My homemade black powder

[Hotfxr]

I have finally found someone local that is into making his own BP who is almost as crazy as I am. We have been comparing notes and having a blast doing it. (When you are comparing notes about BP, it involves a lot of flame and smoke). He is also schooling me on the next level of powder making, such as flash powder, tannerite, and getting different effects with metal additives. Ahem, making pyrotechnics or fireworks or exploding targets out here is verbotten so we are just making colored effects for shooting rifles. Really, that's all we're doing (wink, wink). Of course we do have to test the mixtures before they go down the barrel of something now don't we? Honest officer, that's all we are doing. Anyway, as we were discussing corning and compression and all that fun stuff, it seems he dampens his powder before pucking with spray starch instead of water. Now neither one of us uses much liquid at all, just enough to make it barely clump. So I mixed up a batch and the pucks are now drying out in the sun while swimming in a bowl of cat litter. I have no idea whether or not it will make a difference, but he has been doing it this way for a while so I will report any noticeable results in a couple of days.

[maillemaker]

OK, I have just made it through this entire thread. Really, a new thread needs to be made with "just the facts". There is a tremendous amount of "fluff" in this one.

It sounds to me like the corning method is the best way to go, producing a superior powder. Probably why Goex makes it that way, as it sounds they do.

I'm going to give this a shot, and create a web page that documents the "how to", including sources and costs for materials. I shoot competitively in the N-SSA, and my goal is to make a black powder equivalent in performance and consistency to Goex 3F, which is what I shoot presently. I notice some of you say you still use commercial powder for competition, and the home-made stuff for other things, but that defeats the purpose for me. I only shoot for competition, and when practicing I want it to be like competition. My objective here is to save money - right now 3F Goex is close to $30 a pound. You can buy a 6 pound kit online for like $20, which means you can make the stuff for like $3-$4 a pound. Even at $5 a pound, we are talking 1/6th the price of commercial powder.

Question: What kind of wood is "airfloat" powder made from?

Where can you buy willow charcoal?

Thanks,

Steve

[GhostHawk]

Airfloat as in when powdered, it is so light that throwing a handful into the air would take a significant period of time for it to settle.

Essentially I believe you are going to be looking at the lightest of softwoods. Willow, tree of heaven, possibly poplar/aspen. Good luck finding it, most end up either buying it from the fireworks suppliers, or making their own from what I've seen.

I have seen mention of "oat grass" charcoal. And I wonder about other plants less tree like.
Cattail head charcoal anyone?

[Texantothecore]

A thought just occurred to me that the pucks could be suspended in air for drying by simply placing them on 3 or 4 marbles on a flat surface. Construction nails sitting upright would also work wonderfully. Gonna try the nails on the next batch this week.

[Nobade]

I'm going to give this a shot, and create a web page that documents the "how to", including sources and costs for materials. I shoot competitively in the N-SSA, and my goal is to make a black powder equivalent in performance and consistency to Goex 3F, which is what I shoot presently. I notice some of you say you still use commercial powder for competition, and the home-made stuff for other things, but that defeats the purpose for me. I only shoot for competition, and when practicing I want it to be like competition. My objective here is to save money - right now 3F Goex is close to $30 a pound. You can buy a 6 pound kit online for like $20, which means you can make the stuff for like $3-$4 a pound. Even at $5 a pound, we are talking 1/6th the price of commercial powder.

Question: What kind of wood is "airfloat" powder made from?

Where can you buy willow charcoal?

Thanks,

Steve

I think you will be able to make powder that is acceptable for N-SSA use. I don't compete with my muskets - there is no competition around here - but do shoot them quite a bit with homemade. I use the Tree of Heaven for making charcoal since I don't seem to have black willow around here. I get very good performance from my Enfield and Springfield, at around 60gr. of homemade powder. It is essentially a normal service load, may be a bit too hot for your competitions but much less and I get less accuracy since my minie' bullets aren't always pure lead. I can load and fire a dozen rounds easily without wiping, which isn't bad for the hot dry climate we have around here. About like Goex at any rate, not as good as Old "E".

Once you take up powder making, you'll get to shoot a lot more for less money, just takes a bit of labor and an investment in equipment to get started making good powerful powder.

Oh, be careful with that commercial airfloat charcoal. A lot of it is made from hardwood and makes lousy gunpowder. If you don't want to cut up trees, cedar fence panels or pet bedding work pretty well.

-Nobade

[Fly]

WOW some great stuff above. Another fireworks guy making gun powder, join the fun. Starch for spraying pucks???
That's a new one for me, but sounds promising. I might try that, but I wonder if the starch would slow it down some
as other binder do?

