My homemade black powder

[HWooldridge]

Attachment 319517
I used my homemade powder to take this buck .

Nice deer - did you score the rack?

[Ferryboatcaptain]

No but I did do a European mount .

[shaman]

My comment on the Youtube is that I do not see anywhere in the BATFE site where transportation of homebrew blackpowder is proscribed.

Here is what BATFE has to say about it on their own website:

https://www.atf.gov/explosives/black-powder

[HWooldridge]

Here is a quote from that page: "Individuals do not need a manufacturer’s license if they manufacture black powder for their own personal, non-business use and the black powder produced is not a “commercial” product within the contemplation of the exemption and must be stored in compliance with the appropriate regulations."

[DoubleBuck]

Ferryboatcaptain;
That is a nice deer. It would be neat for everyone to post a picture of their harvests with HM powder. Chow's on!

[Trapper-Jack]

Very nice buck. I know there is a heightened sense of satisfaction to harvest an animal with your own materials. Good on ya!

[indian joe]

A lot of people want their 15 minutes of fame. My dad always to me to keep quiet and let people think I was stupid, rather than talk and remove all doubt.

exactly!!!!

[indian joe]

But, to alleviate any possible problems, I store all my powder in old Dupont or Goex powder cans as they are already properly labeled as to the contents with all the precautions printed on the cans. Unlike his Kentucky moonshine glass fruit jar container, transporting a can or three of the homemade in prior approved commercial containers should present little problem whatsoever.

yes and at the range someone asks where do you get your powder the answer is "ahh well I worried about supply years ago and bought and stashed heaps of it - cheap too it was"

fly under the radar!

[StevenDJ]

But, to alleviate any possible problems, I store all my powder in old Dupont or Goex powder cans as they are already properly labeled as to the contents with all the precautions printed on the cans.

That only works if you have an old powder can.

The only black powder I have ever used is the stuff I've made. I guess that means I can say that mine is also the best powder I have ever used! It really does work great and patterns the shotgun much better than the cheap commercial clay loads. I'll be saving / waiting for the right blackpowder cartridge gun to turn up.

Really, I think that the folks out there trying to do the right thing by digging around in the law are only going to make it hard for everyone. It seems that they want to put themselves in a position of knowledge or pseudo-authority.

[shaman]

I have finally gotten my adventure in Homebrew Black Powder properly documented. I submit it to this august forum for review and comment:

Homebrew Black Powder

[DoubleBuck]

Shaman;
I think the article was very good. Then, I spent an hour checking out your cool site, pictures and articles, etc. Good luck with your adventures! It looks like you live in an area teeming with wildlife and a hunting paradise. I enjoyed your link very much!

[StevenDJ]

Shaman,

I also enjoyed your post. I have been to your site before and had a good poke around there. The nice thing about this blackpowder adventure is that everyone has their own variations on the method and you can take some ideas for adaptation to your own circumstances. When you start making your own powder, 80 grains in the Bess doesn't seem like a lot of powder. I use mine powder to load the shotgun (70 grains), and I seem to be able to do a lot of shooting for a relatively small amount of powder. In fact, I seem to enjoy making powder just for its own sake and I need to shoot more, just so I have the need to make more powder!

I have my own small farm to shoot on, but I don't like disturbing the neighbours with the noise, nor do I like the environmental consequences of spreading lead shot about the place. When I finally find the right black powder cartridge gun, I'll be able to shoot more into a bullet trap and that will remove one of these problems.

Thanks for sharing.

[mmb617]

DJ, I use that grain roller. Mine is modified with gears and additional adjustment but this is not necessarily needed.
After I posted my tool and explained it, several here realized that it doesn't take much effort to drive the passive roller.
A leather or rubber strip fed between the rollers will induce the desired effect.

See the passive roller will bind up on chunks of puck. The driven roller will then grind the stalled chunk to flour.
To avoid this, only a light motivation by the fingers makes it work but well....fingers get pinched.
I just went over the top with gears, turning new dials and shafts. Wasn't needed.

