My homemade black powder

[BPJake]

printedboolits that looks top shelf. You sound like me, I'm just getting started too and did the whole watching all Jake's vids and gathering stuff and trashpicking treadmills and whatnot. I see all your efforts are paying off as well. I've never seen brown charcoal that was actually brown like that (I haven't seen a lot period tbh). I'm ready to try cooking some alder as soon as I get a day without wind, hopefully I'll get some brown in mine as well. That kiln is sweet, love to have one of those.

[printedboolits]

printedboolits that looks top shelf. You sound like me, I'm just getting started too and did the whole watching all Jake's vids and gathering stuff and trashpicking treadmills and whatnot. I see all your efforts are paying off as well. I've never seen brown charcoal that was actually brown like that (I haven't seen a lot period tbh). I'm ready to try cooking some alder as soon as I get a day without wind, hopefully I'll get some brown in mine as well. That kiln is sweet, love to have one of those.

The kiln was free. The PID controller was not, but I already had it on hand for controlling my lead casting pot.

Might check out local pottery or stained glass clubs. My kiln came from somebody retiring from the hobby. The controller that came with it was fried - but that's no big deal. The modern PID controller does a way better job than the old school ones.

[HamGunner]

Going into this, the only things that weren't really clear were the charcoal color, and whether or not I milled things long enough. I went for 72 hours as I wasn't sure if the volume I was making (1000 grams or 2.2lbs) would slow the process way down. Don't see much info here about batches much above 200 grams.

From the pictures, the color of your TP charcoal looks really good. With TP, it seems that a slow and steady temperature is needed to get it all done through and through. Looks like your set up tailed it.

Mill times are certainly not a universal number as we are using so many different types of mills. My mill time seems to be about right with at least 16 hours. I ran a test a good while back comparing five different mill time batches with a chronograph and I got no better results with mill times longer than 16 hours in my mill.

It all depends upon your mill set up, the speed, size, type of media, and of course how fine your ingredients were at the start. You likely can lessen your mill time a good bit, but each mill and situation is different.

I just finished a 4 1/2 lb. batch today. I made up 3 lbs. of fresh ingredients and added 1 1/2 lbs of left over fines from my last few batches. All done except for polishing and screening for the final time. Will get that done tomorrow.

I have a mill that is larger than most. It is about like the 15-17 lb. Thumblers Tumbler set up only I have a 1/4 hp continuous duty motor. I actually do have their mill tub. It supposedly has a 15 lb. capacity and is hexagon shaped. I think the shape helps speed up the mill time. I milled this batch for 17 1/2 hours with 7 lbs. of Linotype 12 ga. ball and about 5 lbs. of 1/2" brass ball.

I ground and screened my pucks right after I finished compressing the pucks and they still had a little moisture of course. Had a bit of dust while screening, so the moisture was slight. I ended up with 1 1/4 lb. of fines out of the 4 1/2 lb. batch that I will toss into my next batch.

[printedboolits]

Mill times are certainly not a universal number as we are using so many different types of mills. My mill time seems to be about right with at least 16 hours. I ran a test a good while back comparing five different mill time batches with a chronograph and I got no better results with mill times longer than 16 hours in my mill.

It all depends upon your mill set up, the speed, size, type of media, and of course how fine your ingredients were at the start. You likely can lessen your mill time a good bit, but each mill and situation is different.

I just finished a 4 1/2 lb. batch today. I made up 3 lbs. of fresh ingredients and added 1 1/2 lbs of left over fines from my last few batches. All done except for polishing and screening for the final time. Will get that done tomorrow.

I have a mill that is larger than most. It is about like the 15-17 lb. Thumblers Tumbler set up only I have a 1/4 hp continuous duty motor. I actually do have their mill tub. It supposedly has a 15 lb. capacity and is hexagon shaped. I think the shape helps speed up the mill time. I milled this batch for 17 1/2 hours with 7 lbs. of Linotype 12 ga. ball and about 5 lbs. of 1/2" brass ball.

