My homemade black powder

[Fly]

The best binder I have ever used is Gum Arabic (Acacia Gum) . Dextrin mostly takes as much as 5% to work good.
Red gum is more to be used with alky, than water.

Fly

[Avenger442]

Just finished trying to grind some of the prilled potassium from Duda Energy LLC using 200 .50 cal lead balls in my ball mill. When I checked it at 2 hours the potassium had turned from white to grey and very little had been ground up. It seems I'm going to have to use something a little harder than the lead. I think I remember Fly saying something about not liking the prilled I don't remember why.

Well, up for suggestions on what grinding media I can use next. Would especially like to hear from someone that has ground up the prilled before. These lead shot will have to go into the Hawken or maybe be used to combine the already ground ingredients.

[swamp]

Maybe a harder alloy ball?

[Fly]

I bought a little electric grinder at Wal-Mart in the kitchen wares dept a few years back. It was like $15
if I remember. I got it to grind up some chemical for my fireworks. I still use that thing today for KNO-3
before milling. Yea I don't use the prilled for that reason. If you have a blender & don't want to buy one
of those cheap little grinders. When your wife is not looking her blender will turn that stuff into fine powder.

Be sure & wash it up good, before putting it up. If there is any saitpeter left in it, then next time she uses
it & feed you what ever was in it, you might not want sex for a while.

(wink) Fly

[Avenger442]

Yea, they used to put it in our orange juice in Jr. High and High School.

[Avenger442]

Fly
What are your thoughts on using this potassium that may have a little lead mixed in?

[Fly]

You think?????? This is what it looks like. http://www.walmart.com/ip/Hamilton-B...inder/15758915

It works great for KNO-3, but Please no one try using this thing for grinding pucks. Kno-3 is by its self is not explosive but pucks are. That's why we use ceramic burr coffie grinders.

Fly

[Avenger442]

Found it! My Mother-in-law's 1960s Oster blender. Hasn't been used in about 30 years but still works. And it does the job on the potassium.

Now if I can just get those guys in California to stop worrying about the fires and get the willow charcoal to me. May just process some of the willow trees locally while I wait.

Thanks Fly

[Hotfxr]

you will be impressed. Your method and experience exactly mirrored mine. Down to screeding damp dextrin balls across 12 mesh to break them up to prep for screening to real powder. And ultimately ending up with 4F, especially after seating the RB in the bore. Which leads to INCREDIBLY dirty barrels on firing.

Nuts to that, now that I have a press and mold.

Sending a check to Fly tomorrow. I was using a press I made from ABS, and it worked well for a while, but alas, it died a couple of days ago when I upped the pressure to a respectable level. It will be fondly remembered the old friend.

[Hotfxr]

Found it! My Mother-in-law's 1960s Oster blender. Hasn't been used in about 30 years but still works. And it does the job on the potassium.

Now if I can just get those guys in California to stop worrying about the fires and get the willow charcoal to me. May just process some of the willow trees locally while I wait.

Thanks Fly

We have had three of those major fires in the last six weeks, all in the next county over, 20 to 35 miles from here. I wish they would knock it off since it has been smokey for a long time. Ironically there has been a burn ban in my county for most of the last three years so I have been getting my charcoal from Fly in Oklahoma. At his price it is a whole lot easier than explaining to the etiquette & enviro-nazi's why I am polluting the air for my selfish exploits. On another note, I started with some of that rock hard prilled KNO3 and wound up crushing it with a large mortar and pestle to get it to mill without having thousands of little white & grey bb's in the powder.

[Whizzer]

I don't know if this is an option for anybody else using Duda Diesel's prills, but years ago I made a largish tumbler from PVC for a homemade ball mill. I bandsaw'ed a bunch of 5/8 round inch brass rodstock into short cylinders. I had access to a scrap yard and bought the stuff for cheap. I had a bag of fertilizer grade "powdered" KNO3 that got damp and clumped badly. The brass rods worked very well, imparting only a small amount of "color" to the KNO3. Brass will GRIND, I assure you. My Duda gets ground nowadays in a Thumbler with hardened lead balls, separately before combining into comps.

DO NOT USE BRASS RODS FOR GRINDING MIXED COMPOSITIONS! NO NO NO!!!! Lead balls only, and in small quantities, or remotely. There is simply no overstating how dangerous this part of the hobby can be. Safety information is out there. Find it or don't do it.

No wait....find it and then DO do it. It's that rewarding!

