My homemade Golden powder!

[2TM101]

It's interesting to know that this Black MZ is exactly the crimson powder. We've already said here that if it's not cooked completely, the powder becomes weak. When all the water evaporates and the temperature increases, a reaction occurs that creates the crimson powder. If you want to make a larger quantity, buy a larger pan. Watching the Everything Black Powder channel, Jack is making Black Power using 5% ammonium nitrate and is having good results... that's a good tip. Maybe using 5 or 10% ammonium nitrate in the crimson powder formula would improve its performance even more. I would do the test if I had ammonium nitrate available. If anyone has it, please do the test and share it with us, the information will be very welcome.

I did get some Alliant Black MZ and while its the same composition as what I make, there is a significant difference in power. I can see no difference between the patent and what I am doing, but it does not specify cook times.

The stuff I'm making is a dull reddish brown. I had assumed Alliant was actually adding some sort of coloring to make it look like black powder. If when I actually thoroughly cook this stuff it comes out looking black I will be sufficiently humiliated.

[HamGunner]

I am still sitting in the bleachers and observing.

Well, actually in the shade today with the temperature up well over 90 and fairly high humidity.

[2TM101]

I am still sitting in the bleachers and observing. Well, actually in the shade today with the temperature up well over 90 and fairly high humidity.

I was originally hesitant to cook the stuff as long as you are apparently supposed to but today I could not get the crimson powder in my .45 Caplock pistol to even go off. It would seem cooking it to the consistency of ground beef is not actually an issue, Crimson has a rather high flash point and is a lot safer to make than I once thought. Biggest risk is probbly getting burned on the cookware. Best advice I would give to anyone attempting this is start with your pan less than 15% full. It expands a LOT as you cook it and I had to stop when it started to boil over - resulting in my having a lot of powder only good for duplex rounds. Once the bubbles all break the volume goes back down.

Even my undercooked stuff has a use. Factory second primer + 2.7 grains of SB-620 + 1CC of lets call it failed Crimson + card wad cut from Rice Krispies box + "grease cookie" from basically pan lube + a 75 grain OOO Buckshot < 5 cents. Time consuming but fun (I think) to make, and produce about 950 FPS. Same thing in a .357 case with 1.2cc goes about 1100 and is actually hitting the limit for a plain lead round ball (I use Lyman #1 for these) And I think worth it as they shoot clean as smokeless rounds.

[Sandro_ventania]

I was originally hesitant to cook the stuff as long as you are apparently supposed to but today I could not get the crimson powder in my .45 Caplock pistol to even go off. It would seem cooking it to the consistency of ground beef is not actually an issue, Crimson has a rather high flash point and is a lot safer to make than I once thought. Biggest risk is probbly getting burned on the cookware. Best advice I would give to anyone attempting this is start with your pan less than 15% full. It expands a LOT as you cook it and I had to stop when it started to boil over - resulting in my having a lot of powder only good for duplex rounds. Once the bubbles all break the volume goes back down.

Even my undercooked stuff has a use. Factory second primer + 2.7 grains of SB-620 + 1CC of lets call it failed Crimson + card wad cut from Rice Krispies box + "grease cookie" from basically pan lube + a 75 grain OOO Buckshot < 5 cents. Time consuming but fun (I think) to make, and produce about 950 FPS. Same thing in a .357 case with 1.2cc goes about 1100 and is actually hitting the limit for a plain lead round ball (I use Lyman #1 for these) And I think worth it as they shoot clean as smokeless rounds.

I still suspect that there is something wrong... maybe there are too many impurities in your ingredients (baking soda, maybe?), because here, the bubble phase doesn't happen, or maybe you are using too much water... I really don't know. Another thing... the iron oxide I use is black iron oxide. Someone here said that using red iron oxide is not good. Congratulations on your experiments!

[2TM101]

I still suspect that there is something wrong... maybe you are using too much water.

After a lot of research I found that it IS moisture. 4% moisture in this stuff burns at half the rate of 1%. And once the stuff has hardened into a solid form you cannot get the moisture out of it, not with a dehydrator, not with a vaumn chamber, nothing. You HAVE to cook the moisture out or what you get is half strength powder.

As far as I can determine there is no chemical reaction happening at the end of the cooking process. The color change you see is actually the last of the moisture cooking out of it. But thats the important step in this. You don't get the moisture out when you cook it there is no way to fix it later, its sealed in.

So what I have is a lot of "Factory Second" powder I can't fix, so I'm using it up in Duplex rounds. By itself its too low powered and too difficult to ignite, but at least I CAN use it.

[Sandro_ventania]

I can't wait for you to try a well-made batch! I believe you can re-cook that bad batch, put it in the pot and add water and start the process over. Even if you think it's not worth it, but testing and finding out that it is possible to re-cook to recover a poorly made batch is good. Your research makes perfect sense, humidity must mess everything up!

[2TM101]

I just read the Pinnacle / APP / Black MZ Patent and it was a serious wake up. That stuff is made the same way black powder is - just with the Crimson Powder formula!

You mix together the ingredients just like BP, ball mill them just like BP (Though 2 hours instead of 2 days!) puck and corn them the same way, only use vegetable starch instead of water as a binder. More dense and completely solved the moisture problem.

There is no chemical difference between our Crimson and Pinnnacle / Black MZ. American Pioneer Powder (APP) uses yellow instead of red/black iron oxide and so has a different color. The catalyst is FEO(OH) instead of FE2O3 or FE3O4. Red & Black oxide being essentially the same in our case.

[HamGunner]

I just read the Pinnacle / APP / Black MZ Patent and it was a serious wake up. That stuff is made the same way black powder is - just with the Crimson Powder formula!

That is the way I made my last batches of Crimson with the Iron Oxide and the one with Manganese Dioxide that had the (Gray) color. I still have a few small medicine bottles of the stuff and checked it a few weeks ago and it was still plenty dry and no moisture seems to have been absorbed. At least it is certainly not caking up or anything.

The only one that I have cooked on the stove was the Golden and it seems to be fairly dry still. I keep all my powders in my climate controlled basement hobby room, but apparently the medicine bottles are fairly air tight anyway. My Potassium Nitrate finds a way to absorb moisture though, so there must be something to be said about the corning of the alternate powders to help prevent moisture absorption.