Making black powder at home

[RBHarter]

Dry in ceramic grinders.

 

[JWFilips]

Damn ,Ian! You always amaze me!
Your insistence and constantly scrupulous work reminds me when I set out to do something!
Never tackled BP before..... GOEX gave me everything I needed because I was their photographer. plus I built BP guns.
So I guessed they liked me
I really got into your process you wrote about above! You are dead on! I got the big tour from the Faringer's when I started photographing for them!
You seem to have Miniaturized Their whole process! Also my brother worked in production for 2 years so he gave me some inside scoop!
Here in NEPA half the year the humidity is very low and by the summer it gets high!
It was always the winters when their explosions occurred! I remember 4 of them! I'm 10 miles away from the original plant ( which now is a ghost town)! The ground shook !
When they moved to the south in Louisiana It was always humid & their product showed it with lower pressures and speeds.

 

[Ian]

Well. I was disappointed that the fresh batch of 3F with brown Alder charcoal only weighed 39 grains from the 50 grain volume measure.

However, it seems to be halfway between the well-cooked Alder charcoal and Goex as far as velocity goes. JimE brought his 36-caliber flinter over and we put a lot of lead balls downrange with the brown powder. I did some chronographing and was getting about 45 fps SD which didn't impress me at all but was having trouble seating balls from the get-go for some reason so I gave up, cleaned the bore, and went back to straight Hoppe's 9+. Ran another 20 or so shots without cleaning and was able to run a wet patch straight to the breech plug and back out with NO TIGHT SPOTS! Zero carbon ring where the ball seats, and two patches later the bore was pretty clean. Pan stayed clean, never touched the vent hole, no flashes in the pan (several klatches). Jim was using spit patches and was getting a lot less fouling using this latest batch than with what was in his horn.

The upshot is the brown charcoal shot even cleaner than the well-done batch all else the same, is still taking about 20% more by volume to equal the power of Goex, but is otherwise working well. Also, at 39 grains vs 43 I was getting another close to 100 fps so there is more energy in the charcoal cooked at lower temperature. I was surprised that the extra creosote made cleaner powder, now I'm wondering if the creosote shuffles the order of the chemical reaction sequence a little and uses up more potassiim nitrate. Maybe the leftover potassium nitrate residue is what makes the gummy fouling when combined with ash, not wood tar?

Where to go next? I'm a little miffed at my inability to achieve 1.7 g/cc density with a 20-ton press and 1.5" pucking die. Either it's the charcoal or I need to hold the pucks in compression more than 30 seconds. Some guys make one, big puck and leave it in the press for hours. Breaking and grinding the pucks right after pressing may also let them expand, I got another batch going now and will both press longer and dry thoroughly before breaking and grinding to see if that gets me a higher density. If I can improve density I think I will have this little experiment licked.

 

[Tomme boy]

Do you have any willow trees down there? Supposed to be the best wood to use. Up here you can't go to any body of water and not have willows. Especially around any ground that has spring water.

 

[fiver]

you getting any water out when you compress?
wait you can't be, your only adding like a half TSP.

 

[JWFilips]

Ian, In NEPA where GOEX had it start They used a lot of white oak ( pretty Hard) Heck everything in NEPA revolved around white oak
It's bark makes the best Liquor for tanning hides!
My favorite for smoking on the grill!

 

[RBHarter]

Tons of trials have been done .
The reason cottonwood doesn't exist across most of the south is that it was the primary charcoal source circa 1860-1865 .
Hercules, in Hercules CA circa 1840-1880 used assorted light willows then shifted to alder .

Black willow is test proven to , in north America, to make the highest energy powders .
Pines are too gooey .
Sweet gum made good screen powder but required 140% by measure to match FFg Goex in a 50 Hawkin cap lock . It required a brush to clear all of the fouling.
Grape wood from desert grown small sweet green grapes was about the same but made a more fuzzy softer fouling that washed clean with hot water .

