My homemade black powder

[DoubleBuck]

Kenny;
Another one bites the dust. Welcome to My Homemade Black Powder.

[2TM101]

So for my purposes I should get:

12-16 for Fg
16-20 for FFg
20-40 or 50 for FFFg

My main concern is getting good Fg and FFg, I don't have a purpose for FFFg currently but I am sure I will in due time.

According to Skylighter:

Cannon Grade 12 (In my case I have a 10 screen and call it 2FA, which is a fireworks grade for that size)
1FG 20
2FG 30
3FG 50 (I use a 40)
4FG 100 (I use a 60)
5FG +100 ( I use a 110, what goes through that is dust)

I have a couple of inline rifles with twist rates intended for Sabots - FAR too fast for a regular patched ball. Unless I use canon powder.......
1FG mostly gets used in 45-70
5FG gets put in 38 Special and used for CAS
2, 3 & 4 get used for the normal things you use those sizes for.

[LAGS]

When I was a kid.
I use to shoot BP guns using ground match heads for powder.
It didn’t work that great. , and was very corrosive and shot flaming sparks out the end of the barrel.
It might be better stuff to use now that I know more about powders and loads.
Back then , I didn’t even have a scale.
So all loads were just by what I thought looked good.
The match heads burnt pretty explosive , and I am surprised that I didn’t turn my guns into pipe bombs.

[2TM101]

Thank you for asking this! You beat me to it by a few hours! Thank you all that responded!! This helps a lot. I just finished a batch of dry milled Golden Powder. It makes fire and smoke. Now to load it in something. Most of the information was obtained from this site or pushed me in the direction by this site. Thank you all for that.

I just took all of my golden powder I had not yet used, mixed it with all of my Black Powder fines and started pucking it. The resulting mix looks a sort of slate grey, and the resulting pucks look grey with black specs all through it. It seems to compress about the same as pure BP and the pucks feel and look the same. Have not yet got to the corning stage but I suspect it will behave just like Black Powder.

[Sandro_ventania]

I just took all of my golden powder I had not yet used, mixed it with all of my Black Powder fines and started pucking it. The resulting mix looks a sort of slate grey, and the resulting pucks look grey with black specs all through it. It seems to compress about the same as pure BP and the pucks feel and look the same. Have not yet got to the corning stage but I suspect it will behave just like Black Powder.

probably just a little cleaner.

[DoubleBuck]

Sandro;
using a .36 pistol and just 6 grains of this mixture I achieved a speed of 741 feet/sec. Using only BP, the best mark is 390 feet/sec.
Are you comparing just 6 grains, to 6 grains of Black? If not, check out HamGunner's posts #7888 and 7889. That should be a lot closer to your .36 caliber velocities, if your Black is performing well.

[Sandro_ventania]

your blackpowder needs work!!!should be able to at least get up in the middle 600 FPS range with homemade BP in a 36 pistol.
Not a purist at all but grinding match heads sounds like hard work for poor reward to me.
Happy with what I am doing - "aint broke dont fix it" has long been one of my things..................................

Can you get 600fps with just 6 grains of powder? If yes, then my powder really needs repair.

[Sandro_ventania]

Sandro;
using a .36 pistol and just 6 grains of this mixture I achieved a speed of 741 feet/sec. Using only BP, the best mark is 390 feet/sec.
Are you comparing just 6 grains, to 6 grains of Black? If not, check out HamGunner's posts #7888 and 7889. That should be a lot closer to your .36 caliber velocities, if your Black is performing well.

doublebuck, But did you notice that the load he used was 22 grains? I only used 6 grains! almost 1/4! I normally use 10 grains and get speeds above 500fps.

[Nobade]

I would not recommend adding chlorates to black powder. You saw how much energy was added with a very small charge. We don't want anyone using a normal size charge and hurting themselves. As you noted, chlorate and sulfur are explosive. That plus a metal will detonate when only slightly confined. I really wouldn't go there.

[dtknowles]

I would not recommend adding chlorates to black powder. You saw how much energy was added with a very small charge. We don't want anyone using a normal size charge and hurting themselves. As you noted, chlorate and sulfur are explosive. That plus a metal will detonate when only slightly confined. I really wouldn't go there.

One needs to be careful what one recommends if you live in the U.S. There are people who will act on your advice, get it wrong, blame you and hire a lawyer to take you to court. We have reckless members even in this forum who don't use good practice or even common sense. Maybe Sandro can get away with it as it seems unlikely he will have to respond to a U.S. court.

Tim

[Sandro_ventania]

One needs to be careful what one recommends if you live in the U.S. There are people who will act on your advice, get it wrong, blame you and hire a lawyer to take you to court. We have reckless members even in this forum who don't use good practice or even common sense. Maybe Sandro can get away with it as it seems unlikely he will have to respond to a U.S. court.

Tim

I have a friend who always says that we are putting an end to man's natural selection and that is why idiots are proliferating so much. Thanks for the advice, I'll be more careful about what I share. If you think it's more prudent and better, I'll delete my messages about it.

