Making blackpowder.

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I was curious so I took a big pinch of my BP just now and put in on a scrap of aluminum foil, folded up the edges but didn't crimp them, and tossed it in the fireplace. It made a very satisfying POOF. I think it's gonna work OK for .45 and .38 cartridges, but even if it doesn't it should be useful for making rocket engines.
 
I intend to. But if it doesn't work satisfactorily, we won't know if it's the low grade S or the low grade KNO3. (or maybe even the charcoal) This is my first batch; I've got a lot of book knowledge but not a lot of practical experience yet :) But I'll get there.
 
I think the 10% impurity in the dusting sulfur is clay and other silicates. Maybe it's ok, maybe not. That's just more material that isn't part of the reaction and leaves fouling and dirt.
It's a one time expense to buy your chems and can work out to about $3 to 4 a pound for you finished BP.
 
I think the 10% impurity in the dusting sulfur is clay and other silicates. Maybe it's ok, maybe not. That's just more material that isn't part of the reaction and leaves fouling and dirt.
It's a one time expense to buy your chems and can work out to about $3 to 4 a pound for you finished BP.
Click to expand...

Oh, I understand and agree with that. But I had the dusting sulfur and the stump remover already, and it is doing a fine job for a "proof of concept" batch of powder. I think the 10% impurity is probably insignificant because S only makes up 10% of the mix, so it's only 1% impurity in the final product -- and the sulfur is the least important ingredient. The limit with my ingredients is probably gonna be the impurities in the stump remover. I should either purify it next time, or find a much higher-grade source of potassium nitrate.
 
When I get a bit more time, I am going to try some of these alternative formulas for BP (sulfurless BP and nitrate/sugar BP) and post the results. The goal being to create something that packs a bit more wallop. Anyone else done anything like this?
 
I suspect the nitrate/sugar gunpowder is really gonna mess up your gun with sticky residue and be hard to clean.

There's a difference beween making small arms propellant, rocket propellant... and quarry-blasting powder for that matter. Stick with the classic, make small adjustments if necessary, and work on your technique. :)
 
You are probably right, though I have a couple of 'junk' guns I use just for things like this. After wasting a bunch of time reading various post all over the Internet from experts, novices, and the companies that make it, it sounds like searching for an improved BP substitute is a bit like trying to invent a perpetual motion machine. You can't improve on what is already perfect.

Still, curiousity gets the best of me. And this sugar/KNO3 version really has me curious too, since apparently some of the substitutes use fructose, obviously a close chemical cousin to sucrose. It makes me wonder what the reasons for using carbs was? Was it to burn cleaner?

I am also curious what 'rocket fuel' it might do to the old chronograph.:D
 
sugar is very hygroscopic though, it'll make your powders clump and pull moisture from the air.
The only think I'd be interested in trying someday would be "Benzolift" . It's about 2 times more powerful than BP. It's a mix of whistle mixture ( KCLO4, Sodium Salicylate and Iron oxide ) and Black Powder. Pyros use it for lift charges, rockets, burst charges....etc. It's supposed to be very safe to deal with, and might make a good gun powder. I'd definitely want to do some tests first.
Here's a great page on BP ( I should have posted this awhile ago!! )

http://www.wichitabuggywhip.com/fireworks/blackpowder2.html
 
part i hate was saying you can get sulfur powder at any drug store. Ya right. i spent about 45 minutes in Longs Drugstore today. a much bigger drug store. looked at everybottle twice.
 
It occurs to me that if you were to perform mass-spectrometry on a sample of charcoal that had been well homogenized, you could find out the optimum proportion of KNO3 for that sample, unless not all the atoms that could react with the KNO3 were able to break the molecular bonds of the charcoal; even if that were the case, it might be easy enough to figure out from the atomic proportions in the charcoal what the composition was, with particular interest towards finding parts of the molecule(s) to rule out as reactants.

Where, you might ask, would one find a mass spectrometer? Well, I know my old high-school had one, so that's the one I would try to use. You might be forced to consult a company like LabCorp, which may or may not be worth your money.
 
I just ordered KNO3 and S from Phil. 5lb and 3lb respectively. Total with shipping, $35.73. That should make 6.57 lbs, for a price/pound of $5.34. Plus I'll have a whole lot of S left over since I'll only use 1/2 pound of it. Sure beats the $20.00/lb BassPro tried to charge me in Tulsa awhile back.
BTW, I saw pawlonia wood mentioned as a good wood for charcoal. I have a pretty good sized chunk of that.
 