I had some Oregon alder but I didn't use it .

The closer you get to clean ingredients the better the results will be . My powder had at least 5% nonproductive anti clumping etc junk in it .
Organics are the hard part . You literally have no way to control anything beyond the daylight duration window of when it is cut and a maximum water content before it goes to the kiln .

Any given is at the whim of the atmosphere for 15-150 yr before it's reduced to charcoal, at least 3-4 yr before a limb is big enough to be used . Vines or weeping type willows will produce a single season in quantity for personal use .

I lived in an area that would have up wind fire 80-90 miles away with white ash fall out and smoke thick enough to taste . I would imagine that among other things that those years with a nice cleansing rain would draw up a lot more carbon and sulphur than years that were clear .
If your "orchard" is down slope for say a new housing tract with leach fields or a new golf course that uses reclaimed water in 5-7 years you'll have higher nitrates in all of the growth .

Wet year you'll get a higher yield by volume but it won't be as dense , drier years the reverse.

Ag runoff ........ Yeah ...... Sulphur, lime , nitrates, etc and if it's in good rotation it might change 2-3 time a year or might not change at all if for example they grow alfalfa for 5 yr then corn and a flour grain for 2 years . The content of new growth might be almost a different species.

 

[Tom]

Well. I was disappointed that the fresh batch of 3F with brown Alder charcoal only weighed 39 grains from the 50 grain volume measure.

However, it seems to be halfway between the well-cooked Alder charcoal and Goex as far as velocity goes. JimE brought his 36-caliber flinter over and we put a lot of lead balls downrange with the brown powder. I did some chronographing and was getting about 45 fps SD which didn't impress me at all but was having trouble seating balls from the get-go for some reason so I gave up, cleaned the bore, and went back to straight Hoppe's 9+. Ran another 20 or so shots without cleaning and was able to run a wet patch straight to the breech plug and back out with NO TIGHT SPOTS! Zero carbon ring where the ball seats, and two patches later the bore was pretty clean. Pan stayed clean, never touched the vent hole, no flashes in the pan (several klatches). Jim was using spit patches and was getting a lot less fouling using this latest batch than with what was in his horn.

The upshot is the brown charcoal shot even cleaner than the well-done batch all else the same, is still taking about 20% more by volume to equal the power of Goex, but is otherwise working well. Also, at 39 grains vs 43 I was getting another close to 100 fps so there is more energy in the charcoal cooked at lower temperature. I was surprised that the extra creosote made cleaner powder, now I'm wondering if the creosote shuffles the order of the chemical reaction sequence a little and uses up more potassiim nitrate. Maybe the leftover potassium nitrate residue is what makes the gummy fouling when combined with ash, not wood tar?

Where to go next? I'm a little miffed at my inability to achieve 1.7 g/cc density with a 20-ton press and 1.5" pucking die. Either it's the charcoal or I need to hold the pucks in compression more than 30 seconds. Some guys make one, big puck and leave it in the press for hours. Breaking and grinding the pucks right after pressing may also let them expand, I got another batch going now and will both press longer and dry thoroughly before breaking and grinding to see if that gets me a higher density. If I can improve density I think I will have this little experiment licked.

Ian, iirc, potassium nitrate is the oxidizer? If so, a little more fuel (creosote) may well utilize the oxidizer better until the balance between fuel and oxidizer is overwhelmed. I'm no chemist, and don't plan on making my own, but this makes sense to me.

 

[Tom]

Tons of trials have been done .
The reason cottonwood doesn't exist across most of the south is that it was the primary charcoal source circa 1860-1865 .
Hercules, in Hercules CA circa 1840-1880 used assorted light willows then shifted to alder .

Black willow is test proven to , in north America, to make the highest energy powders .
Pines are too gooey .
Sweet gum made good screen powder but required 140% by measure to match FFg Goex in a 50 Hawkin cap lock . It required a brush to clear all of the fouling.
Grape wood from desert grown small sweet green grapes was about the same but made a more fuzzy softer fouling that washed clean with hot water .