Steve you want to make powder as consistent as Goex. I have to a extent. My take is screen, screen, screen. I be leave
one of the biggest reasons MOST home made powder lacks in being as consistent is grain size differences. Most of us screen
our powder once, & say that's good enough. Me also, but he!! I,m lazy, (wink). But look at a batch of your powder & then
Goex or Swiss as to grain consistently & I think you will see what I,m referring too. There are other things as charcoal cooking
temps & how long its cooked.

But that my take on this. But I,m going to press some puck tomorrow & might just try the starch deal.

Fly PS Noblade is right on about the airflot charcoal that's sold threw pyro dealers, it can be made from any wood. That's why
it is cheap. Hobby sells it for about $3.50 LB. They sell Black Willow for $8.50 a Lb when they have it.

[Boz330]

OK, I have just made it through this entire thread. Really, a new thread needs to be made with "just the facts". There is a tremendous amount of "fluff" in this one.

It sounds to me like the corning method is the best way to go, producing a superior powder. Probably why Goex makes it that way, as it sounds they do.

I'm going to give this a shot, and create a web page that documents the "how to", including sources and costs for materials. I shoot competitively in the N-SSA, and my goal is to make a black powder equivalent in performance and consistency to Goex 3F, which is what I shoot presently. I notice some of you say you still use commercial powder for competition, and the home-made stuff for other things, but that defeats the purpose for me. I only shoot for competition, and when practicing I want it to be like competition. My objective here is to save money - right now 3F Goex is close to $30 a pound. You can buy a 6 pound kit online for like $20, which means you can make the stuff for like $3-$4 a pound. Even at $5 a pound, we are talking 1/6th the price of commercial powder.

Question: What kind of wood is "airfloat" powder made from?

Where can you buy willow charcoal?

Thanks,

Steve

For 100 to maybe 150yd you should be good with HM. I have shot mine to 500yd but the 300yd results weren't bad, after that the vertical is too much to deal with.

Bob

[Fly]

Heck Bob that covers any shooting I will ever do here in Okla. I plan a trip to Az to visit my son & want to bring the Gibbs.
I for sure will bring the Swiss on your reconditions from the past on that rifle.

Fly

[maillemaker]

Oh, be careful with that commercial airfloat charcoal. A lot of it is made from hardwood and makes lousy gunpowder. If you don't want to cut up trees, cedar fence panels or pet bedding work pretty well.

Good to know. I was hoping to just buy a kit from the vendors like starlight or hobby or whatever but they just call it "airfloat". I guess I'll get a cedar fence panel from Home Depot. They have lots of pine that is whitish in color but I understand from this thread that while it is fast it is dirty.

Steve

[Texantothecore]

Petsmart carries both cedar and aspen bedding. They work fine.

[Nobade]

Heck Bob that covers any shooting I will ever do here in Okla. I plan a trip to Az to visit my son & want to bring the Gibbs.
I for sure will bring the Swiss on your reconditions from the past on that rifle.

Fly

Hey Fly,
If you happen to be driving through ABQ on your way to AZ, give me a shout! I would like to meet you and I bet LynC2 would also.

-Nobade

[maillemaker]

OK, so it looks like a good recipe for black powder is:

http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/recipe.html

100 parts potassium nitrate
18 parts charcoal
16 parts sulfur

So if you want to know how much of each ingredient to make, say, 10 pounds of black powder, this should do the trick:

10 lb = X saltpeter + .18(X) charcoal + .16(X) sulfur

10 lb = X(1 + .18 + .16)

10 lb = X(1.34)

X = 10/1.34

X = 7.46

So we can see then that for 10 pounds of black powder you would need:

7.46 pounds saltpeter

7.46(.18) pounds charcoal = 1.34 pounds charcoal

7.46(.16) pounds sulfur = 1.19 pounds sulfur

Sourcing materials as follows:

http://www.customcharcoal.com/willow-lump-charcoal.html

8 pounds of black willow charcoal shipped for $39.99. You can only buy it in 8 pound sacks so I am sourcing the other materials assuming you have 8 pounds of charcoal.

To consume 8 pounds of charcoal, you would need about 45 pounds of Potassium Nitrate and about 8 pounds of Sulfur (rounding up to nearest pound).

http://www.hobbychemicalsupply.com/potassium-nitrate/
http://www.hobbychemicalsupply.com/sulfur-powder/

45 pounds of Potassium Nitrate + 8 pounds of Sulfur shipped for $167.25

This works out to $207.24 for sufficient materials to manufacture about 61 pounds of black powder.

This works out to about $3.40 per pound.

I currently can purchase Goex from one local gun store that carries it for $26 per pound. 10 pounds of Goex from Powder Inc (https://www.powderinc.com/catalog/order.htm) will cost you $200.50, or $20.05 per pound, shipped. 25 pounds will cost you $405 or $16.20 per pound, shipped.

