My homemade black powder

[almar]

[Vettepilot]

I had burn tested (ain't that fun?!) a small amount of the green meal BP I made using the Red Cedar pet bedding, and was really happy with it.

So I went ahead and granulated it, and then last evening let my daughter torch a half teaspoon of it. Man it's fast! POOF! and it's gone. I don't have an open can of commercial powder to test it side by side with, and I don't want to bother opening a new one just for that. But I do have an open jar of Black MZ black powder substitute and testing against that, this batch is very noticeably faster.

That Black MZ burns pretty clean, but this Red Cedar BP is cleaner. We had torched it off on tin foil, and all it left was a little smoke stain.

Anyway, I'm impressed enough that when we were shopping today, I went ahead and grabbed two more bags of the Red Cedar chips. They are easy and fast to process into charcoal, and a $3.98 bag will make about 3-1/2 pounds of powder I estimate. Willow is hard to come by here, and this Cedar will work just fine until I can scrounge some more. (And I'm not out yet anyway.)

I've not really seen any historical references to Cedar being used, and now, after my testing, I'm kind of wondering why. I have seen it positively referred to in other, hobby type literature; just not any commercial references. Maybe because it's not as fast growing, and proliferous as Willow and the Cottonwood the Rebels used... Dunno.

Vettepilot

[ChrisPer]

Good work Vettepilot!

The 'POOF test' basically applies to BP; if its POOF great, but if burns noticeably slower forget it. Any smokeless or BP substitute should burn slower if unconfined, I think.

[DoubleBuck]

Almar;
great job finding and sharing the book. Now, if I can just find that 'violet tint' to the smoke. That will make my style of cooking substantially easier than the try and see method I used. Some of my wood was not completely charred. Only four pieces and only part of them, but still a bit. Which has me wondering if any that I ground up that may not have been completely charred is going to be a problem. I'm ball milling some, right now, and will screen it, to see that it is all powdered, before I incorporate it with the other two chemicals. Hopefully if it is not done, it won't powder completely and will show up. Thanks for the link, that is very useful info.

[DoubleBuck]

VettePilot;
congratulations on the powder! Poof is good!
If you want to make you a very simple linear burn rate tester; get you a piece of 1/2 inch or even 1 inch angle iron, about three to five feet long. I use a one inch piece, about four feet long. You'll need to be able to stabilize it, so that the angle will be down. I used to use a piece of 1/2 inch channel for a tester, but it was not easy to make a uniform line of powder in. The angle is very easy to do. I set my angle in the 1/2 inch channel and it will set flat, while the edges support the angle, and keep it angle down. I made a piece of thin cardboard cut so that it will fit the angle and leave about 1/8 of an inch gap at the bottom of the angle. That way, you can spoon a bit of powder in the angle and drag it with the cardboard, to 'draw' an even line of powder. If you know the length, and video it, it will give you a lot of useful information. First of all, you can super slow motion it, or even still frame it, one frame at a time, and watch the burn. Secondly, a digital camera is usually set to 36 'frames' per second, like a conventional movie camera. So, you can time your linear burn rate to 1/36th of a second. I have tested probably ten different powders, with mine. You can lay your tester on tin foil, or make a covered hoop over it, in the middle, to see how dirty the powder burns, or just observe the residue on the tester. Even though burn rate and lift are two different things, I've found fast powder is usually both clean and strong. Not always, but usually. But I burn rate every powder I make. I think it is very useful the information it gives you. And, if you video each one, you can use it later, as a reference.
I'm glad you like your powder, and will be interested to see how it performs for you!

[Vettepilot]

Thanks DoubleBuck.

Vettepilot

[almar]

its a nice read, ton of good stuff in there. I wish there was buckthorn alder here. Apparently it is considered to be invasive in the norther states and illegal to plant. Im too impatient to wait for it to grow anyways, so i wont be planting it here. I guess I should be happy with the black willow.

[almar]

But will look for smaller branches instead of the large logs from that willow. And not use the "bad" wood with imperfections" like they mention. Feels like splitting hairs at this point though.