I had some Oregon alder but I didn't use it .

The closer you get to clean ingredients the better the results will be . My powder had at least 5% nonproductive anti clumping etc junk in it .
Organics are the hard part . You literally have no way to control anything beyond the daylight duration window of when it is cut and a maximum water content before it goes to the kiln .

Any given is at the whim of the atmosphere for 15-150 yr before it's reduced to charcoal, at least 3-4 yr before a limb is big enough to be used . Vines or weeping type willows will produce a single season in quantity for personal use .

I lived in an area that would have up wind fire 80-90 miles away with white ash fall out and smoke thick enough to taste . I would imagine that among other things that those years with a nice cleansing rain would draw up a lot more carbon and sulphur than years that were clear .
If your "orchard" is down slope for say a new housing tract with leach fields or a new golf course that uses reclaimed water in 5-7 years you'll have higher nitrates in all of the growth .

Wet year you'll get a higher yield by volume but it won't be as dense , drier years the reverse.

Ag runoff ........ Yeah ...... Sulphur, lime , nitrates, etc and if it's in good rotation it might change 2-3 time a year or might not change at all if for example they grow alfalfa for 5 yr then corn and a flour grain for 2 years . The content of new growth might be almost a different species.

Your take on effluents and the tree is something I would never have thought of. Whoda thunk it that a dog's favorite marking spot would influence the quality of the charcoal? While I'll probably not make my own, introducing these ideas is interesting to me, a bear of very little brain.

 

[RicinYakima]

Your take on effluents and the tree is something I would never have thought of. Whoda thunk it that a dog's favorite marking spot would influence the quality of the charcoal? While I'll probably not make my own, introducing these ideas is interesting to me, a bear of very little brain.

In 1804 Napoleon nationalize all farm yards to mine the nitrates out of the stock yards. 400 years of stock urine was the best source of nitrates in Europe. Or in the South in 1863-1865, people urinated in pots and sent it to the the yards to concentrate the nitrates for making gunpowder. The chemistry is simple, but it works.

 

[Tom]

In 1804 Napoleon nationalize all farm yards to mine the nitrates out of the stock yards. 400 years of stock urine was the best source of nitrates in Europe. Or in the South in 1863-1865, people urinated in pots and sent it to the the yards to concentrate the nitrates for making gunpowder. The chemistry is simple, but it works.

I get the part about making saltpeter, but the runoff influencing the nitrate in the wood is something i wouldn't have thought of. It does make sense, though.

 

[Tomme boy]

people urinated in pots

And that is where the saying " they were so poor they don't have a pot to piss in " came from

 

[Bret4207]

I get the part about making saltpeter, but the runoff influencing the nitrate in the wood is something i wouldn't have thought of. It does make sense, though.

Up here in the north some people spread manure in their sugar bushes to increase the flow of maple sap. Everything is part of the big circle of life.

 

[Ian]

I do have willow here, lots of little creeks. We've been in a 3 year severe drought and it looks like a lunar landscape this winter. The wild grasses barely had enough energy to go to seed and look pitiful.

I chose to use the Red Alder from the PNW first because I saved a lot of edge trimmings from the cabinet shop and have stored it for 15 years. It's consistent as wood can be throughout the batch I have, but still the charcoal is one of the biggest variables and cooking it consistently from batch to batch isn't exactly a piece of cake either. Red Alder may simply not be the best fuel but that doesn't explain why I can't get the density. It seems to have the power per unit mass, but so far my powder isn't dense enough.

Milling another batch of meal, will experiment with compression this time.

 

[RicinYakima]

but still the charcoal is one of the biggest variables and cooking it consistently from batch to batch isn't exactly a piece of cake either. Red Alder may simply not be the best fuel but that doesn't explain why I can't get the density. It seems to have the power per unit mass, but so far my powder isn't dense enough.

