My homemade black powder

[Richard66]

Ground my first pucks today and not good results I used a ceramic coffee grinder and have to much fine powder any suggestion's if I adjust then to much large pieces

also it may not be dry enough I am letting the remainder dry more to test that possibility

[Richard66]

Start off grinding your broken up pucks so the pieces on top are about 1/8" diameter.
Screen out anything that won't go thru like a #10 or 20 screen.
Now regrind the large chunks that didn't pass thru the screen WITHOUT adjusting the ceramic grinder.
It will produce more of 2 & 3f and still have large chunks that you can again regrind.
Then you can adjust your grinder a little bit and run those chunks thru again.
The trick is,
Do your grinding several times and screen it often.
Only put the material into the grinder that is larger than the powder you want.
And grind the powder at least Twice before you re adjust the grinder.
A ceramic grinder will not be able to be adjusted to grind a Specific Size powder.
Take your time and you will end up with more powder that the size you want

I was trying to grind in one try that may fix my issue THX will the grain grinders do a better job

[HamGunner]

Ground my first pucks today and not good results I used a ceramic coffee grinder and have to much fine powder any suggestion's if I adjust then to much large pieces

I found that it was a bit more work, but I think starting out with the CERAMIC burr grinder set at a fairly coarse setting will lower the percentage of fines overall when you are finished. I grind first with a fairly coarse setting, screen, regrind anything too coarse at a bit finer grinder setting, screen again, and regrind anything that is still too coarse at an even finer grinder setting.

I tried grinding just one time at the proper setting to only give me the size of granules or smaller that I wanted and it ended up with way too many fines, as you did.

[Richard66]

I found that it was a bit more work, but I think starting out with the burr grinder set at a fairly coarse setting will lower the percentage of fines overall when you are finished. I grind first with a fairly coarse setting, screen, regrind anything too coarse at a bit finer grinder setting, screen again, and regrind anything that is still too coarse at an even finer grinder setting.

I tried grinding just one time at the proper setting to only give me the size of granules or smaller that I wanted and it ended up with way too many fines.

what is a burr grinder

[HamGunner]

what is a burr grinder

"A burr mill, or burr grinder, is a mill used to grind hard, small food products between two revolving abrasive surfaces separated by a distance usually set by the user."

I am sorry, I left off the CERAMIC in ceramic burr grinder or (ceramic burr coffee grinder as most of us use), but we all know not to use a metal burr grinder for BP. I corrected my prior post.


LAGS suggestion is likely the best. It takes several runs through the burr mill, but you want to screen each time so that the smaller wanted granules are separated so they do not get re-ground into even smaller granules.

[HamGunner]

I was trying to grind in one try that may fix my issue THX will the grain grinders do a better job

I think the grain grinders are only used to bust up the pucks originally, you will need to use your ceramic burr coffee grinder, or something similar, to get the product to the proper size.

[Richard66]

I will try again another day .got tired of screening and grinding so mixed my fines with alcohol and screened got just what I wanted first try as usual it is a lot faster to do.THANK YOU for your help.

[ChrisPer]

I was trying to grind in one try that may fix my issue THX will the grain grinders do a better job

Firstly, most of my work has been with the ceramic burr coffee grinder.
LAGS and HamGunner's suggestions are good, set it wide and accept several passes, screening off the too-coarse material and regrinding only that.

I add to what they said, start with your puck breaking. I made a grid of screw points to break the puck, then work through the broken pieces getting all the bigger ones and snipping them into four or five pieces with nippers/side cutters. This generates no more than about 2% fines before the ceramic burr mill grinding.

I just built my coffee mill into a wooden box frame that I screw to the bench like indian joe suggested. Then the handle broke.

I have also just got the grain grinder and starting to learn it. It is VERY good just as it came, but only AFTER the puck chips are reduced by the first pass through the coffee mill. I sieved the coarse out with the kitchen sieve, dumped it in the grain mill and it processed very fast and not too many fines.

The mill I got has a maximum roller separation of 1/10". The adjustment is positive, easy to lock at the width needed. The rollers are knurled, and are not geared together. My pucks were too thick so they just sat there while the roller points sliced them to powder.

I am working on all these aspects, and things are coming together.

