Black powder DOES NOT "detonate"

[Jason313]

Ok, calling on those old timers who know the science of BP, check my logic here and tell me if im missing something or am i hitting the mark I keep reading all over the different black powder boards everyone saying that "subs combust, BP detonates" first off, neither one detonates, from the Latin for "thunder down" detonation involves a supersonic blast wave and was not discovered by human beings until 1880. Both BP and subs deflagrate they don't detonate, not when they are loose and and also not when they are contained.
Detonation is only seen in high explosives, it is what defines a high explosive from a conventional one. Black powder is legally classed as an explosive because before tnt it was the primary medium for construction and demolition blasting, so it was classed as explosive based on it's use, not it's nature. Likewise dex was patented to propel projectiles therefore it is propellant. I think people try to make sense of the law treating BP and subs differently by surmising that subs deflagrate and BP detonates. This is also probably fed by the fact that BP does in fact tend to whoosh! away very quickly when burned in a loose pile, compared with pyrodex, which gives a seemingly slower but hotter appearing burn, but that whoosh is not a supersonic expansion, and any sub sonic expansion is by definition deflagration and or explosion NOT detonation, and without some type of minimal containment even explosion is not going to happen. Final point- making any type of scientific claim based on how fast and how bright the powders APEAR to burn, in a environment completely different than the one inside your gun, is at very very best psuedo-science and that is being generous.
Ok, I can't wait to see the feedback-
I like that I don't find people on this board being nasty to each other, or making us noobs feel stupid when we don't know obvious things (obvious being relative)
Thanks all for that.

 

[JeffG]

Black powder is an explosive, but it rarely detonates, even with hard impact. The velocity of blackpowder explosion is low boom. dynamite and up is considered high boom. The type and weight/density of the impedance of the explosion leaving the original ignition site (cannon ball, paper wad, wood plug, pipe bomb) is what causes the nature of the sound signature and the appearance of flame or flash. A lot of BP substitutes have a sugar based fuel, and consume oxygen at a different rate.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

CORRECT
In 1863 Alfred Nobel (same guy as "Nobel Prize" including for "peace"..., ironic eh, ..ooops back to topic)..., Nobel successfully detonated Nitroglycerin with his invention of a blasting cap. Then, to increase safety for the handlers, he experimented with the nitro, ceventually combined with an inert substance, and came up with dynamite, patented in 1867. This was the first "High Explosive"..., the term used to show it's difference between the only other explosive, gunpowder, which was then the "low explosive" most commonly used, and now called Black Powder. It was after more than a decade that folks looked into the differences between the "low explosives" and the "high explosive" and started making the scientific distinctions about "detonation" and "deflagration" and just plain "flammability". Which is why, when using correct terminology, black powder never detonates.

LD

 

[Tommygunn]

It's a low grade explosive. All explosives have a characteristic called "Brisance" which has to do with their shattering characteristics, as well as other characteristics that determine the rapidity of the explosion and how large of an explosion is caused per volume-unit of explosive.
Black powder is centuries old and in terms of power has been eclipsed by many other types such as Composition 4 ..... other chemical explosives, to say nothing about nuclear bombs.
But it does have an explosive nature.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Well Pyrodex is pretty close to black powder with potassium nitrate (ionic salt) potassium perchlorate (inorganic salt), sulfur and charcoal, with the sulfur at 8%, which is around 1/2 the amount of sulfur in regular Black Powder. Which is why Pyrodex is corrosive, at a level similar to BP.
Triple 7 has a base of pyrodex, but removes the sulfur, and adds sodium benzoate (a sodium salt), dicyaniamide, and dextrin (10%), so only 10% of that is a "sugar".

LD

 

[JeffG]

It's a low grade explosive. All explosives have a characteristic called "Brisance"

THAT'S the term I was searching for. It was the demarcation that helped EOD personnel understand explosion velocity, and it's effect on building materials other than just for example, calling Semtex "C4's ugly little sister".

 

[labnoti]

I found it interesting that historically, it was black powder that was used in mining and tunneling for the railroads. Dynamite generally was not. I'm generalizing here, but when we think of old-school, 19th century hard-rock mining, what they were using was black powder. And of course, earlier that's all they used. Nitroglycerin was far more effective, but very accident prone both in mining and in transport to the mines, storage, as well as manufacture and so it was scorned. Dynamite is often lauded as a wonderful invention that made nitroglycerin safe, but the patent-right holders at Giant were too greedy for it to be used much. So miners kept on going with black powder. Giant's later rival Hercules, acquired by DuPont, was also monopolistic. Both Giant and Hercules suffered multiple accidents and generally failed to deliver the revolution that nitroglycerin-based products promised. As a result, most underground hard-rock mining in the US was done with black powder through the end of its prevalence. In the 20th century, "big dynamite" (DuPont) was broken up by the Federal government, but for mining, it was largely replaced by open-pit mining with ANFO and heavy equipment.

I assert that dynamite was more or less economically useless in US history, and that it was black powder that did the work through the 19th century. Where dynamite probably was very significant to mining was in South Africa, but that's another story. High explosives were, of course, significant elsewhere than in mining, such as in demolition and warfare during the 20th century, but those roles were probably filled primarily by TNT, PETN, RDX and C4.

So whether black powder detonates or just deflagrates, it sure blew up a lot of rock.

 

[whughett]

Yep, like in a big detonations called explosions, with smoke and fire.
And then this from Wikipedia: Detonation is a type of combustion involving a supersonic exothermic front accelerating through a medium that eventual drives a shock front propagating directly if front of it.

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

How many people really care what the basis of a black powder shot is called? I know that I don't, but then I do enjoy the result even if I am ignorant of the technical definitions of the process.

 

[damoc]

This is an interesting read and I think helps to paint the picture of the limitations of black powder.

https://railroad.lindahall.org/essays/black-powder.html

Just my quick summary BP does not realy detonate and blast the rock to pieces as in a high brisance high explosive but rather
just allowed the splitting apart of rock by the pressure it could generate inside that rock.Even then to make it work took much
more setup than later nitroglycerin and then dynamite.

 

[whughett]

Not to mention millions of stumps blasted skyward as out pioneering ancestors cleared millions of acres of farmland. Some homesteaders still do it.

Monday, time to go create some exothermic front driving little lead balls at those nasty paper targets. Think I'll use the 51 Navy and the Spiller and Burr this fine New England morning.