Manufacturing Black Powder

Discussion on reloading the 9x18 and any other cartridge
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juniustaylor
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Manufacturing Black Powder

Post by juniustaylor »

Has anyone on here tried to make the stuff. I am thinking about giving it a go this summer on some weekend. I bought a digital scale the other day. All I have left to do is buy the saltpeter, charcoal, and sulphur. Supposedly you can leave the sulphur out and it will be less corrosive but may be harder to ignite. I still need to acquire a ball mill (rock tumbler) as well.

Anyway, anyone that has some experience in this, I'm willing to listen.

I'm a bit dangerous at times I guess, however, I think I will make a homemade muzzleloading gun. It will be made with plumbing pipe and an end cap. So, it'll be smoothbore. I guess I always wanted a shotgun muzzleloader. I haven't decided on the diameter, but something with about a 0.5" inner diameter should be just fine. It'd be like a .410 shotgun. This gun would allow the the ability to test out my different blackpowder variations without using my nice rifles as test beds. I don't plan to only use the traditional materials. I may even use the saltpeter (KNO3) with powdered sugar like some folks use in science rockets for the motors. They will probably look like those IMR White-Hots for muzzleloaders.

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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

Post by normsutton »

juniustaylor

when I was a kid , we used to mix half and half of potassium nitrate with sugar and make flares out of it , it doesn't work as gun powder they already tried that,(it was tried in the war for independence we didn't have a lot of sulfur deposits but we had sugar cane) it was called white powder its more corrosive and the fouling is even more the BP


pluming pipe is not strong enough to hold the pressure

the making of BP , is very complex, it has to be mix right , it has to be boiled down into mud patties , then dried, then ground down , then screen for grain size, this all has to done with no sparks, or you could blow yourself up


BAD IDEA

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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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normsutton wrote:juniustaylor

when I was a kid , we used to mix half and half of potassium nitrate with sugar and make flares out of it , it doesn't work as gun powder they already tried that,(it was tried in the war for independence we didn't have a lot of sulfur deposits but we had sugar cane) it was called white powder its more corrosive and the fouling is even more the BP


pluming pipe is not strong enough to hold the pressure

the making of BP , is very complex, it has to be mix right , it has to be boiled down into mud patties , then dried, then ground down , then screen for grain size, this all has to done with no sparks, or you could blow yourself up


BAD IDEA

NORM
I'll take your caution into consideration. So far I have read several different publications and references and they all seem to make it out to be relatively simple and actually safe. The static thing has been debunked. A shock from your finger should not set it off, nor should most any other shock for that matter. It is supposedly ignited by heat. So, there'd have to be some fragments of metal in the mixture, mixed with an electric shock to produce enough heat in the metal particles to cause it to poof. However, that's only what I've read, I haven't experimented with it myself.

The actual process seems straightforward. You need a ball mill and you put all the ingredients in their proper ratio into the ball mill which is already filled half full with lead balls. These are the media that grind the ingredients together + prevent the static electricity. Once all the stuff is pulverized together, you sift it out from the lead balls. You moisten the powder with a water + 10% alcohol solution until it is in a clay like format, you don't want it sloppy. The "boiling down" part is where it gets dangerous, that's why you don't do it that way. You then grate it on a piece of screen to get it to roughly the correct size. For someone that is picky they can actually corn it using different sized screens. However, for general use, the first method I mentioned seems to be sufficient. From there you let it set and air out for about 14 - 16 hours and bottle it up.

I'll do some more research on this subject. I still don't understand why the KNO3 and powdered sugar would not work. It is used by science folks when making rockets for projects. It seems to be a propellant if it can launch it several hundred yards in the air. How did you mix the two together? You're supposed to heat it in an electric pot until the KNO3 and powdered sugar actually melt together. From there you can pour it into a cylindrical mold and it cools and hardens in about 3 minutes.