[almar]

I'm going to just put this out there it may help somebody at some point. This may not affect people in very dry climates but in my case, humidity has gone down a lot since the summer but it's still 86% on the hygrometer I have outside. It has risen to above 60 in the house because the HVAC doesn't turn on as often due too lower temperatures, so I have the humidifier working more often to reduce it below 50. Now we know that humidity particularly High degrees of it can affect black powder. And I also had trouble determining if my black powder was sufficiently dry sometimes after drying it in the oven or outside in the sun. So I came up with an easy way that can check if it's fully dry. After drying in the oven or in a dehydrator, I place a small portion of it in a very small sealed see-through ziplock tupperware container with a small hygrometer. It will eventually stabilize, the air inside the container will have the same degree of humidity as the powder. This can help with eliminating another variable when testing especially since I am now testing feet per second in a small Zone to see if I'm improving things. I don't want results to be skewed because of a varying amount of humidity level and therefore come to conclusions that are false. Then again this could be a huge fire hazard because who knows if that hygrometer Sparks. I will not leave it in there. Or is this unrealistic? Any thoughts?

[DoubleBuck]

Almar;
I don't think anything you can do is unrealistic, when it comes to powder consistency.
Years ago, I was reading the Wichita Buggy Whip Charcoal site and saw that Sassafras was one of their top three fast powders. They left it out of their lift tests, so no information there. But, that intrigued me and I have Sassafras all over my place. It has become my favorite powder. I've tried many others, but so far, it has been my fastest on the chronograph, of my top three. Which have been it, Balsa, and Paulownia . Black Willow and Paulownia were very close in speed. If you have it available where you are, you might give it a try. I made this Black Willow, which is coming off the mill in about ten minutes; because I wanted to give this brown powder a try and so many people rate the Black Willow so high. But mainly, I have several sticks cleaned and dried for three years, in my shop. I have good tests on it already and it will be easy to see if the brown makes a substantial difference. If it does, I'm going to try it on my Sassafras next.
I milled the charcoal, and had a small amount (less than a gram estimate of 100 grams), that wouldn't pass my 50 screen. The rest air floated very nice. I'm probably going to puck some, this evening. Hey, I'm sending you a message by the way.

[HamGunner]

The information on this thread has been very interesting to say the least. It convinced me a while back to go ahead and see about making my own. And to my surprise, it actually was not too bad, even for my first attempt. Now that I have steadily refined my procedures, due to new data and suggestions on the thread and continue to better my end product, I do not feel so saddened by the closing of the BP factory in Louisiana. I hope someone does buy it and reopens of course, but it was already getting very difficult to find BP locally and too expensive to order by mail as I am not a member of a gun club or any organization where a large order could reduce the shipping fees for me.

I managed to find the time to chronograph my last batch of BP made with the slower and lower cooked (brown) Black Willow and I was surprised that it did not really appear to be much faster at 4.6% ash than it did at a bit over 9%. But the accuracy and velocity consistency was improved. That could also have been helped by the fact that I tumbled the finished granules in my mill a bit and rescreened with a fair reduction in the dust and much improved consistency in size of the granules.

I do not really have a problem finding Black Willow in my area, although I do have to look around a bit, but it is certainly available. But I do have an abundance of Sassafras for sure and might as well make up a small batch of that just for fun and who knows, it might just be the cats meow to speed up my little small caliber toys, as long as it will prove accurate and consistent. I actually had two logs of Sassafras cut out of my yard years ago that were well over 18" in diameter and perhaps larger. I could not find anyone interested in the logs for making furniture lumber, so I ended up just busting it up for firewood. I hated to do that as it makes some beautiful furniture. I mostly just use it for fires in my little metal patio fire pit as it burns really hot and without much smoke.

I love the smell of Sassafras roots where bulldozers have uprooted the young Sassafras brush when cleaning out fence rows. Have even made tea a time or two from the roots, although it is reportedly carcinogenic. But what is not anymore.

[Vettepilot]

Yeah, you guys are lucky to have usable wood growing. It's like the surface of Mars here, and in fact, if you want to know what it looks like, the pictures from Mars are remarkably similar! Really!

Last year my daughter and I went on a camping/shooting vacation to the high country about 200 miles from here. OMG it was so good to see green! I kept telling my daughter we should take some plants back home with us for her to show her friends that live here in Havasu that "things actually DO grow" on this planet!

Hopefully this month we'll make it back over there and I'll snag some more wood.

Vettepilot

[HamGunner]

I have see plenty of the Alder Black Buckthorn (Rhamnus Frangula) in most of the wooded areas around S. Missouri, or at least I think that is the type of Black Buckthorn that is here. We might have several varieties. So that is something else for me to play with if I can manage to find the right stuff. I think the berries are still on them right now, so I might be able to get out and round up enough to char up a small batch. I do have an app on my phone that identifies plants by the bark, leaves, or flowers so hopefully I can determine what type we have here.

