Making black powder at home

[Ian]

It stops at the front trigger guard tab, which is put back as far as it can reasonably go. I'll just use a 2" extension for cleaning after I drill out and re-thread the ramrod end to 10/32. So far my only complaint with the whole Kibler deal is the ramrod tips (even the Colonial 3/8" one) are threaded 8-32 when most black powder tools are 10-32. That's okay, I have a lathe, number drills, and many taps.

 

[Ian]

From what I've gathered is that short/long starters have been extremely rare among period light hunting rifle accoutrements. Coned muzzles were the norm.

I turned a bigger motor pulley for my tumbler, brought the RPM from 44 to 72 which is now 60% of critical speed. Could go to 70 or 75 but we'll see how this does first. Probably will let it go all night and see if I have any residual KNO3 left over from the burn test tomorrow.

I also decided to grind half the pucks right after pressing and let the remainder dry before grinding. I want to get to the bottom of the dusty powder problem that some batches had and some didn't. I didn't always record whether I ground damp or dry before, so at this point I'm not sure if it's amount of water in the press meal or grinding damp/dry that's making the difference. This will also allow me to compare granulated volume of damp vs dry pucks one more time to confirm my previous findings.

 

[Ian]

Just got through running the Chinaberry 75/15/10 with just the amount of moisture in the pucks that I thought best, it worked well in processing. The other half of the pucks are drying in the sun.

Kibler SMR with Chinaberry at 60 grains averaged 1738 fps. 50 grains averaged 1569 fps. 50 grains of Goex averaged 1719 fps yesterday. 50 grain volume of Chinaberry, ground right after pressing and dried in the sun for a couple of hours, re-classified after grinding to 20/50 mesh, weighed exactly 50 grains. Double-checked with GOEX 3F and got 51 grains. So again, I have basically matched the density and the granulation of GOEX but still 150 fps off. Getting lots of latent dust in the powder.

I'm going to call the Chinaberry dirtier than Willow. I was getting more fouling a foot ahead of the chamber than normal, making it a little more difficult to seat the ball. Chamber had a nice, hard ring as usual that took a patch wet with water to wipe out. It is very, very dry and in the upper 80s today and I was shooting pretty hot and fast so that may be a contributing factor. Chinaberry is still cleaner than GOEX.

Per some more reading I gather that folks experimenting with puck density are getting higher velocity per grain weight by pressing to only 1.5 or 1.6 g/cc rather than 1.7-1.8 like I am and GOEX does. Less pressure, faster powder, more velocity, maybe even at the same volume. I'd try Graphite but that's been proven to drop 100 fps off speed in a rifle identical to mine. I dunno, just puzzled over why I can't equal GOEX velocity even when finally equaling the granulated density.

Thinking about going back to brown alder charcoal and run another batch of 75/15/10 at the faster mill speed. I wonder if it was cleaner than anything I've tried so far because it wasn't as dense after granulation.

 

[JustJim]

Back when the shoot at Western was still an annual event and I kept winning cases of Elephant powder, the Mad Monk put me onto "socking" the powder to reduce the fines and narrow the velocity spreads. Basically, put the powder in a fabric tube, and roll/tumble it. (Curiously, a decent-quality cotton or wool--no synthetics!--sweat-sock works well for this, hence the name.) It did work. That was about the time when I was also screening the powder for particle sizes much as you are doing, followed by socking/weighing charges, and--in appropriate cartridge guns--going to duplex loads. Eventually I came to my senses, set the Elephant to the side for shotguns, and went to better powder for rifles and cartridge guns.

 

[JWFilips]

Back when the shoot at Western was still an annual event and I kept winning cases of Elephant powder, the Mad Monk put me onto "socking" the powder to reduce the fines and narrow the velocity spreads. Basically, put the powder in a fabric tube, and roll/tumble it. (Curiously, a decent-quality cotton or wool--no synthetics!--sweat-sock works well for this, hence the name.) It did work. That was about the time when I was also screening the powder for particle sizes much as you are doing, followed by socking/weighing charges, and--in appropriate cartridge guns--going to duplex loads. Eventually I came to my senses, set the Elephant to the side for shotguns, and went to better powder for rifles and cartridge guns.

Yep! That was the only way you could use Elephant Powder!

