My homemade black powder

[Vettepilot]

Meanwhile.... Indian Joe, (and likely others), are sitting back, shaking their heads and thinking "JEEEZZ!!" "Just make it and shoot it for Pete's sake!!" "KISS" (Keep it simple Stupid!)

And they would be right. Entire wars were fought with powder made simply. But it IS fun to experiment and play....

Looking forward to more shooting test results. It's WAY too hot to do anything at all outside here now already. Hopefully soon I'll have some things done and will be able to pack my daughter and I up to head to the high country for some camping and serious shooting---> If the fire season doesn't start first and put the "squash" on that plan!!

I hate the southwest, and REALLY need to head to parts much farther north to live. It's just that it's a daunting thought/prospect being a disabled old fart now... :~(

Vettepilot

[DoubleBuck]

Have any of you guys that make charcoal out of different woods done any testing to see how the different woods compare to each other as per Weight to Volume.
That possibly could be a way of selecting your wood for charcoal.
We compare the finished powder to others by weight to volume.
So why not compare the charcoal.
That could end up being a factor in the finished product comparison.
IE.
Does Willow charcoal weigh the same per volume as other woods
The lighter the charcoal , could be more volume .

LAGS;
I have not actually weighed the wood, before cooking. Silly of me, in one way, because, I always weigh the charcoal, to see how much powder it will make. HighUintas told me the other day, that he weighs both the wood and the charcoal, because he is experimenting with how high temps and low cooking temps affect the charcoal. I bet he can add more to the subject. It's a worthy question. I do know, that, by volume, the Balsa charcoal was dang near airfloat, when I took it out of the retort. You could blow on a piece, and roll it around, easy. When grinding it up, which I do by hand; it had to be done with nearly zero air flow, because a breeze would blow it away, right now. It made me a pretty good mess, in Mama's kitchen, and took me a minute to clean up, afterwards. A month later, she was cleaning a shelf and showed me the sponge, which was supposed to be light yellow and was pretty close to black. ha. I've since switched to the well house, to do almost all my powder steps. Now, she's trying to wean me off her best strainer, which works perfect for the first screen. If I sneak it out, she don't seem to miss it.

[Vettepilot]

Happy woman= happy marriage. Except nobody's ever figured out how to keep them happy!!

;~)

Vettepilot

[indian joe]

LAGS;
I have not actually weighed the wood, before cooking. Silly of me, in one way, because, I always weigh the charcoal, to see how much powder it will make. HighUintas told me the other day, that he weighs both the wood and the charcoal, because he is experimenting with how high temps and low cooking temps affect the charcoal. I bet he can add more to the subject. It's a worthy question. I do know, that, by volume, the Balsa charcoal was dang near airfloat, when I took it out of the retort. You could blow on a piece, and roll it around, easy. When grinding it up, which I do by hand; it had to be done with nearly zero air flow, because a breeze would blow it away, right now. It made me a pretty good mess, in Mama's kitchen, and took me a minute to clean up, afterwards. A month later, she was cleaning a shelf and showed me the sponge, which was supposed to be light yellow and was pretty close to black. ha. I've since switched to the well house, to do almost all my powder steps. Now, she's trying to wean me off her best strainer, which works perfect for the first screen. If I sneak it out, she don't seem to miss it.

I make decent size batches of stuff then stash it for later - one cycle per year keeps us shooting - charcoal I grind in a meat grinder then to airfloat in the ball mill , then it goes in airtight screw top containers - fill em up, lid on, dump it down to settle contents, rinse and repeat several times - I cram as much air float coal in there as I can get, seal it with duck tape, come back six months later and ........that stuff has settled down and now theres two inches of airspace at top of the container ......I dont reckon weighing the wood or the pressed pucks is much advantage - I check weigh a 45/70 case full to the top - drop tubed, tapped down ten times, vs same with commercial powder (I have Goex 5FA from way back when = before they blew the Moosic Pa plant )

[indian joe]

Happy woman= happy marriage. Except nobody's ever figured out how to keep them happy!!

;~)

Vettepilot

Happy is an internal thing .... no one can make someone else happy - thats a game that never ends - and each test we fail leads to another, and another bigger than the last. In the end you hand over over your cojones on a plate and its still not enough. Man up at the start and pass the first test - life gets easy. I got lucky at the start. (she hates guns - happily does the secretary treasurer job for our blackpowder club) - none of the above is a licence to be an a$$ O ----------------------I bought my own strainers and figured out how to lube boolits without stinking up the kitchen

[Vettepilot]

Yep!! What he said!