I read somewhere that they used to use urine to wet the powder way back. A wine drinker's urine was prefered to a beer drinker's, in case you want to go totally traditional. I haven't read all of the posts so: Has anyone mentioned that they called the wetting/making granules process "corning?"

BTW, this is a great thread.
 
zxcvbob, why not let us all know how the low grade 'garden store' sulfur works out (in addition to PMing scrat).
Click to expand...

I loaded six .45 Colt cartridges with about 27 grains of my powder (stump remover, garden sulfur, and cedar charcoal) and a 230 grain bullet. I could have got about 28 or 29 grains of powder in if I had really compressed it. I also took a couple of smokeless powder cartridges with the same bullet for comparison. (I think they were 7 grains of Red Dot, but they might have been 7.5 grains)

I just had a few minutes to shoot outdoors before going in to the indoor range where I was on duty tonite.

The powder worked great. The recoil was about the same as the smokeless loads. Of course they sounded much different. BOOM! I was just taking one-handed quick shots at a 9x11" target someone had left set up at 75 feet, and all 8 rounds hit the target.

I have 2 more pounds of stump remover that I bought on clearance at Walmart for $1 a pound. This summer I'm gonna check at all the grain elevators and farm co-ops around here to see if any of them sell (or can get) "spray grade" potassium nitrate. It should be less than $20 for 50 pounds, the hard part is finding it. I could order a bag from a place in Florida, but it would cost $50 to ship it that far.

The garden sulfur obviously is good enough. The stump remover KNO3 is good enough but probably has much room for improvement.
 
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I've been reading this and thinking about whether I want to try it or not. One thing that came to mind was that my wife has started buying hardwood charcoal in 10 lb bags. I'm not talking briquettes either, it's actually chunks of charred wood. The name of the company is Ozark Oak. It doesn't say exactly what trees they use but I'm pretty sure we can assume it's mostly oak. When I googled it there was some speculation that it might have some hickory in it too. I believe she gets it at Wallyworld for $5 or $6 a bag. Anybody know anything about oak and/or hickory in BP?
 
This is really good news ZXCVBOB. I already have my saltpeter (10 pounds) and the willow charcoal (2 pounds) enroute. Now all I have to do is head to Wallyworld or some other garden shop to get the sulfur and I'm in business. I am figuring that I will be paying about $50 for 13.33 pounds of BP. So the final tally is about $3.75 a pound. Since I get about 350 shots out of a pound (I shoot 20 gr in my BP revolver and 7000 gr=1 lb), that works out to a little more than a cent per shot (for the propellant only). How's that for economy. This has my factory ammo buying non-BP buddies drooling. :) :) :)

I also just got one of those el-cheapo Super Comanches that shoot 45LC and .410 shot shells. I am going to try some BP reloaded 45LC in it on it's debut at the range in addition to my C&B revolver.

Also, just got McLean's book (The Do-it-yourself Gunpowder Cookbook) and he discusses "red-or-white propellant" that uses saltpeter, sugar (sucrose), and ferric oxide (rust). He mentions the hygroscopicity of the final product but I get the impression that it performs about like BP. I know we have discussed the sucrose idea, but anyone know what the rust does? Does it somehow lower the ignition temp or function similar to sulfur?
 
I really like the idea of using rye straw charcoal (see post 120). That was the last black powder formula the US military used up through the Spanish-American War.
 
Also, just got McLean's book (The Do-it-yourself Gunpowder Cookbook) and he discusses "red-or-white propellant" that uses saltpeter, sugar (sucrose), and ferric oxide (rust). He mentions the hygroscopicity of the final product but I get the impression that it performs about like BP. I know we have discussed the sucrose idea, but anyone know what the rust does? Does it somehow lower the ignition temp or function similar to sulfur?
Click to expand...

The iron oxide is a catalyst that speeds up the reaction (I'm not sure how in this case.) The type of iron oxide used is Fe2O3, which is available as red jewelers rouge powder.

I suspect this is more of a rocket propellant rather than a small arms propellant because it would be easily cast or pressed to make hollow tube-shaped cores.
 
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