My homemade black powder

[FrankJD]

.... ... You have bamboozeled yourself with information overload - stay simple - go make some.

Ya think, Joe? Actually, no - yer assessment of my BP making queries are incorrect. It's about research and learning whilst being cognizant of the dangers, no more or less.

Attempting to learn from this and other "make black powder" internet threads has its inherent opinions of "what's best" along with a cornucopia of inputs and "truths" from people I dunno. So call me a bit skeptically cautious whence my life and limbs are on the line, and try to be appreciative of where I, and many others, are coming from with regards to mixing up a batch of holy black explosives.

But please do know that I, and others, do appreciate your input and knowledge, and certainly the input of many others.

I've been using traditional muzzleloaders for near 7 decades and I don't want to be a statistic, so I'm sorry for all my questions and requests for details - and if they frustrate you, please don't bother answering and I'll understand.

Cheers,
Rob.

[Vettepilot]

Well guys, I never said the Red Cedar pet bedding was the best; only that it seemed pretty good, and that I liked it.

The stuff I use consists of "curls" of wood. Personally, my thought is that bark doesn't make the pretty, red/white curls of cedar I see in this stuff.

But, whatever "turns ya on..." I really don't care.

Vettepilot

[Vettepilot]

Indian Joe offered good advice. If you don't want it, then ignore it and move on. Personal affronts are as unwelcome as government interference. Indian Joe offered none. You did....

Vettepilot

[DoubleBuck]

Vettepilot;
I meant no offense about the bedding. I've seen bags of it, and it looks really good. I just have many other options. I tested my Red Cedar probably 4 years ago, or more, when I was testing everything. Again, if the cedar bedding works, I certainly am not against anyone using it, in any way.
I do have a question about it though. Does it have any visible bark in it, or is it all pure red or white? The reason I ask, is because they may run the whole tree through a stripper, before they chip it up. If it has no bark in the bags, I'm betting that is what they are doing. Which would eliminate bark and limbs both.

[LAGS]

As far as the cedar chips.
The quality and purity can depend on the brand and price you pay for it.
If I remember correctly.
I bought the cheapest biggest bag I could find.
I can not say for sure that there was any sizeable amount of bark in that bag.
But it looked to me like stuff I ran thru my garden chipper than what Vette described as Shavings.
That is why I would still use the cedar chips in the future.
I will just pay more attention to the quality.

[indian joe]

Ya think, Joe? Actually, no - yer assessment of my BP making queries are incorrect. It's about research and learning whilst being cognizant of the dangers, no more or less.

Attempting to learn from this and other "make black powder" internet threads has its inherent opinions of "what's best" along with a cornucopia of inputs and "truths" from people I dunno. So call me a bit skeptically cautious whence my life and limbs are on the line, and try to be appreciative of where I, and many others, are coming from with regards to mixing up a batch of holy black explosives.

But please do know that I, and others, do appreciate your input and knowledge, and certainly the input of many others.

I've been using traditional muzzleloaders for near 7 decades and I don't want to be a statistic, so I'm sorry for all my questions and requests for details - and if they frustrate you, please don't bother answering and I'll understand.

Cheers,
Rob.

just tryin to save you a few miles on this trip - the Screened method I gave you in those couple of posts is about as easy and effective as this gets for a muzzleloader shooter - we shoot all screened powder in our front loaders for those reasons. If you want to take the long and winding road with this, go for it - no skin off my nose at all.

Safety should always be in our focus - but a bit of objective thinking there too - most BP shooters I see are casual enough handling a kilo can of bought powder - yet they think me a fool for making it (in kilo lots) go figure!

[Trapper-Jack]

I've got some cedar powder that I will test against Goex as I did with my Juniper, Willow and Quaking Aspen powders when I get some time and a good day. I made it with the same process as the others, only the charcoal is different. The cedar is in thin shavings and I use it in the chicken coop (cedar is supposed to be a natural bug repellant) and use it to tumble my coyote and bobcat pelts before selling (fluffs and makes the hair shine). I don't notice any bark in the product I am using. The powder I've made with it does well, but so far when testing for consistency, my willow has the smallest deviation of what I've tested. That may change when I test out the cedar, we'll see.

[HWooldridge]

Many, many moons ago, I worked in a plywood mill in New Waverly, Texas - a big Louisiana-Pacific plant. The bark, limbs and any other scrap were all shredded into chips, which were used for many applications, including sawdust for floor absorption.

Lumbermills don't waste anything - I can't believe anyone is producing cedar or other shavings from virgin wood and debarking it before grinding. I can almost guarantee that any type of bedding you purchase in a bag will have a good amount of bark.