Vettepilot

[Vettepilot]

Amazing! I had read a couple of times, somewheres, that they really don't quite understand exactly how black powder works; performs it's magic, even today. I thought bullcrap! Somebody knows! A compound that's been around for over a thousand years!!?? With today's advanced scientific analytical techniques?? Gas spectrum imaging, electron microscopes that can image at the atomic level, super high speed photography, data analyzing via super computer, etc., etc., etc.??? I don't believe we don't understand the magic of Holy Black, even today!!

Well, apparently it's actually somewhat true!! Digging into GOVERNMENT, "no holds barred" studies, reveals that basically we still don't actually understand it fully. What makes it work so well, what makes it better or worse in manufacture and exactly why, etc., etc. That's amazing!! Maybe it truly is "Holy".

It's really quite illuminating reading the government studies on BP, and how far in depth the studies are in trying to divulge the secrets of this over one thousand year old miracle compound! Wow!

Vettepilot

[DoubleBuck]

I think someone took my joke as a serious marital flaw.

This is my new puck processing system. These new no water pucks are too hard to bust, without making that mess I was talking about. They shoot shards ten feet. So, I saw someone talk about making one of these, and they are the drizzlin's. Cost me seven bucks for the caps and I had the PVC laying by the shop.

[Vettepilot]

Oh, no worries. Lot's of joking and teasing is all, and on the ole interweb, ya can't see someone's face to know when they're teasing.

That looks like a cool, and very cost effective puck buster there. Works good huh?

Vettepilot

[DoubleBuck]

Ok, guys, I now have something quite weird to share. So I made the hardest pucks I've ever pressed, yesterday. I got them made into powder, and was grinning. I had about three quarters of a pound that had been wetted and was drying. Same powder, made at the same time, just a day later, getting processed. It was raining all afternoon, and tonight, the humidity is 93% with a temperature of 65°, this minute. This afternoon, it was 80° and raining. So, I took the dried powder and decided I would give the Paulownia every chance to be good, and I ball milled that powder again, for three hours. I got into a baseball game and forgot it, because I was only going to mill it for two hours. It was not packed in the mill when I took it out, but it looked 'heavy'. Not like the face powder, it sometimes looks like. So I figured I better warm it up, so it didn't draw moisture, before I got it pressed. While I was pressing the first three ounces, I was warming the powder at 120°. It was in there, for about two hours, while I was drawing out of it. The first three pucks were pressed for an hour, at 20 tons and backed off for ten minutes and hit again, for 15 minutes more. I pressed them out of the die, and they were just like the first group. Hard as ceramic. Poured three more ounces, with two dividers in the die and pressed them for an hour, checking every 15 minutes or so. Released the pressure, for 10 minutes and pressed them again, for 15. Released the pressure and moved the die to press the pucks out and, all the powder dumped out, in a pile. Three piles, to be exact. It looked exactly the same way it looked, before I put it in the die.
I'm thirty minutes into the third pressing, now. If it comes out loose powder, I'm totally confused. This is killing me.

[DoubleBuck]

Oh, no worries. Lot's of joking and teasing is all, and on the ole interweb, ya can't see someone's face to know when they're teasing.

That looks like a cool, and very cost effective puck buster there. Works good huh?

Vettepilot

I don't know! I haven't got to use them yet. I just knew I had to come up with something different, before I busted any more. I'm hoping it works as good as it looks like it should. The three inch cap is removable, so you can dump it without losing any. If these pucks will cooperate, I'll find out...

[DoubleBuck]

Well, the last three pucks came out like they went in, too. No puck at all. The only difference in the first three, which were great, and the last two sets were, the last ones were all dried for up to two hours after coming out of the ball mill. So, I'm saying there is a limit to how dry the powder can be, to 'dry' press them. Yesterday, the powder set out in 68% humidity, for several hours, before being pressed. Today, the first three came out of the mill, in 98% humidity and set for a couple of hours.
I added 3/4 ml water per ounce of powder to the mix, and stirred it up good, let it set a few minutes, and screened it, to distribute the moisture. I just pressed three ounces, with no sign of the water and the pucks look great again. BUT, they aren't 'dry' pressed, either. Not completely dry, for sure. As Fly said, my brain is hurting. I think he actually said I made his brain hurt. Now, I'm making mine hurt. I'm out.

[HighUintas]

I tested out the "dry" pressing method the other night. It didn't work for me.

It's been ~20% relative humidity here and between 75-90 F.

I pressed for about an hour, without adding any water, and they were very crumbly. I'm using a 12 ton press and a 2.5inch die.