I'm glad it's gear driven but hindsight is usually 20/20 and the fine folks here pointed out the leather or rubber strap fix within a few hours.

The quantity rule still very much applies. Mine sits over a wood box and only a few pucks go in at a time.

When I first started making my own powder a little over two years ago I read this entire thread over the course of a couple weeks. So much good information. Recently I remembered reading a post where a member had geared the two rollers together on his grain mill and I wanted to do that with mine. I figured I'd look up that post and ask some questions of the poster who had already done it, but I couldn't recall who had posted it or exactly when. So I started working backwards through the posts till I found what I was looking for.

I quickly realized I didn't have the equipment or expertise to make the gears and shafts like Brimstone did, but then I found this post where he gave an alternate method of making the rollers turn together. I wanted to say Thank You to Brimstone as I'd never have thought of this. I found an old serpentine belt in the garage that was about an inch wide and looked to be about the right thickness so I tried a dry run and it works perfectly. I have a batch of pucks scheduled to come out of the dehydrator tomorrow so I'll be able to see how much difference it makes. I anticipate it will make a pretty big one. So again thanks!

[StevenDJ]

mmb617,

I have found that I only need to use the belt between the rollers for the first pass that breaks the pucks. After that no belt is needed and both rollers work together to further crush the large grains down. Without the belt, I couldn't use the grain mill to crush pucks. With the belt, it is effortless.

I sieve my powder after each pass through the rollers and in doing so, I generate under 20% that passes as dust through my 45 mesh screen. I get a mix of 1F (12-16), 2F (16-24), 3F (24-45) on the first roll, but I take the 1F and run it through again as I really don't need the 1F size. The ratio of my final product is 2F:3F:dust --> 40:40:20.

Have fun!

[mmb617]

I had a batch ready for granulation today so I got to try out the modified grain mill with the belt between the rollers for the first time. All I can say is wow! So much easier. Before I had to practically jam the pucks in to the rollers while turning the handle to get it started and now I just drop the puck in and crank the handle and it pulls the puck in. It's also breaking them into smaller pieces that I dump straight into my screen stack for the first screening. After the first breaking up I don't use the mill anymore as the pieces are small enough to run through my coffee grinder once, then again after another screening with the grinder set a little finer. I do intend to make a guide for the belt to keep it far off to the side of the rollers as it tends to move around some and gets in the way of the pucks at times. I also want to keep it out of the way of the container under the mill that catches the powder. Easy to fix though.

All I want is 3f and 4f so my first screen is a 20 mesh. Anything that stays on there is reground. Next is a 40 screen. What stays on there is my 3f. The last screen is a 60 mesh that holds my 4f. anything that passes that screen is my fines, and by then it's practically airfloat.

I use a shaker table with my screen stack so there is very, very little fines mixed in with my 3f and 4f. When I first started making powder I had flow issues but since I started using the table to shake the screens the powder flows like water.

I weighed my output of each size today and got a ratio of 60% 3f, 16% 4f, and 24% fines. I can live with that as I just throw the fines in with my next batch of green meal before pressing.

I have learned a ton from this thread that has helped me to be powder independent. I have more than enough KNO3 and Sulfur to last the rest of my life, and an endless supply of charcoal. I still have some commercial powder I bought before I started making my own, but it just sits as i shoot nothing but home grown now. There's that feeling of satisfaction you get from knowing you made the powder yourself. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about.

[StevenDJ]

I reckon 24% fines under your 60 mesh is really great. I'd be happy with that! Even more so since you are only looking for 3f and a little 4f.

I make my pucks about 1/8" thick. This pulls them really quickly between the rollers. I find that using a 1 foot length of rubber strip that I can easily crush a puck, reverse the handle a few turns to bring the strip back up, then crush another puck.

The worst part about the process is that it goes too fast and I like playing around with the tools and powder I have made.

mmb617, What are you shooting your powder through?

... Yep, we know what you're talking about

[mmb617]

I reckon 24% fines under your 60 mesh is really great. I'd be happy with that! Even more so since you are only looking for 3f and a little 4f.