So you can manufacture your own for about 17% to 21% of the cost of buying it.

It would be interesting to see someone take one of the Harbor Freight drums and load it with a typical charge and rolling balls and deliberately ignite it electrically and video the results, so that everyone can see the explosion/damage potential. I don't know how much containment the tumbler will offer before it ruptures and just allows the powder to burn off. But it would be good to see this in a controlled and isolated experiment so that others could gauge the risk. I live in a residential neighborhood. I'd put my tumbler off along my back fence on my property, but would this send my back fence into the neighbor's house 50 yards away?

Steve

[maillemaker]

I wonder if you could grind and/or store green black powder wet, thus negating the explosion hazard? Would this affect the chemical properties of the product?

In other words, what if you had a blender/grinder submerged in a wet environment, such that the mix of ingredients was pureed wet? Then the resultant mixture could be stored wet in 5 gallon buckets, and as needed poured out in a slurry into something like cookie sheets, where it could be allowed to dry. Perhaps it could by allowed to try thoroughly and broken up for screening without the need for pressing, or it could be allowed to dry to a sufficient texture for pressing.

In this way you could mix and store large quantities of the green powder, say a 5-gallon-bucket worth, but by storing it wet keep it relatively inert until batched out for processing?

Steve

[Whiterabbit]

You are overthinking it.

Store as individual components and there is no hazard. mill, corn, and grind in one shot and you make what you need when you need it. no extra storage. If that worries you.

I'm not against reinventing the wheel, but you have to be able to answer "why are we changing something?" if the why doesnt make sense or is mitigated elsewhere, no need to change.

[maillemaker]

Obviously there is no hazard in storing individual components. I'm talking about the hazard in the mixed chemicals.

It sounds like most people make this stuff in small batches due to the explosion risk. I've got a Diamond Pacific 65T wet tumbler that can hold 8.5 gallons, or 90 pounds of material. Instead of making 1/2 pound batches, I'd rather make 10 pounds at a go. But this would be pretty risky to do in a residential setting dry.

So I'm trying to think of ways to process and store the materials wet.

Edit to add: I basically shoot about 2-3 pounds of powder a month. If I was making it 1/2 pound batches, I'd be making black powder every weekend to keep up. I'm trying to figure out a way to safely make it in larger batches. Wet would do that, assuming it does not harm the powder.

Steve

[Whiterabbit]

It's up to you to perform your own risk analysis and execute accordingly. We all know the guy who is so risk averse he throws out cases with a small dent, or will never touch anyone else's reloads under any circumstances, etc.

If you decide the risk to product performance is less than the risk of lost productivity when considering a mitigating strategy of changing production methodology to enhance yield (while only mitigating the safety risk), then that is a risk you bear on your own. It would seem that the rest of us consider our production needs and adjust batch size according to those needs. Without the need to consider mitigation strategies for production volume, yield/quality, or safety.

Good luck to you. Folks willing to take risks like the ones you are considering are why we have the knowledge we do.

[Whiterabbit]

For what it is worth, though I have only ball milled .3 lb batches at a time, I have been in the situation of running 4-6 batches back to back and storing the airfloat black powder in powder tins until ALL the ball milling was done before starting the corning step, then corning all before starting the grading, etc.

With enough 1lb tins, it is easy to store whatever your production output is in comparatively low risk quantities.

so IMO it would seem your only consideration really is whether the mitigating strategy to reduce the risk to safety (when upping batch size) and the resulting increase in risk to product quality is really only related to the ball milling step, and not so much an issue of storage, corning, grading, etc.

[maillemaker]

>It's up to you to perform your own risk analysis and execute accordingly.

I have done so, and concluded that it's probably not safe to produce this stuff in batches larger than about a pound in my back yard in a residential neighborhood.

Now, does anyone have anything useful to contribute to my question about the feasibility and/or side effects of wet-processing?

Steve

[Fly]

NOBLADE I,m flying this trip or I would. But I maybe driving out next month or so.
When I find out I will pm you buddy. It would be fun to meet up for sure.

Fly

[maillemaker]

so IMO it would seem your only consideration really is whether the mitigating strategy to reduce the risk to safety (when upping batch size) and the resulting increase in risk to product quality is really only related to the ball milling step, and not so much an issue of storage, corning, grading, etc.

That is correct. The issue is during the milling step, which will result in a large quantity of "sludge" that must be stored until it can be processed in batches. I was envisioning a 5-gallon bucket full of wet green powder that could then be processed in batches as needed. The issue is not the safety of the storage of the sludge, it's the safety of the large batch production that would produce a bucket of the stuff.

Steve