Garden sulfur for BP

[lead chucker]

I ordered some garden sulfur for making black powder and was going to purify it. It says it 90 percent pure. Will it work or did i waste money? I have always purchased good quality sulfur but its getting more and more expensive so i thought i would experiment. I have been corning my gun meal and it makes really good powder. Better than some store bought stuff, well faster any way. I figured if i can purify it, it should be good. Any thoughts.

[lavenatti]

Just use 11% instead of 10% (75-15-10) to keep the ratio of sulfur in the mix correct. Doubt you'll notice any difference.

Purifying it would be a lot of work.

[trapper9260]

I just came on this and never though of it being that much different for what the OP stated . Thanks lavenatti for clearing it up.

[William Yanda]

What are the impurities in the 12%?

[Trapper-Jack]

I've been using 10% of the garden sulfur in my powder and it's been working fine. My sulfur is only 90% pure.

[ofitg]

I would worry about purifying garden sulfur if I was making primers/percussion caps. See post #544 in this thread -

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...ghlight=bonide

For making black powder, the small amount of impurities (aluminum silicate?) does not seem to make a noticeable difference.

[LAGS]

I use to use garden sulfur when I first started making my own BP.
I took the Garden Sulfur and put it in water for a few hours.
I would stir it up every once in a while.
Then let it sit in the water overnight.
The Sulfur settled to the bottom of the container.
I then carefully drained off the water and let the sulfur dry out for a day.
The biggest impurity in the sulfur when I bought it was a Clay to keep the sulfur from clumping.
Sulfur is not water soluble.
The clay is , so it will separate.
This process probably didn't make the sulfur true 100% pure.
But at least it helped a little bit for doing lots of work.
One other thing.
When soaking the sulfur , use a glass container.

[lead chucker]

Thats how i was going to try to clean up the sulfur. I glad other people have used it and it worked. I will try a test batch and see how it goes once i get it. Thanks for the replies.

[dondiego]

Sulfur is one of the cheapest and most available of the components of the powder. Why not buy the good stuff?

[LAGS]

I agree that Sulfur is cheap and available.
But for people who are just getting started , buying something that they can find locally and maybe even cheaper is a good start.
As I got satisfied with my work , and thought about doing even better powder , I opted for the higher quality stuff and ordered it on line , and in Larger quantities.
That pertained to the KN03 also.
When I started out.
I used Stump Remover for my KN03.
I also boiled it and recrystallized it to purify it.
Now I buy Top Quality stuff in bulk orders.
But when I started out.
The off brand stuff was a good investment in case I might not wanted to continue making large quantities of powder in the future.

[Tracy]

I would just use it and not worry about it. Sulfur is the least important component anyway; in fact it's not even required except in the priming charge for a flinter.
I certainly wouldn't increase the percentage because that would decrease the percentage of the more important components.

[Trapper-Jack]

I've used the 88 - 90% garden sulfur in my powder. Used it at 10% of the powder mix and it works fine in our flintlock priming and main charge powder.

[indian joe]

What are the impurities in the 12%?

I think its bentonite clay ? maybe not, - the 90% stuff I saw was some kind of brand fungicide -- I guess 1% clay in the mix dont make much difference - but I'll pass for now
We can still get 99% pure yellow sulphur in the garden store

[lead chucker]

Im going to try to clean it up and get some of the impurities out of it. Doesnt seem like that much work. put some in a jar with distilled water and shake it up let it set for a day pour off the water and maybe do it again and let it dry. Seems like a hurry up and wait project. Then i will do a small test and see how it works.

[ofitg]

I think its bentonite clay ?

Some labels might call it Kaolinite, some labels don't specify at all. Bentonite Clay and Kaolinite are naturally-occurring forms of Aluminum Silicate.

[GregLaROCHE]

This is the first time I’ve heard of garden sulphur. What is in used for in a garden?

[lead chucker]

keeps the bugs off your plants i guess so they do better.

[Dark Vaj]

I ordered some garden sulfur for making black powder and was going to purify it. It says it 90 percent pure. Will it work or did i waste money? I have always purchased good quality sulfur but its getting more and more expensive so i thought i would experiment. I have been corning my gun meal and it makes really good powder. Better than some store bought stuff, well faster any way. I figured if i can purify it, it should be good. Any thoughts.

If you really want to purify it, you would first need to know what the other 10% substance is, once you know, figure out a way to recrystallize sulfur without dissolving the unknown 10%. Hopefully sulfur will recrystallize first before the unknown substance does.

[MostlyLeverGuns]

Garden sulfur - used to make soils more acid. Alkaline soils tie up iron, other nutrients, also part of photosynthesis, necessary for chlorophyll, synthesizing sugars, starches, metabolizing nitrogen.

[LAGS]

Funny thing is that I also put left over charcoal and ash in my garden to help the soil.
I will have to check and see if any of the other chemicals I put in the garden contain KN03.