I'm pretty much satisfied with the percentages I'm getting now. It did take a while and some experimenting to get to where I am now.

I make my pucks about 1/8" thick. This pulls them really quickly between the rollers. I find that using a 1 foot length of rubber strip that I can easily crush a puck, reverse the handle a few turns to bring the strip back up, then crush another puck.

I use 24 grams of meal per puck with a 3 inch puck die which gives pucks about that thick. My rubber strip is an old serpentine belt about an inch wide that's 5 ft long or so. I can run 8-10 pucks before I get to the end and have to feed it in again which is why I need to make a guide for it as it tends to walk across the rollers after a few pucks.

The worst part about the process is that it goes too fast and I like playing around with the tools and powder I have made.

I'm the same way!

mmb617, What are you shooting your powder through?

I have 4 rifles and 1 pistol. All are .50 caliber flintlocks and all are Traditions. The rifles are Deerhunter, Hawken, Mountain and Kentucky, and the pistol is Trapper. I know a lot of people on some forums think Traditons muzzleloaders are junk but mine have all been accurate and reliable. Sometimes it's the shooter that's the problem and not the gun!

What firearms are you using? I assume some larger bores since you only want 2f and 3f powder. I could not get reliable ignition with 2f in my collection. In fact my Kentucky rifle prefers 4f as the charge.

... Yep, we know what you're talking about

There's a guy at the club where I shoot who is big into flintlocks, and he runs all the black powder shoots the club sponsors. In conversation with him one day I mentioned that I was making my own black powder and he was surprised. He's seen me shoot and knows I rarely have a misfire or hangfire. He was interested so I showed him some of my powder and he poured a little into his hand and examined it. He was impressed that the granules were very hard, there were no fines and it looked just like commercial powder. That meant something to me coming from him. He said he thought about making powder before but he builds flintlocks from scratch and doesn't really have the time.

I'm enjoying this hobby more than I ever could have imagined.

[LAGS]

IMO.
The Traditions guns are not Junk.
They are just Basic.
They mostly work , and are reasonably accurate.
Mine seemed to work well with homemade powder and primers.
Their Kits seem to be the ones with minor issues.
But those issues are mostly from not paying attention to fine adjustments you need to do to get them to function perfectly.
Like setting and adjusting the trigger and lock to fit together properly.
But most Traditions Kits are put together by first time shooters who are not familiar with what to look for and fine tune.

[StevenDJ]

mmb617,

"What firearms are you using? I assume some larger bores since you only want 2f and 3f powder. I could not get reliable ignition with 2f in my collection. In fact my Kentucky rifle prefers 4f as the charge"
I am loading my 12 guage shotgun at the moment. I found that the black powder patterned tighter than the equivalent smokeless load. When I find a little time, I will experiment with using fibre wads and over powder cards in place of plastic wads. The difference in recoil between 2F and 3F was far greater than the difference between 60gr and 70gr of powder. I would love to get a flintlock or single shot 45-70 or a 45 Colt to load (or all three), but money is tight at the moment.

It is nice to get feedback from knowledgeable people. I gave a sample to one of the ladies behind the counter in the local gun store. She is a black powder pistol shooter. I hadn't dropped in for months but saw her again this weekend. She grabbed me quickly to say how great the powder was. She said it was so much cleaner than her commercial powder. She wants to put in an order for my powder to which I said... "Hmmm, I don't think I should be selling this stuff". I am happy to give a bit away though as I need the help from people like her because I have never even seen commercial powder . I have nothing to compare against. Again, even if I could find it, local prices seem to be around AUD $180/kg, which is more than I want to spend.

For me the powder is almost a separate hobby to shooting. For years I built laminated longbows and similarly, shooting bows had a different thrill to making them.

LAGS,

It would be great if we could buy kits for muzzle loaders in Australia, but I have not seen nor heard of that happening. It is probably due to licensing that this is not available to us.

[LAGS]

Over in Australia,
Are BP guns required to be registered as firearms.
If so, that may be the reason they don't import kits because they lack registration till they are built.
But do they Import things like the Traditions rifles and pistols ?