My homemade black powder

[DoubleBuck]

I have to either press my pucks out of the die, as well. Or, use a dead blow hammer on the piston, which seems to be quicker. I don't have blow-by, but as Ham said, the side pressure is just very high and makes for tight fit.

[Somebody]

What sort of protection is everyone using during the tumbling process? None of my neighbors are close, but to protect my house and theirs, I plan to tumble inside a U shaped sandbag wall, open end facing the woods, and tall enough to have no line of sight to any building.

[DoubleBuck]

Somebody;
That sounds to me like you should be good to go. If you make sure your media is non sparking and your powder has no contaminates that can cause sparking and if you mill small quantities, it should not be a problem. Your 'bunker' should work fine. Good luck!

[indian joe]

Personally, I don’t use dividers - just make one puck at a time since it just doesn’t take that much time. But if I did, I would not want sheet metal or thin plastic, at least .060” thick and a slide fit inside the outer sleeve.

been using divider since the get go - five or
six x 75 - 100gram pucks at the time - thin plastic dividers - milk jug but have made a few out of ice creame can (40thou plastic) which was why I responded to Lags? comment about the plastic maybe compressing - thin aluminium sheet would proly be ideal

heavy metal dividers that dont deform under pressure would then need really strict attention to packing the layers in the die - and would negate the substantial gain in time pressing pucks and also tempt us back to making thicker pucks - the whole aim of this excercise for me is to make the process of granulating from pucks to powder easier and simpler - I only do it once or twice a year but its work when its on and dont need it to be harder than necessary.
I enjoy shooting homemade powder, but making it for the sake of fun? nope! its work to be done so we can go shoot some more.

[indian joe]

I have had to use a PVC spacer under my die to press the pucks out of my die.
My spacer was just made out of a piece of the right interior sized PVC pipe , glued into a PVC collar or coupler to make the spacer thicker .
I then cut it to about 1” long so I didn’t have to major adjust my press when I pressed out the pucks after I did the compression .
I use this with my two “Fly” dies

same here pretty much
have a fibre board spacer (masonite the stuff they use under floor tiles) that goes on top of the puck stack (one underneath also) cut neat to the die body then my plunger proper is a chunk of Aluminium round thats about a 1/4 inch smaller than the die
when the pressing is done I set the whole thing up on a pvc (like Lags') collar and push the column on through