My homemade black powder

[luvtn]

Thanks Fly and guys, I noticed at the link HF has an 4 ton bottle jack at $18. Make a frame with what to be able to contain 4-8 tons pressure? I am totally mechanically challenged with no tools beyond basics. So l will buy an 6 ton A-Frame press.
luvtn

[rancher1913]

so after grinding everything separate and weighing the portions it seems as though charcoal is the main ingredient by volume, thought I was doing something wrong and reread ulrigths(spelling) website, he shows the piles of ingredients for a batch and his charcoal looks like its the main ingredient as well. hopefully I got it right.

the little electric coffee grinders work great for grinding the individual ingredients and my charcoal came out as airfloat, and the sulfur and kno3 look like powdered sugar. my wife has been picking the grinders up at thrift stores for one of her projects and had 3 to spare so I have dedicated grinders for each ingredient.

I know that ideally the ball mill should be half full of media but would 1/3 full work, I think my ball mill might be a tad big because I have cut up 3 sticks of copper and that is all the fuller I can get it with out buying more copper pipe. when you put the ingredients in what is the optimum fill level, maybe even with the top of the media?

[Fly]

First of all, are you measuring the ingredients by weight? Are you filling the copper tubing with lead? Filling with a 1/3 will work but will take much longer to grind. Finally ulrights website is not the best source of information.

Fly

[rancher1913]

yes by weight on a highly accurate electronic scale. yes filling the pipe full of linotype. and lastly I know to not take everything you read as gossipal, hence the double checking here with sources I trust.

I used the given formula weights from here, just in my mind the charcoal should have been less than the kno3, should have thought of the old which is heavier, pound of gold or pound of feathers analogy.

[Fly]

Great sounds like your getting there. Sometimes trying to communicate on a key board can be confusing.

Fly

[rancher1913]

how full can you fill the ball mill and still get good mixing, mine is about 1/2 full of media and the ingredients filled it to about 90% full. its milling now so I guess I will know in the morning.

[Nobade]

Mine is half full of media and I usually put enough powder in to cover it. Any more and it doesn't work as well.

[2grouse]

I’ve got all the ingredients for black powder, but, I seem to be lacking the balls to try it.

[rancher1913]

my powder looks nice, looks evenly mixed, kind of a grey color. a small pile straight from the mill burned very vigorously and now I have a bunch of pucks drying. hopefully in a couple of weeks I can screen it and see what I got.

a big thanks to all who have helped and kept this thread active.

[brian1]

I've read this thread, plus another related one on this site. That's a lot of info, and I'm still trying to absorb it all.

I've collected the chemicals, and I made a TLUD furnace and made a 5 gallon batch of charcoal from a big black willow tree I cut down. I think I read somewhere that small, even pieces become charcoal quicker and more evenly, so after splitting the logs into firewood-sized chunks, I ran it all through my bandsaw and made it into 1-2 cu. in. blocks. I now have several grain bags full of these little blocks. The charcoal making went quicker, easier, and smoother than I'd imagined. I've rough-crushed the charcoal in a stainless steel pail with a big steel pestle (or is that the "mortar"?)

Some questions so far. The charcoal is really light and dusty, and loves to float around. Just pouring it slowly from one bucket to another put a teaspoon or so of fine powder into the air, then onto the floor around the bucket. I've been rough hand grinding it slowly, so as to not raise dust. When the dust starts coming up out of the pail, I go do something else. Do you guys spray this at all to hold down the dust? If so, with what - water or alcohol? I'm wondering how much dust I'm going lose when I pour this into my tumbler tub to ball mill it. Seems like it needs to be dry to ball mill, but maybe not.

Which brings up my second question so far, and the reason I haven't gone any further with this. I have a Thumler's Model B Tumbler, which I got for cleaning brass with stainless steel pins (which works GREAT for that, BTW). I figured I could remove the pins and use this as my ball mill. But the tumbler has a capacity of 15 pounds, and I have read here that I need to fill the drum HALF FULL of lead balls. That seems like a lot of balls. I haven't weighed out what the drum half-full of 1/2" lead balls will weigh, but I think it's going to be a lot more than 15 pounds. Are others using the Thumler's Tumbler or similar? Do you fill it half full, or just put in 15 pounds of balls and let it go at that?

Are plain balls as good to use as the pieces of lead-filled copper pipe I've read about, or doesn't it matter? I've already got a few coffee cans of .490 balls that I probably won't shoot, so I can use some of them, or I can melt up some lead into pieces of copper pipe, whichever might work better.

And to summarize the rest of the process, as I understand it -
I mill all the charcoal into powder, then repeat with the prilled potassium nitrate (separately)
The sulfur is already pretty fine - no need to ball mill that, or should it be milled some, too? It's the "Ground Yellow Sulfur Powder, Commercial Flour, 99.5+% Pure" from Duda.

Then I weigh the ingredients at 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur and mix it together.