[jmh54738]

OK, guys, I enjoy all of the math and percentages. I have Red Elder BP ready to test, but the weather is all overcast and rain.
My 1880 Appleton's Cyclopedia references Willow, Alder, and Black Dogwood, as the best woods for BP charcoal. I had no luck researching Black Dogwood; that is until Gibbons, provided the answer. "In the 19th century, Alder Buckthorn was commonly known to charcoal makers as Dogwood. What we know today as Alder Buckthorn is identified as Frangula alnus." It is not an Alder and it doesn't have thorns." So,now, the quest is to find that one in my woodland acres.
jnh54738

[DoubleBuck]

OK, guys, I enjoy all of the math and percentages. I have Red Elder BP ready to test, but the weather is all overcast and rain.
My 1880 Appleton's Cyclopedia references Willow, Alder, and Black Dogwood, as the best woods for BP charcoal. I had no luck researching Black Dogwood; that is until Gibbons, provided the answer. "In the 19th century, Alder Buckthorn was commonly known to charcoal makers as Dogwood. What we know today as Alder Buckthorn is identified as Frangula alnus." It is not an Alder and it doesn't have thorns." So,now, the quest is to find that one in my woodland acres.
jnh54738

From what I can read, there seems to be very little Alder Buckthorn in the U.S.
Another good reference is "Like Fire And Powder: Black Powder for the Modern Shooter" Someone posted a link to it a few months back and several of us bought hard copies or internet versions. It has some good info. Nothing particular to you searching for certain wood, however.
I'll be interested to hear the report on your Elderberry BP.

[indian joe]

I found that it was a bit more work, but I think starting out with the CERAMIC burr grinder set at a fairly coarse setting will lower the percentage of fines overall when you are finished. I grind first with a fairly coarse setting, screen, regrind anything too coarse at a bit finer grinder setting, screen again, and regrind anything that is still too coarse at an even finer grinder setting.

I tried grinding just one time at the proper setting to only give me the size of granules or smaller that I wanted and it ended up with way too many fines, as you did.

same here!

[HamGunner]

OK, guys, I enjoy all of the math and percentages. I have Red Elder BP ready to test, but the weather is all overcast and rain.
My 1880 Appleton's Cyclopedia references Willow, Alder, and Black Dogwood, as the best woods for BP charcoal. I had no luck researching Black Dogwood; that is until Gibbons, provided the answer. "In the 19th century, Alder Buckthorn was commonly known to charcoal makers as Dogwood. What we know today as Alder Buckthorn is identified as Frangula alnus." It is not an Alder and it doesn't have thorns." So,now, the quest is to find that one in my woodland acres.
jnh54738

I really doubt that very many areas of our spread out country will have the "Frangula Alnus" that in Europe is called "Alder Buckthorn" or "Dogwood", which is very much different from our native Dogwood. I have experimented with "Frangula Caroliniana" that is the common "Buckthorn" in my area. Although it was a bit hard to locate, once I was able to identify it, I realized that it was actually not that scarce in S. Missouri.

I tested the ash level and it was fairly low in ash. Burn tests, however were not as promising as I was hoping. It was a bit slow and easily burned through the crease in my folded paper during my test of both the green meal as well as the finished corned powder at around 3FFF size. Both my Sassafras and Black Willow charcoal powders were much faster. I am not positive that the Carolina Buckthorn should be just tossed aside, as it was decent as far as the ash level is concerned, and further testing might give a bit better result as I only done the one batch.

I have myself, settled on using Sassafras and Black Willow as both are abundantly available locally and they are decently free of much ash and fairly fast burning, with Black Willow slightly edging out the Sassafras in burn speed. But I would be satisfied shooting either in my 1851 Navy and 24 gr. almost fills the cylinders to the point that a lubed felt wad on top of the powder and then a ball is about all that will fit comfortably in the cylinder without over compression of the powder. Goex, using the same volume, weighs approximately 10% more or just under 27 gr.

[mmb617]

What percentage of fines are you guys getting? I did a little experimenting today to see if I could reduce my fines, but I don't think I'm going to get below about 20% with the equipment I have.

I have my mill rollers set at 0.075 and that setting pulls my pucks through well with both rollers turning, but I also noticed that the puck breaking step with the mill produces more of the fines than the grinding step with a ceramic burr grinder that follows. So I tried opening the roller spacing to 0.100 and that did produce less fines but it also made some chunks that were too big for the grinder. I didn't think it was worth the tradeoff so I went back to the original 0.075 setting for breaking the pucks.

I then played with the settings on my grinder but the end result was that the setting I've been using is about the best. The only thing I did change after reading the suggestion here was to screen the powder right after breaking the pucks before the first grinding. It makes sense to not run that portion of the powder through the grinder that's already the size I want after breaking.

The procedure I ended up with was to break the pucks with the mill then screen the resultant powder before running it through the grinder. All I really want is 3f and 4f, so anything too big for my 3f screen after the first grinding gets run back through the grinder again.

I had what for me is a full batch of powder to process. That's both my HF tumblers output plus whatever fines I had from last time, which gave me 26 pucks with a total weight of 601.8 grams. That's pretty much the capacity of my dehydrator so that's the amount I'm usually working with.