[HighUintas]

I may need to work out a disk/plug solution for the bottom of my die. When I get the BP flowing out of the bottom of one side of the die to due the pressure, it will actually start canting the die sideways and ends up bending the press ram bar. Once that happens, it's so much harder to get a puck pressed without it happening even more. It's a compounding problem. I've already had to hammer the press ram back to center and then grind the pressing surface of the ram back to square, and it's already bent out of alignment again!

I'm not sure what the primary root cause is here... The meal column not being uniform in the die, the piston not pressing completely aligned in the sleeve, the surface my die is sitting on not making an adequate seal, the press already being slightly out of square... I'm not sure. This problem is getting aggravating

[Vettepilot]

At these pressures, anything that is not dead square, and wants to stay that way, will get out of square, worse and worse, in a hurry!! Once it starts happening, you've really got a problem. Get everything back to dead square, and securely braced so it doesn't want to "wrack" out of line. From the sounds of it, I'm surprised you haven't gotten your puck (piston) stuck/jammed into your die sleeve yet...

Vettepilot

[HighUintas]

At these pressures, anything that is not dead square, and wants to stay that way, will get out of square, worse and worse, in a hurry!! Once it starts happening, you've really got a problem. Get everything back to dead square, and securely braced so it doesn't want to "wrack" out of line. From the sounds of it, I'm surprised you haven't gotten your puck (piston) stuck/jammed into your die sleeve yet...

Vettepilot

Yup. It probably hasn't gotten stuck because it's the Woody's die and the sleeve is steel :/ preventing galling. The piston hasn't been that crooked, only slightly. It's mainly the press ram that somehow became bent.

I wonder how others have had better luck with their harbor freight presses when maxing then out. There is quite a bit of play in the horizontal member the ram is attached to. I don't know if that's promoting it or if I'm just not doing something right.

Anyway, it will take some serious doing to get that ram straightened. I might just have to cut the sucker off.



Anyway, I'm going to do the last burn test on my cedar charcoal done at different temps.

[DoubleBuck]

I tested out the "dry" pressing method the other night. It didn't work for me.

It's been ~20% relative humidity here and between 75-90 F.

I pressed for about an hour, without adding any water, and they were very crumbly. I'm using a 12 ton press and a 2.5inch die.

It was working so good, and then just took a nose dive. The pucks that worked are unbelievably hard. I broke up 16 this afternoon, into more manageable pieces. The ones I put water on were very hard, like the dry pressed ones, but I had to dry them for six hours in the dehydrator. I can't figure it out, other than the powder has a dry limit. Dry pressing never worked for me, before day before yesterday and I figured it must be because I let them set so long, under pressure. Now, I'm clueless.

[HighUintas]

It was working so good, and then just took a nose dive. The pucks that worked are unbelievably hard. I broke up 16 this afternoon, into more manageable pieces. The ones I put water on were very hard, like the dry pressed ones, but I had to dry them for six hours in the dehydrator. I can't figure it out, other than the powder has a dry limit. Dry pressing never worked for me, before day before yesterday and I figured it must be because I let them set so long, under pressure. Now, I'm clueless.

I bet they had some amount of moisture in them when pressed. Maybe dry some out all the way and add 0.1g water per ounce meal until you find the amount that it needs for the pressure you're using.

I'll bet that minimum amount of water is also dependant on pressure applied.

[HighUintas]

Yes there is a pressure/moisture/density relationship. I forgot about this section of one of the links I posted.

[DoubleBuck]

I'm having trouble searching this site. Anyone with some experience, I would appreciate your help. I've spent all afternoon hand grinding the broken pucks and screening them. I'm using a Mortar and Pestle and it works great, but is some kind of slow. My fines are around 30% and I'm good with that, but I can barely close my right hand, from the abuse it has taken. haha
This subject has come up several times, but I've decided that if they work, I'm ready to try a coffee grinder and need to know which ones are the best, for the money. Doing an advanced search, for 'Ceramic Coffee Grinders', it kicked out 54 pages of links. Not one of them were to 'My Homemade Black Powder'. I scrolled every page. I know the subject has been hashed before, but I'm not up to reading all night, to try to find where. If you are using a coffee grinder, and it works good, please give me a name. My new puck buster is great for getting that done, but when it starts getting chunks smaller than a quarter inch, the plastic is just not hard enough, and takes too long to go smaller. I can get them coffee bean sized, in short order. From there to 2FF or 3FFF, not so much. Thanks in advance. Buck