[Texantothecore]

Let it run for at least 6 hours. A lot of my grinding goes 24 hours. I found that 2 hours was not sufficient even for soft charcoal.

[Texantothecore]

Rods grind much faster and finer than round ball. Some lee bullets might be helpful. I use the 405 grn 45-70 and works beautifully.

[Avenger442]

Rods grind much faster and finer than round ball. Some lee bullets might be helpful. I use the 405 grn 45-70 and works beautifully.

I have about 20 lb of bullets cast and coated with Hi-Tek in several calibers. May try some of them. Hardness on some is in the 18-20 BHN range. They should be hard enough to survive. And the coating should help with the lead rubbing off into the mix.

[Whizzer]

Rods grind much faster and finer than round ball. Some lee bullets might be helpful. I use the 405 grn 45-70 and works beautifully.

So it isn't the brass or its hardness then... that cuts so well? It's mostly the shape?

[Hotfxr]

I have been playing with making my BP for over two years now and finally, with the help of this group , I think I have it down. Or at least a lot closer than I was. Milling for anywhere from 24 to 48 hours depending on how closely I pay attention without a binder. Slightly wetting down, just enough to clump when pinched. Using one of Fly's most excellent puck pressing gizmos the powder gets pressed with the always high quality Harbor Freight 20 ton jack in my remodeled homemade press frame.



Figuring the jack might make half of it's stated capacity, it seems like a good press. I let is stay compressed for at least an hour and have found that sprinkling a little cat litter after reaching compression around the die soaks up the surprising amount of liquid that seeps out at the bottom. The press is a bit on the petite size so it takes a while to get a whole 8oz batch pressed, but in all not long enough to be an inconvenience and I like having the smaller pucks that seem to dry faster than having them larger. That Fly guy knows what he is doing. Being the impatient person I am, I am always trying to force the drying time. I figured two or three days in the sun, given the weather we have had lately makes them nice and crispy. They sound almost ceramic when I tap them against the top of my table saw. We had a couple of cool days so I thought that maybe cranking up one burner on the old gas Webber might be the trick to hastening what could be a week of drying. It was safe, let me say that right out, modified the grill to be about a 125 degree hot air dryer. I think it worked in reverse as the pucks all swelled up and gained a couple of grams of weight. Back to the old physics books for some remedial education on fluidology. Not having a dehydrator or one of those vacuum food sealer things to experiment with, laying them out on a paper plate and covering them up with cat litter seems to help them dry out faster. Well at least in my own mind they do. Break up the pucks in a large marble mortar and pestle then grind them up in the recommended (by the members here) ceramic coffee grinder then pour them out onto a stack of sifting boxes, mesh sizes starting from the top; 6, 12, 20, 30. As the grains get caught up in the screens right now I get about 30% 3f, 30% cannon, 20% 2f with the remaining caught in the bottom as 4f or dust. Since I don't use 4f, all the bottom tray will go back into the ball mill. Maybe if I just become a bit more patient the powder percentage might shrink up. The grains seem to be holding their shape and so far after being bounced around a bit have not reverted to dust. A good thing.



This is a comparison shot. The top row is Goex 2f then 3f. The bottom is my cannon powder without any commercial to compare it to, and then 2f and 3f. I realize I have much more tweaking to do until I get it right, but for now I am happy with the results so far.

Many many thanks to the members here without whom I would still be struggling to find commercial power to buy and paying a premium + for it and missing out on the fun of DIY black powder.

[Whizzer]

Thanks Hotfxr for your excellent post and the pictures. It's hard to explain the satisfaction of making your own BP. Either you "get it" or you don't...

Like motorcycling.

[Hotfxr]

Thanks Hotfxr for your excellent post and the pictures. It's hard to explain the satisfaction of making your own BP. Either you "get it" or you don't...

Like motorcycling.

Amazing, you are one of the very very few who get the reference. And I totally agree, whether making smoke & thunder with rifles or on two wheels, if we have to explain it, they will never be able to understand it.

[Whizzer]

And you can explain it until you are blue in the face.

You either get a sparkle in the eyes and a flash of grin in the face...., or zip. Zero. NADA.

What would anybody want to ride one of those dangerous things. When its hot you sweat, when its cold you shiver and when it rains you get wet. Stupid, huh.

But I'm looking for another one all the time.

Same deal here. DIY BP gets its hooks deep inside you. "He who hath smelt the smoke is ne'er again the same."

[Fly]

You guys are confusing me now???? (wink)

Fly