When I was done I had 392.5 grams of 3f (65%), 87.4 grams of 4f (15%), and 121.9 grams of fines (20%). I think that's as good as it's going to get for me, but it works pretty well since I'll add those fines the next time I press a batch and I'll have a full dehydrator again. By this method I yield just over a pound of usable powder each batch and I could easily do two batches a week if I needed to, but even when the weather is nice enough for me to go to the range almost every day a pound is enough for the whole week.

I am curious about how my fines percentage compares to others, so if you've calculated that I'd be interested to hear what you're getting.

[HamGunner]

I am curious about how my fines percentage compares to others, so if you've calculated that I'd be interested to hear what you're getting.

I only want to keep 3FFFG sized powder so I think I get about 60-65% of that with each session of grind and the rest is smaller. I do screen after each grind before adding the large stuff back in for a re-grind and I repeat this until I no longer have any large granules to re-grind. I usually re-compress my fines after I am done, at least once and regrind those pucks and perhaps then end up with closer to probably 80% keepers total from the whole batch, so you are doing fairly well compared to what I get I suspect. Lots of screening, but then that is not all that bad and does not take up as much time as one would think.

Since winter weather hit I have not worked up any powder and now the rainy season has arrived. Probably get back to making up another batch before long as I do all my milling, screening, and of course the charring outdoors. I do grind inside, but that is just a small part of this process.

With only shooting my .36 cal revolver for the most part and a .32 cal. rifle a bit once in a while, I do not go through a whole lot. But I certainly have been making a much larger dent in my BP supply use than I did before I was making my own powder, wads, and caps. Makes it so much more fun when you realize it is your ingredients and of course, that the price is WAY lower than when buying it all.

[DoubleBuck]

mmb617;
I just checked numbers from my last two batches. I had 25% fines. Note however, that I consider anything smaller than 50 mesh to be fines. I use a home made puck breaker and a pretty good ceramic burr coffee grinder. I don't get in a hurry and sometimes run the chunks through as many as three times, before I change sizes on the grinder. I would personally consider your 20% fines a good number.

HamGunner;
This past weekend, I shot 60 rounds through one of my 30-06's. That cost me nearly $120. I was comparing that to my powder and even buying balls and caps, I could shoot more than four times as many rounds, for the same money. If I could just get them to ring my 600 yard gong....

[LAGS]

When I am grinding my powder ,
I do care about the amount of Fines or even 4f that I end up with.
That is why I use the multi grind and screening that I do.
But I never weigh it out and worry about the percentages.
All those Fines will get Remilled , Repressed or Rescreaned then reground and most of it will end up as 2 or 3f at the end.
So all you are really spending is your time.
Your time shouldn't be costing you much unless you are making the powder to sell.
Take your time and enjoy your hobby.
We don't have Professional equipment and we will never be able to turn out exactly what we want Every Time

[Vettepilot]

Remember too, that pressed and ground powder is not the only option, unless you're loading BP cartridges. Screened powder is easier to get your desired granulation with very little fines. You have to load more of it for each shot to get equalivalent power, but so what?

[ChrisPer]

I got 35% fines average, including the 4F; 20% if you keep 4F (40#-100#) as good powder. I need much more 2F for longer range charges and shoot 3F in shorter range and pistol matches, so now everything from 40# down is reprocessed.

I just processed my first grain milled pucks. This wasn't as good, more than half ended up as fines if the weights I wrote are right. It broke the pucks well and on the first pass only 14% were fines and 24% went straight into the usable sizes <15# and >40#. I need to improve the cleaning of the rolls and take smaller bites on each pass, and I think it will get very good indeed.

[mmb617]

Thanks for your inputs. It looks like my fines percentage of 20% is about what most are getting. I was just curious to see if it could be improved by fiddling with adjustments. Now that the weather is finally getting nice I'll spend more time shooting my powder and less time trying to refine the process by which I make it.

[Richard66]

Remember too, that pressed and ground powder is not the only option, unless you're loading BP cartridges. Screened powder is easier to get your desired granulation with very little fines. You have to load more of it for each shot to get equalivalent power, but so what?

I am new to making powder .So I am trying to learn. My attempts so far were to ball mill then mix with alcohol into a ball and screen and my powder worked great but as you said I had to use more which I am OK with .Then I started reading about pressing into pucks so I did that and bought a ceramic coffee grinder and tried that to see if I could do a better job but with all the screening and regrinding and screening again I don't know if it is worth all the extra time . So can you tell me if you use the alcohol and screen like I do or what process do you like to use THX in advance for all replies