My homemade black powder

[LAGS]

I may not be doing things right,
But I did a calculation of the density of my compressed pucks.
They came out around 92% compression.
But , when I broke up the pucks , ground them and screened them to each grain size. My grinders of powder came out to 85 to 88 % comparison to granular Goex.
I am not trying to get all my powder to perfectly match up to commercial powder.
I just need to know what the comparison is like so I have an idea on how much volume matches the weight of the factory powders that I have and still use.

[Sandro_ventania]

Did you buff your powder? I believe that if you polish as much as Goes does, the measurements should match

[LAGS]

I did polish some of it.
It didn’t increase the weight per volume.
But it makes it measure better and more consistant than the unpolished that has those tiny sharp corners.
Polishing that I have found.
Helps keep the powder from forming DUST as you shake or move the powder around in your container over time.

[DoubleBuck]

I tested the re-milled and reprocessed fines, that I had left over from several batches. I got mixed results, but a couple of good ones.
The most notable thing I found, was, they have great density. I got 1.7 puck density, and after processing, the 3fff powder in a 50 grain measure, for five drops averaged 54.1 grains. That is 108.2%.
I only shot my .50 TC Renegade, with patched round ball and .020 patch.
The 60 and 75 grain loads of 5 each performed very closely to my tests of Charmin TP powder.
The 90 and 120 grain loads annihilated every patch. Blew the middles out of them and shredded the edges. They were lubricated with pure lanolin and when I first saw what was happening, I started soaking them with spit. They all shredded and I got lousy readings on them.
The powder did perform well on clean and accurate, both. Even though the heavy loads blew patches, they were very accurate. And in all, I shot 17 loads without swabbing and the last went down as easy as the first.
This test was just to rid myself of a bunch of fines, and it did that. I wish I had not added some of my lesser powder fines by mixing them all together a few months ago. I'm satisfied the velocities would have been higher than they were. I was really impressed with the density gain, from reprocessing. And, how clean they burned. I know some of the fines were Wisteria and Black Locust charcoal. Both were dirty, on the first round as well as low energy. Which goes to show, not all fast growing, even light density woods, make good powder. Both of those powders were made before I learned how to do a simple test for Ash. That probably won't happen again. Thanks, Linstrum!
My plan is to try the powder in my pistols in the next few days, if we don't get rained out. They may like it, though I don't have high hopes. It will be fun, as it was today.
Carry on!