My homemade black powder

[Trapper-Jack]

I've tried dropping the sulfur and with the sulfur I'm using (90%), if I went below the 10% I started getting hang fires and miss fires out of my flintlock. If I were to use it in one of my cap guns it may work fine.

[LAGS]

You have a point about the ignition on a flinter.
But you may just make your 4f with higher sulfur ratio.
Or try cleaning that 90% sulfur , and make it closer to 100%
You can do that by just soaking that Sulfur in water and then let it dry again.

[dtknowles]

You have a point about the ignition on a flinter.
But you may just make your 4f with higher sulfur ratio.

You said it but then again you did not. If one wanted a very sensitive powder for the pan on a flinter what would be the suggestion? We know the traditional ratio works well so why mess with it but then again that never stopped nobody here. Maybe up the sulfur a little or maybe don't even granulate, use meal. Maybe add a sensitizer like in other priming compounds, maybe user flash powder. Could that be dangerous?
Tim

[Trapper-Jack]

We went to a muzzleloader shoot this weekend. A friend of ours took this picture at just the right time. The pan powder seems to be quite sensitive.

[LAGS]

From what I have found,
The granulated powder or even just screened powder ignites way better than Green powder right out of the mill.
I just save the fine granulations for my 4f.
1% higher on the sulfur and .5 % less on the Kno3 and charcoal Ignights Easier , but not super hot like flash powder.

[Vettepilot]

Yes, fine granulated powder lights off better than meal.

Vettepilot

[DoubleBuck]

I don't have any flinters but when screening my last re-puck fines, I was looking at them, after screening with a 60 screen, just to see what they looked like. The grain structure was great and the high density from being pressed, broken down and repressed (twice, actually) looked to me like it would work in the pan. Now, I'm itching for a flint rifle. I did burn some on the burn rate tester, just playing around; and they were fast.

[HamGunner]

I have a use for 4FG in my flintlock, so I have always tried to keep a bit of that size after screening, but I do not have a small enough screen to screen out the dust properly. I had always gone outside and over a tarp spread out, I let the wind separate the dust from the heavier fines and the dust is captured by the tarp for use in my next batch of powder.

Once I started polishing my screened powder a bit, I found that I would be able to screen it again after polishing and the screenings were 4FG size with virtually no dust at all, so that is how I have been collecting my 4FG. If I needed more of this size, I would just get myself a much finer screen I suppose, but for now, I am collecting enough for my use.

Dust does not burn fast and is more like green meal right out of the mill, but the tiny fragments that are about 4FG size do burn very nicely in my pan. I suppose if a person wanted to make almost all of their powder into 4F size, then adding extra Sulfur in the formula might surely give a much easier ignition to their pan powder.

[LAGS]

I kinda did that with some of my left over Dust.
I just weighed the dust and added a little more Sulfur to it.
It seemed to work well for just ignition.
After I added the extra sulfur , I just tumbled them together to mix the sulfur in better.
I do have a 60 and 100 screen to use if I would dampen that mixed dust and ran it thru that fine screen again.
But I really didn’t think that would be needed just for smaller amounts of priming powder.

[Vettepilot]

I, as well as some others here, have been watching YouTube videos made by Jake at the "Everything Black Powder" channel. Entertaining character and interesting vids. Like us, he makes his own BP, and is a prolific experimenter. He has an idiosyncrasy in that he insists on only using the same powder in the pan that he loads with. Unless there's some other problem, he gets consistent ignition doing so.

Worth a try? Of course, collecting and using our fines is easy and effective too...

Vettepilot