[FrankJD]

Thank you Indian Joe.

Whilst the CIA wet method appears to be the safest, I will take Joe's advice, and that of legions of others, and go the dry ball mill route.

I have Skylighter chemicals - KNO3 and sulfur - and good willow charcoal and some Dextrin.

Here's my game plan, please critique with your personal preferences ...

* With a ceramic burr coffee bean grinder, grind the KNO3 to flour-like consistency.
* Ball mill the charcoal and sulfur for 2 hours in a Harbor Freight ball mill with about 90 pure lead balls (.530, .490, .440).
* Add the KNO3 to the mix and ball mill for 8 hours.
* Add 2% Dextrin to the mix and ball mill for 2 hours.
* Add in just enuf water to the meal powder to get it to a clay-like ball.
* Grate the powder ball over a 30 mesh screen.
* Sift the results over a 40 mesh screen to recover 3F powder on the screen top, save the fines for another batch.
* Allow the 3F powder to thoroughly dry.
* No puck making, at least initially.

How much powder would be reasonably best to make for my first go 'round for a 75-15-10 mix?

[LAGS]

Frank.
Your procedure seem just fine.
My only suggestion is to press your balled up powder thru a little courser screen like a #20.
Yes it might produce a little courser screened powder on your first screening.
But when it is dried , you can crush it a bit or even run it thru your ceramic grinder to get your #3 f powder that you want.
But doing it the way you described will work good.
What passes thru a #30 screen when dry but stays on a #40 will be your 3f.
Start off doing a half pound your first attempt.
It will let you see how things go.
Then you can make bigger batches as you improve your skills.
One more thing I can suggest.
It will work better if you used harder lead balls to mill your powder rather than pure lead balls.
The lead balls work.
But you just have a greater chance of leaving lead contamination in your milled powder.
If you cast your own balls , Wheel weight lead is harder than pure lead.
Mine are cast from Monotype that I smelted myself for this use.

[indian joe]

[QUOTE=FrankJD;5519000]Thank you Indian Joe.

Whilst the CIA wet method appears to be the safest, I will take Joe's advice, and that of legions of others, and go the dry ball mill route.

I have Skylighter chemicals - KNO3 and sulfur - and good willow charcoal and some Dextrin.

Here's my game plan, please critique with your personal preferences ...

* With a ceramic burr coffee bean grinder, grind the KNO3 to flour-like consistency.
I use soluble greenhouse fertiliser - the coffee grinder wouldnt be any benefit at all to that material - If you wanna pre grind your KNO3 - use the ball mill (maybe an hour)
* Ball mill the charcoal and sulfur for 2 hours in a Harbor Freight ball mill with about 90 pure lead balls (.530, .490, .440).
You want your canister (if its just a straight cylinder - I have no experience with those stepped wall ones) half full of lead balls for best result
* Add the KNO3 to the mix and ball mill for 8 hours.
I mill my charcoal to airfloat ahead of time and store it - then I load the four components (KNO3, charcoal, Sulphur, Dextrin) into the canister, hit the remote switch, I shut it down to check for clumping at two hours - timer switches off when its done.
* Add 2% Dextrin to the mix and ball mill for 2 hours.
Put it in at the start works ok

* Add in just enuf water to the meal powder to get it to a clay-like ball.
needs a little bit gluey and work it some - remember we need to activate the sticker and that needs moisture
* Grate the powder ball over a 30 mesh screen.
TOO fine !!!! use a 16 mesh first - when its half dry put it through the 16 mesh again - if you try for too fine you dont hardly get any grain structure
* Sift the results over a 40 mesh screen to recover 3F powder on the screen top, save the fines for another batch.
now its dry you might wanna use a 20 mesh screen to take out the coarser stuff as well as the 40 or 50 mesh to get the ffffG and fines out
* Allow the 3F powder to thoroughly dry.
yep dry +dry +dry
* No puck making, at least initially.
dont need to do that ever for muzzleloaders (including cap and ball pistol)
If you wanna load brass cartridges - most of em you need to make pucks to get the better density, exception to this is any big old case that fellas try to download - prime example would be a 450/577 martini

Lags says a few things a little different - thats fine - everybody will tweak their method to suit themselves and their conditions to some extent - I work this screened powder fairly wet - we have a low humid environment - it dries quick for me - I get good solid grain structure - have some screened stuff from 2017 in my powder horn now and still quite useable .