Thanks for the info Norm.
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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juniustaylor

I was 10 or 11 years old when I made the stuff, me an 3 other kids went down to the drug store and bought a 16 oz bottle of salt peter ( potassium nitrate ) for 2 dollars 2 cents tax if I remember right it took 50 cents from each of us for to buy it ,my allowance was 75 cents a week back then I think sugar was 25 cents a pound we had to wait a week to buy the sugar


I shoot fink lock rifles and a spark will set BP off , as a propellant sugar and potassium nitrate would be good in a rocket but not in the barrel of a gun

the reason they used to sell in drug stores salt peter is a laxative for farm animals a tea spoon per cow , a pinch for a human


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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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normsutton wrote:juniustaylor

I was 10 or 11 years old when I made the stuff, me an 3 other kids went down to the drug store and bought a 16 oz bottle of salt peter ( potassium nitrate ) for 2 dollars 2 cents tax if I remember right it took 50 cents from each of us for to buy it ,my allowance was 75 cents a week back then I think sugar was 25 cents a pound we had to wait a week to buy the sugar


I shoot fink lock rifles and a spark will set BP off , as a propellant sugar and potassium nitrate would be good in a rocket but not in the barrel of a gun

the reason they used to sell in drug stores salt peter is a laxative for farm animals a tea spoon per cow , a pinch for a human


NORM
I haven't experimented with real black powder, I've only messed with Pyrodex RS and Triple 7 in my muzzleloaders -- I have 4 rifles and 2 revolvers. (Cabela's Hawken I assembled as a kit, Thompson Center Hawken, CVA Buckhorn in-line, Traditions .45LD in-line, Pietta '51 Navy .44, & Pietta '58 Rem .36). I have tried American Pioneer powder as well, it's garbage.

Here's some experimentation with electricity and black powder - http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/ctml_exp ... parks.html Nice photos - looks interesting. Static electricity or any other electricity is one thing. A jolt from lightning or a hot spark from a cap/flint is another.
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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juniustaylor

try the real thing,


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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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I'll eventually get around to getting a pound of it to try. I am always looking for something new to try and make myself. I'll definitely eventually make black powder, it won't be in the near future, but I'll get there. I'm just looking for answers from folks that have made it successfully or unsuccessfully and what went wrong. I may not find those answers here though.
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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When we were pre-teens we made it out of sulfer, salt peter and charcoal. We didn't know the exact measurements so the results were never very spectacular. That was the summer we all started to notice the cute little blond girl around the corner and our interest in explosives waned rapidly.
Probably a good thing, I still have all of my fingers.
G.R.
Last edited by gunneyrabbit on April 5th, 2010, 10:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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G.R.

and that's when all the trouble began, (LOL)

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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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Amen Brother!
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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Yeah my Pop was a custom black powder rifle maker in VT. I remember the day when he came in from the shop and was visibly shaken by some news that his friend, a cannon maker in CT had given him. He said that one of the owners of pyrodex and his assistant were killed when one of their new formulas went off accidently.

The cannonmaker had one of his cannons explode when the users were mixing black powder with regular rifle powder (made much more smoke) but is highly unstable. The lady standing 30 feet away got hit by a piece of the cannon. Now Mr. Cook had been making cannons for about 30 years. He put a stainless steel sleeve in the rear and sides of the back housing of each cannon. In one piece. Then had the foundary cast the cannon around than sleeve. In all his years of use, none of his cannons ever had come apart like the one mentioned above.

As Pop was a metalurgist he proved that regular blackpowder could not have blown that cannon apart. He took a 14 inch cut down muzzloading barrel, threaded both ends, drilled one hole for a fuse and packed the inside of the 14 inch long barrel with regular balckpowder like what Mr. Cook advised all customers to only use in his cannons, then screwed in the bore plugs on each end of the short barrel. He clamped it into a vise outside, and upon lighting the black power burned out of the fuse hole.

So if the users had been doing the correct instructions then no one would have been hurt. This was documented by video tape and played for the court. Pop realized that a 14 inch piece of barrel is not the same diameter and the powder load in the cannon chamber was alot bigger, it was to prove that if regular black powder was utilized the burnout would have left the muzzle of the cannon, not blowing the back and sides off the cannon as done. Safety is better to be folowed than forgotten.

Advise is like a wild rattlesnakes tail, if heeded there is usually no problems or bites,
If not then there is always bloodshed. 8) Sgt P.
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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Ulrich Bretscher's Black Powder Page

http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/bp_menu.html

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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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Interesting website, thanks for posting that Norm. I have bookmarked it for future reference. Not exactly sure when / if I'll ever get to it though. :|
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Re: Manufacturing Black Powder

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Jun

just don't blow your self up


this is a video of me testing the lock on a Brown Bess that I just built, the powder charge is about half of a 9x18 shell casing



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these are still shots
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