Question Ian, never having done this, why do they not use "carbon black"? It is commercially available and appears to be pure powdered carbon from some petroleum processing work?

 

[Bret4207]

Question Ian, never having done this, why do they not use "carbon black"? It is commercially available and appears to be pure powdered carbon from some petroleum processing work?

I'm not Ian, and I never played him on TV, but I'd bet it's a lot like making up an alloy. Just because it measures 18Bhn doesn't mean it has the same properties as another alloy that measures 18Bhn. All the little micro-parts and pieces probably differ widely across the spectrum of "charcoal" or "carbon". In fact, I have books and diaries from back in the 17/1800's that say with certainty that different woods make up different qualities of charcoal. Heck "coal" should be coal, but there are a dozen different types. I'd bet that's the reason.

Now watch Ian chime in and wipe my theory out entirely!!!

 

[Maven]

All, There's a guy who works at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds who wrote a short book about making BP at home. As I'm not presently at home I can't tell you his name or the book's title. However, I do remember he was making very high quality, low fouling BP for his rifles: It's a graduate level version of home brewed BP. It was reviewed within the last year in Muzzleloader magazine and was interesting reading. Maybe it's worth searching for?

 

[RicinYakima]

All, There's a guy who works at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds who wrote a short book about making BP at home. As I'm not presently at home I can't tell you his name or the book's title. However, I do remember he was making very high quality, low fouling BP for his rifles: It's a graduate level version of home brewed BP. It was reviewed within the last year in Muzzleloader magazine and was interesting reading. Maybe it's worth searching for?

I have Gibbons book Like fire and Powder. However, he is simply following the traditional processes without any explanation of why he did not use commonly available pure chemicals. Best I can tell it is because that "is the way it was done" and not from a home chemistry perspective.

I've made lots of chemicals that go "bang" since I was 12 years old, but only an ounce or so. Making five pounds of black requires a much better engineered process that I have used.

 

[Ian]

Pure carbon makes terrible fuel. People have tried activated charcoal used in filtration and also graphite. The problem is there are no aromatic hydrocarbons left in those products, just carbon with all the hydrogen cooked out (reacted to make water). Bret's analogy is pretty close as far as I can tell from reading.

I really don't like re-inventing the wheel, but when taking processes which have been worked out to a fine science, often in secrecy, on an industrial scale and shrinking tons to pounds, there is some experimentation involved. I remember something from when I was a kid about the world's biggest loaf of bread being made, it was quite the undertaking and not just because of the scale. Pouring a sidewalk and pouring the Hoover dam also involve some very different considerations in the processes.

Maven may have the answer, I'll be doing some searching shortly...

 

[Ian]

Just got through corning the latest batch. Started with 3,090 grains with the extra 1% sulfur and 2% soluble glutinous rice starch on top of a 3000 grain/100% mix of 75/15/10 like I have been making it the past few batches. Ended up with 6.25 ounces of pucks. Did some more number stuff and came up with 1.8 grams per CC, with the standard for sporting grade being 1.7 and maximum theoretical density being something like 1.9 and change.

I used less water this time, about a quarter teaspoon which when gently blended into the dust for about ten minutes would just, and I mean JUST barely settle the dust. Humidity is 31% today so this is a minimum. Reports from a guy in Florida are that he doesn't add water at all due to high air humidity levels and the powder absorbing enough from handling between mill and pucking die to make hard, durable pucks. I also used more pressure and held a minute or more at full compression. My steel bushing driver handle is starting to mushroom just from the pressure.

Now, to let them dry all the way before breaking and grinding, or go ahead and do it now? I think I'll let them dry out for a few days and see how it affects the process. That will be four adjustments at once: A little less water, a little more pressure, a little more time under pressure, and letting the pucks dry. Science!