[DoubleBuck]

Sandro;
I saw the 22 grains that Ham used. That's why I asked you if you were comparing 6 grains to 6 grains. That makes a lot of difference. If that held true for the full 27.27% increase, in velocity, that would make your 22 grains 1444.44 FPS. I would say your black is performing pretty rang dang good! Carry on!

[Nobade]

I made my first charred toilet paper today. I used Cottonelle, and the two rolls that fit in a gallon paint can made 62 grams of charcoal. So I can make 434 grams of black powder, nearly a pound. How convenient. We're supposed to have lousy weather here tomorrow so I'll probably run the mill and see what I get.

[DoubleBuck]

Nobade;
I hope your Cottonelle charcoal comes out the best! If you can, document your cook time/temp and any results you come up with. I'm pretty sure others are interested, and I know I am. If you want to play, I have done three batches of it, but they've all been 75-15-10 ratio. The guy on Youtube said his normal ratio and the one he used on the Cottonelle was 77-13-10. I don't know of anyone here who has tried that ratio, but it may be worth splitting your batch, if you care to. I plan to try that recipe, on my next batch. One way or the other, good luck and please report as much info as you can.

[Nobade]

I've always used 75-15-10, but could certainly adjust it to see what happens. Jake seems to get good results from his, so it's certainly worth a try. I'll let you know what happens. Wish I could find all the parts to my chronograph so I could get some real speeds. Still working on that.

[Sandro_ventania]

Nobade;
I hope your Cottonelle charcoal comes out the best! If you can, document your cook time/temp and any results you come up with. I'm pretty sure others are interested, and I know I am. If you want to play, I have done three batches of it, but they've all been 75-15-10 ratio. The guy on Youtube said his normal ratio and the one he used on the Cottonelle was 77-13-10. I don't know of anyone here who has tried that ratio, but it may be worth splitting your batch, if you care to. I plan to try that recipe, on my next batch. One way or the other, good luck and please report as much info as you can.

I use 76-15-09. I think coal is essential. It's the sulfur that basically comes in to lower the ignition temperature, so I decided to change it.

[dtknowles]

I have a friend who always says that we are putting an end to man's natural selection and that is why idiots are proliferating so much. Thanks for the advice, I'll be more careful about what I share. If you think it's more prudent and better, I'll delete my messages about it.

It is up to you and any concern you might have. I think it is good info. Just that here in the U.S. this kind of thing can get you hauled into court for someone's stupidity and they will try to blame you. I don't know how things are where you live.

Tim

[Graysmoke]

I tried tp char found good powder and a little cleaner than red cedar. Still my density never reaches what others get so I just up the charge by 5 to 10 grains.I tried dropping a 50 by volume factory and it weighed 48 after 3 tries, mine will drop 42 or 43 grs. close as I can get. I tried 76 14 10 didn't see a lot of difference, maybe 76 15 9 would be better.
Graysmoke

[Trapper-Jack]

I recently bit the bullet and bought a chronograph and have been running some numbers on some of my different charcoal. Some of you may be interested in my results. All my powder has been the 75/15/10 ratio with the potassium nitrate being the greenhouse grade 99.8% and the sulfur being the garden sulfur 90% from the farm store. I bumped up the sulfur weight by 10% to compensate for the 90% purity and didn't see any velocity difference. All the powder was milled 20+ hours in a Harbor Freight rock tumbler with 9mm shell casings filled with lead for the media. It was pucked with a 20 ton jack and ground with a grain grinder passing the #16 sieve and retained on the #3. The wood for the charcoal is Cedar, Quaking Aspen, Blue Spruce, Hybrid Willow and Juniper. These were all compared to 2F Goex. Each 5 shot string was shot from a Lyman 50 caliber Great Plains flintlock with a weighed 65 grains behind a cast round ball and a spit patch. The fouling seems to be quite soft and with the spit patch I don't have any issues with loading or loss of accuracy.
Goex - Average - 1390 fps, ES - 35, SD - 15
Cedar - Average - 1194. ES - 39, SD 15
Willow - Average - 1430, ES - 24, SD - 9
Quakie - Average 1448, ES - 91, SD - 38
Spruce - Average - 1463, ES - 36, SD - 15
Juniper - Average 1493, ES - 41, SD - 15
In defense of the Cedar velocity, it was made from shredded pet bedding and may not have been the best wood.
Where my willow didn't have the most energy or highest velocity, it seems to have the lowest extreme spread and standard deviation. Besides, I've also got a lifetime supply along the back of my property so unless something else is dramatically better with the ES and SD, this is what I'll stick with.
I've picked up some Cottonwood limbs to try out but I suspect it will be something like the Quakie.

[DoubleBuck]

Trapper-Jack;
Nice tests! I've often wondered about Juniper and Quakie both. They all seem to be viable and worthy of use, or further development. I guess the Spruce was Blue? Thanks for the input!