Sounds like we're using basically the same milling tub. Think the Thumblers and Rebel 17 are the same. Or at least the rubber liners are interchangeable. I am likely way overmilling things if we're running at a similar speed and media amount. Might look at reducing times in the future. For now, 3 days isn't a big deal, especially for big batches. Can't shoot that much powder in 3 days. Might try a slightly bigger batch next time though. If I can fit any more in the can. My charcoal was so fluffy that it takes up a ton of space.

I ground and screened my pucks right after I finished compressing the pucks and they still had a little moisture of course. Had a bit of dust while screening, so the moisture was slight. I ended up with 1 1/4 lb. of fines out of the 4 1/2 lb. batch that I will toss into my next batch.

How many sizes are you keeping? For the 120 gram batch I ground, about half ended up as fines. The only thing I kept was 3F however. The 1F and 2F I kept grinding down until it was 3F, and I didn't bother with separating anything smaller than 3F.

I think when I grind the rest of this current batch, I'll only keep the 3F and 2F.

[HamGunner]

For this batch, I only kept 3F size <20 - >40 mesh. Several of us have been grinding fairly coarse and screening for a couple of screenings before tightening up the grinder a bit. More grinding and screening seems to reduce the fines at the end. I think I ground and screened about ten times. At times, I have ended up with only about 20 % fines, but I think I was in a hurry and likely had a bit more than that. I guess it calculated out to about 28 % fines this batch.

I use a hand crank grain grinder.

[printedboolits]

For this batch, I only kept 3F size <20 - >40 mesh. Several of us have been grinding fairly coarse and screening for a couple of screenings before tightening up the grinder a bit. More grinding and screening seems to reduce the fines at the end. I think I ground and screened about ten times. At times, I have ended up with only about 20 % fines, but I think I was in a hurry this time and likely had a bit more than that. I guess it calculated out to about 28 % this batch.

I use a hand crank grain grinder.

I started out coarse and worked my way down. Didn't count how many times I went through, but it was probably around 10. Sounds like were using different mesh sized though - I was using 30-50 for 3F. Maybe going to that size just makes things more difficult.

Could also be me using very little water - probably not quite enough. I added only 2%, and it was quite hard to mix that in evenly. I added water with a squirt bottle. Got a mister coming, and I think that'l make things easier.

[greyhawk]

I started out coarse and worked my way down. Didn't count how many times I went through, but it was probably around 10. Sounds like were using different mesh sized though - I was using 30-50 for 3F. Maybe going to that size just makes things more difficult.

Could also be me using very little water - probably not quite enough. I added only 2%, and it was quite hard to mix that in evenly. I added water with a squirt bottle. Got a mister coming, and I think that'l make things easier.

moisturising ----I use a little pump sprayer bottle on the finest mist setting but even then its really hard to get it even without going too wet ..I fixed that by forming the meal into balls by hand then grating the balls back through a 16 mesh screen - mix again before pressing - this dont take very long and you get a real even incorportation mix.

[printedboolits]

moisturising ----I use a little pump sprayer bottle on the finest mist setting but even then its really hard to get it even without going too wet ..I fixed that by forming the meal into balls by hand then grating the balls back through a 16 mesh screen - mix again before pressing - this dont take very long and you get a real even incorportation mix.

Hopefully I can avoid doing that. If you've got enough water in stuff to form balls, then you're certainly going to be growing nitrate crystals larger that they are in milled form. Dunno if that's enough to matter or not, but I'd like to avoid it if possible.

[BPJake]

Envious of you guys mammoth tools. Hmm, that didn't sound good at all, what I meant was I sure would like to be able to mill 5lb at a shot lol.

When mine comes from the mill I send it thru a 16 mesh dry, that puts it right to be dampened, then I use a whisk to stir it in like cake flour.

Today trying the turkey fryer for charcoal. This is the first time I've used a thermocouple and so far I've noticed how it just hovers around 100c inside the can as the moisture boils off. Wish me luck for the brown gold.

20250912_135451 (Large).jpg