I came on here at about page 50 and even then there was so much info on how you do it (bamboozled with information overload is a real thing!) - so "Fly" was active here then and he seemed to be the guy with the best handle on it so I followed him, every twist and turn, and I ignored everything anybody else posted - not because they were wrong but because it was obvious there about a hundred different ways of getting to the end point - only took a couple of batches and I had good screened powder - then I joined the general community, lookin at all the little tweaks, comparing equipment, all the information that I consider confusion to a newby. I am seat of the pants a fair bit - but that does not mean I am careless at all - nor does it mean I will accept second rate results - no Sir!

[FrankJD]

Thank you LAGS and indian joe.

I'll get some coarser 16 and 20 mesh screens to add the to 30 and 40 I already have.

I cast all balls for trad muzzleloaders (pure lead) and slicks for PPB cartridge BP guns (20:1 or 16:1 of lead:tin). I can cast balls with the harder Lyman #2 alloy - wheel weights in my area are scarce as hen's teeth.

The willow and sulfur are both already "airfloat", so I'll refine the salt-like KNO3 in either the bean grinder or ball mill first.

The Harbor Freight mill is straight rubber, no steps.

I'll add all 4 components into the mill at the same time - is 2% of the final target weight the right weight of the Dextrin?

A simple spreadsheet to figure out the proportional powder weights, based on 75-15-10 ...

[LAGS]

I just use the bottom numbers based on 8 oz or a half pound.
My HF tumbler works great with those amounts and using 2 to 2 1/2 lbs of lead balls.
2% Dextrin works perfect for a binder.
4% makes harder powder , but it makes the powder burn a little slower.

[Edward]

Black powder is the “raisin” we all here LOL. Seriously though, If I can make my own powder, repurpose spent primers and cast my own bullets, all I have to do is make sure I have ample brass.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not if your shooting muzzle loaders (the real independent shooters) all do /Ed

[FrankJD]

I just use the bottom numbers based on 8 oz or a half pound.
My HF tumbler works great with those amounts and using 2 to 2 1/2 lbs of lead balls.
2% Dextrin works perfect for a binder.
4% makes harder powder , but it makes the powder burn a little slower.

Great scoop, thanx LAGS.

Does it make sense for me to cast new mill balls using the harder Lyman #2 alloy?

[LAGS]

Frank.
If I was you,
I would just start off with the stuff you have.
You don't have to start off with Everything Perfect .
Once you get going , you will be able to upgrade things like the hardness of the balls.
That is the way I started.
And I cast up the new balls while my powder was grinding for 8 hours.
It gave me something to do.
And the next half pound was milling when I was screening or Corning my first batch.
On my Kno3.
I grind it first , even if it is not Prilled stuff.
Then I mill it by itself , same as the charcoal and sulfer to turn all three into air fly for future batches.
I mill all three chemicals to air Fly separate and have them in bulk stored so they are ready to start my next batch and the next one and so on.
Once you get started , you will figure out what works best in prepping for your hobby.
Right now.
I have 10 lb of air Fly KNO3
5 lb of air Fly willow Charcoal
And 5 lb of air fly sulfur
.plus a pound of milled Dextrin

[FrankJD]

Thanx again, LAGS. I'll cast up the Lyman #2 balls anyway - I'd rather use up and get rid of that alloy than the pure.

I'll pre-grind the KNO3 in the ceramic burr bean grinder, then ball mill all the ingredients together.

I've got a 20 mesh screen coming.

Guess I'm set to give 'er a go.

[HWooldridge]

Thanx again, LAGS. I'll cast up the Lyman #2 balls anyway - I'd rather use up and get rid of that alloy than the pure.

I'll pre-grind the KNO3 in the ceramic burr bean grinder, then ball mill all the ingredients together.

I've got a 20 mesh screen coming.

Guess I'm set to give 'er a go.

Everybody has slight tweaks and preferences that seem to work for their needs.

I use bronze triangles for grinding media - had some sticks left over from a job that were right triangles in profile and the pieces were easy to cut down. I'm not claiming they work better or worse that spheres, but I already had the stock and it works.

I grind the charcoal to smaller pieces but don't grind anything to air float ahead of time - I just mix everything by weight and tumble for 12-15 hours. There might be a better way but again, it seems to work until I decide whether to tweak it again. Some folks like to experiment and that is perfectly fine, but I want to produce good powder that I can shoot.

[LAGS]

One thing I see about grinding , milling and storing your three chemicals separately.
It is called " Safety "
The three chemicals are almost inert if not mixed together except the kno3.
And now it is ready for when you are ready to play.
Plus, If you get out of this hobby.
You can sell off all three chemicals separate and even ship them legally.
But once you make black powder.
You can't sell it or ship it to someone.

[FrankJD]

Yep, my game plan from the get-go was to make only 8-16oz at a time.