critical part. You got to get it while the gettin's good, or write it off.

[indian joe]

I too do not see how the size of your tumbling media will be related to the size of your mill.
It just seems that the size of weight of the tumbling media is more related to the hardness of the items you are grinding or polishing.
If your media is too fine , it is doing more polishing than crushing.
I prefer the tumbler to be at least 1/3 to 1/2 full of the larger media.
That weight too is in relation to the power your drive motor.
You want your drive system to be able to rotate your mill drum if it was close to totally full of media alone.
IE
My HF tumbler is rated at 3 lb capacity.
So I use 2 1/2 lb of .50 cal hard cast balls to the 1/2 lb of the batch of powder I am tumbling.
I had built a 8" tumbler out of PVC before.
I filled the drum almost full of .50 lead balls and made sure the drive motor would turn it with out lots of strain.
Then when I tumbled the powder or powder chemicals.
I only filled the drum 1/2 full of the lead balls, and 1/2 a drum of the powders.
That 8" PVC tumbler was great.
But just too large for the small amounts of powder that I was making at a time.
So I gave it to someone who did rock polishing.

I just gathered up everything I could find -- from 00 buckshot to .75" brown bess ball ..............good opportunity to clean out stuff in the loading room (like a couple bean cans of .500 RB that I sold the rifle for but couldnt bring myself to remelt because of all the work makin em) - its all softlead - done about 70 pound of meal and getting very dodgy looking. Yeh its time to do this part again and better - at least hard alloy or copper tube. Tumbler is 6" diameter tube x 10" long - takes a decent amount of media but does a kilo of meal at a fill.

[Eddie2002]

Been away for a while, life got in the way. Anyways back when I was making screened powder I got a noticeable increase in burn rate by tumbling the mix, screening and drying the powder then running it through the tumbler a second time and rescreening it with a final drying. Best I could come up with is that the second wetting and screening helped incorporate the potassium nitrate into the carbon better than just one pass through the process. It would be something to try by splitting a small batch and checking the velocity of the two. Just a thought.

[DoubleBuck]

Eddie2002;
Several of us have had the same results, even with repucked fines and using very little moisture. Your test should give some good information. If you do it, please share those results with us.

[shaman]

Update: I got the charcoal ground. It all now passes through metal window screen. I netted about 7 ounces from a gallon can almost full of ailanthus.

[LAGS]

I take it that now that you have the charcoal all ground to pass thru a screen.
Now you still have to Tumble it and turn it into Air Fly consistency.

[shaman]

I take it that now that you have the charcoal all ground to pass thru a screen.
Now you still have to Tumble it and turn it into Air Fly consistency.

It's tumbling now. I put 1.5 oz of charcoal in with 1.5 lbs of .715 lead ball-- that's all I had free and it's raining; I can't cast anymore until tomorrow.

The speed on the little tumbler goes from 1 to 9. I set it for 2 days at speed 3.