[SeaMonkey]

Earlier this year I downloaded from somewhere (probably from this site or a link provided by a member here) a most interesting report on the role of Charcoal in Black Powder.

It certainly adds to what we've been discussing and learning, particularly from the Waltham Abbey book that Almar linked for us.

It is fascinating to discover how intensively Charcoal was researched and how much detail was devoted to developing the very best for any application.

Ball Milling is rather a modern day equivalent of the old Stamp Mills that were used before the Massive Incorporating Wheels were developed.

The Old Books tell us that our method is inferior to the incorporation the Massive Wheels are able to achieve, but I'm wondering whether we can compensate for the difference somehow?

I generally mill my powder for three continuous days, or a total of 72 Hours or thereabouts.

The Waltham Abbey book reveals that the degree of incorporation is largely responsible for how clean (or dirty) the powder will burn when proofed and tested.

The book also reveals that powder for small arms was incorporated for a much longer time than cannon powder.

So the question arises: How long a milling time with the ball mill would be necessary to produce the cleanest burning powder?

[almar]

I have see plenty of the Alder Black Buckthorn (Rhamnus Frangula) in most of the wooded areas around S. Missouri, or at least I think that is the type of Black Buckthorn that is here. We might have several varieties. So that is something else for me to play with if I can manage to find the right stuff. I think the berries are still on them right now, so I might be able to get out and round up enough to char up a small batch. I do have an app on my phone that identifies plants by the bark, leaves, or flowers so hopefully I can determine what type we have here.

Im kind of jealous if you have that over there!

[almar]

I have some velocities to report!

The lower Sulphur mix at 78 9 13 fully dried this time gave this

25 grains, 220 gr J&D

696
730
670
716

av 703 stdev 26

The 77 10 13 gave this!!

722
744
752
762

av 745 stdev 17

Ok im nipping at the heels of the swiss powder here and I replicated my best batch, if you consider that my logs were far from "select" wood and its not buckthorn alder...I mean this is right there is it not? Their average velocity was 762 I think. Im pretty happy with it, but I can still do more testing with lower temp charrs.

Fouling after 4 shots



Seamonkey: 3 days??? I cant manage more than 6 hours before it clumps up real bad. And that's with all the drying I can do. I wonder if I should then, after 6 hours, take it out, pass it through a screen, dry it and go again.

[Vettepilot]

That's amazing Almar. And you're closing in on it to where pretty quick, you're going to be able to "set it and forget it" with your charcoal cooking rig.

Quite excellent work, and congrats!

Vettepilot

[Vettepilot]

@Almar:

Did you ever find out what temp your kiln will max out at? Also, am I seeing it correctly that not counting the top, or lid, you used 11 bricks for the kiln itself? Did you find a good price on those fire bricks??

Edit: Nope, on re-think, I believe you couldn't quite make it with 11. It's 12 right?

Thanks,
Vettepilot

[HamGunner]

I pull my mill off the stand about every hour and turn the drum upside down and toss it around a bit to make sure that it is not clumping on the ends and to help mix it up a bit. I milled my last batch for 12 hours and could not tell much difference from the one before milled for only 6 hours. My drum is hexagonal shaped so it does seem to have a good noise to it of the lead balls dropping six times per revolution. 20 rpm seems slow, but might be enough. I will look in my junk collection to see if I have a slightly larger pulley that will fit on the shaft of the motor and see if I can speed it up just a wee bit. Not sure I want it too fast or the balls might not be able to fall before the next section of the hexagonal drum come up on top. The balls drop 120 times per minute as it is.

[almar]

@Almar:

Did you ever find out what temp your kiln will max out at? Also, am I seeing it correctly that not counting the top, or lid, you used 11 bricks for the kiln itself? Did you find a good price on those fire bricks??

Edit: Nope, on re-think, I believe you couldn't quite make it with 11. It's 12 right?

Thanks,
Vettepilot

This the wire i used to make the coil

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00JM...b_b_asin_image

These are the bricks

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01MS...b_b_asin_title

I used 10 bricks for the surrounding walls with some left over, i ordered 20.

I have not tested it to its limit quite yet...theoretically, it should get to above 900 centigrade

Its about how well you insulate it...