I'm a bit foggy as to what happens next. I just stir it up good, add a tiny bit of water (or alcohol? - I'm kinda unsure where the alcohol comes in, if at all), and compress it into pucks? No tumbling once it's mixed, right? I have a 30 ton press and I made a puck-making die on my lathe from aluminum rod. Just compress the pucks good and hard? Is there a limit to how much they should be compressed? Can they be compressed too much, and what's the downside to compressing too much (or not enough)?

Then I let the pucks dry, break them up, run the particles through sieves to grade it, and that's it, right?

I'd sure appreciate it if those of you who know more will correct any of my misconceptions or anything I've said wrong here. It's been quite an interesting learning project so far, and I thank all those who have shared their information.

[fishingsetx]

Making black powder is a dusty dirty process. Im not sure about misting the charcoal. Id be worried it would make a slimy black mess, but it might work great.

As for filling the tumber half full, it seems to me that under full workes a lot better than overfull. I had bad results with regular lead balls. You need HARD lead balls or look at cutting 1/2" copper tubing into 1" lengths and filling with lead (much cheaper than buying lead balls).

I get solid chunks of sulfur from work i crush into pieces about the size of a pin head, use stump remover (little round balls of kno3), and make my own charcoal out of cedar chips (havent found a good supply of willow yet). I just weigh the ingredients, toss them in the tumbler and let it roll for 24 hrs or so. I dont see any need to pulverize the materials to powder before milling, but there may be someone come along and prove me wrong. So far, my powder has worked well enough for me.

I then take the green mill, add a few drops of tap water (I use a lee powder dipper to try and keep it consistent), mix it up very good, press pucks, dry overnight in dehydrator, break them up, mill with coffee grinder, screen for size. I take the good stuff and toss it back into the mill without media, add a few puffs of graphite powder and tumble overnight again. One final screening and its done!

Guns have only two enemies: rust and politicians!

[Fly]

Ok lets address your charcoal first. I grind my charcoal with a hand meat grinder. I have a new one I made but I,m not
going in to that as of now. When I grind the meal powder in the ball mill all is ground together at once. The thing about
the copper lead filled tubes helps in grinding & keeps the soft lead from wearing away. Be sure to peen the tube ends to keep
the lead tight, for it will shrink when it cools & will come out. I don,t know what ton press you have but I use a 12 ton & max it out.

Get you a hand ceramic burr coffee grinder to grind your busted up pucks then sift it.

Fly

[brian1]

Thanks for the tips. My wife OKd using her old meat grinder for the charcoal. And I forgot to mention it, but I got a new hand ceramic coffee grinder for grinding the pucks, as per previous recommendations. I'll start cutting up some copper pipes for the ball mill. And then I'll mill all 3 ingredients together at once.

[Fly]

Brian grinding all 3 ingredients together at once will make a huge difference in performance.

Fly

[rancher1913]

my tumbler was rated at 15 pounds and by the time I filled it with the small pipes and ingredients it was well over that, had to help it get started and it ran for 12 hours with no problem. my wife found a bunch of electric coffee grinders at the thrift shop and they work great for pulverizing the charcoal and kno3, the sulfur was already powder. I have a grinder for each ingredient and only the same ingredient gets used in each one. fly's die held up to a 20 ton press, filled the die almost to the top and it made 3/8 inch pucks.

[brian1]

My thanks to Mr. Fly for the suggestion about the meat grinder. That old antique hand meat grinder sure made quick easy work of the charcoal. From my first 5 gallon TLUD batch, I got just under 2 pounds of fine, soft charcoal powder. Pretty messy making it, but I got it done and all the seepage vacuumed up. Now I just need to clean the s/s pins out of my tumbler and ball mill it (after I make the balls)

One other question - should the KNO3 be run through the grinder first, or just used as it came from Duda Diesel?

[rancher1913]

I run it through my grinder, comes out like powdered sugar. my thoughts are that if everything going in is already pulverized then it does not require the mill to work as hard or run as long to make good powder.

[Fly]

Ya I agree with Rancher. It will cut down on the ball milling time. Keep us posted on your progress. Sounds like your almost there.

Fly

[fishingsetx]

Picked up a 6 ton bench top press from harbor freight yesterday and put it together last night. My 8 ton homeade rig had about had it. The c-channel i used just wasnt stiff enough and was warping bad. I have a couple lbs or milled powder ready to press. I just have to find the time to try it out!

Guns have only two enemies: rust and politicians!

[Boz330]

If you use the B-tumbler the balls should work good because of the flats. With the Harbor Freight smooth tumbler the copper tubes filled with lead work better. I had trouble with the balls pushing the meal to the ends and caking there and not grinding properly. No problem with the tubes doing that.
I have a B-tumbler but normally I don't make batches big enough to make that feasible. Like several of the other guys I use a meat grinder for the CC and it isn't near as messy. For measuring I use a spoon and dump it carefully so it doesn't make a lot of dust.
Like many things there are more than one way to do it and they can all be right, just pick what works for you.


Bob