 

[JWFilips]

Bill Knight was a very good friend of mine! He Joked with me being GOEX's poster boy and their photographer! But that was only because he hated the Faringers ( New Owners of Gerhart Owen Black Powder factory!) He Partnered up with the New Elephant powder Folks making powder from the burning rainforest in South America using Bat Guano as the oxidizer! I tested it numerous times with GOEX paying the bill...but I told them I would be very impartial! That stuff was very hydroscopic, dirty and low energy compared to GOEX! I had a few cases of it that I blew up in Fireworks for July 4th! Wouldn't even use it in my canons! Yes I guess if you tuned your loads to it and cleaned between each shot you could get it to work!
Bill and I joked back and forth about it all! But he had a lot of historical research on gun finishing and Coloring that he shared with me! For this I am forever grateful! He shared a lot with me and when he past.... I felt a tremendous loss of knowledge!
At least I have what he shared with me and his first great manuscript which I treasure!

 

[JustJim]

Goex had some lots that were pretty bad too. . . in one order our club got about '85, you didn't want to open a can unless you were going to shoot it all in a day or two, as it would "go bad" and velocity (as indicated by POI--no one I knew had a chronograph yet) would drop. I had 3 unopened cans rust through--turned out that whole order was like that, so in our next order the club specified a different lot.

Then the Goex plant blew up (in '91? '92?), powder almost doubled in price to (to $12!). Elephant entered the market at half that, including shipping, with a much better distributor network. The '94 lot wasn't too bad (no worse than C-H), and I always thought the '99 and later lots of Elephant were as good as pre-blow-up Goex (by then I had a chronograph, and was shooting long-range to test). The '97 lot was s-l-o-w.

Around 2000 Goex finally started improving their powder: switched charcoal suppliers, then potassium nitrate suppliers (and stopped using water that seemed to be carrying sulpher-eating bacteria). Swiss and Schuetzen came in, and Elephant didn't have a chance. The plant sold and they made a comeback try in 2004(?), but the powder ("Diamondback") wasn't any better than than the '99 lot, and they just kind of went away. The guy who ran the shoots at Western was still getting Elephant til 2003 or 2004, but the last year of the shoot the prizes were Diamondback.

 

[Ian]

Sodium nitrate is very hygroscopic. It makes good sporting gunpowder so I'm told, very clean and almost as powerful as potassium nitrate powder, but if you don't keep it in a sealed container with fresh dessicant and shoot it right after loading, you'll have a mess. I don't know how hard it is on gun steel but I imagine in humid environments it would rust while you're shooting.

 

[Ian]

Been a while. I finally got to the range again today with a new powder and I think I've finally gotten it right.

Things I changed:

• Cleaned the blender and put my granulated KNO3 in it for a couple of minutes to make it airfloat grade. It needs to be really dry to do this, mine was fresh from the package but an hour in a warm oven (150 degrees or so) would help.
• Still using the higher-speed mill as previous.
• Milled all three ingredients together for only 10 hours this time. Finished powder meal felt wet between fingers it was so slick. NO gritty whatsoever.
• Changed the ratio to 78/13/9.
• Same Black Willow charcoal as before, powdered in the blender.
• Same puck pressure, about as much as my 20 ton press can give, hold for 20-30 seconds, maybe one drop or less of water squeezing out around the base (two capfulls of Ozarka water per half pound meal).

Now, I ground two batches. First one was right after pucking, it was damp enough to clog up the grinder disc faces and just sort of crush though. It was a mess and I didn't have high hopes for it after weighing in at around 40 grains per 50 volume. Second half of the batch I re-pucked and ground after it had dried for only a couple of hours. MUCH better grind, still a little clumpy going through the screens but acceptable. Second half came out about 47.5 grains weight per 50 measure. This changed a little after drying the granulated powders and re-screening.

Both batches were dried on a cookie sheet and re-screened to remove dust. Still grading 3F at 20/50.

Took the scale to the range with me this time. Short version, batch B ground drier was shot first and gave me about 1585 fps at 50 grains volume/47.5 grains weighed and 1650 fps at 55 grains volume/51 grains weighed. Was getting a little erratic velocity due to bullet seating issues, slight carbon ring in "chamber". That got better when I seated the ball with the short starter on the end of the ramrod. Pretty dang clean though, happy enough with the performance overall. Batch A was shot next after cleaning and I ran 16 shots through. This stuff was coming out 50 grains for a 55 measure at the range if I poured the measure to overflow and tapped it a couple times to level the powder. This gave me virtually the same velocity average at virtually the same WEIGHT.

The difference between the densities was how clean the less dense, batch A shot. This was by far the cleanest black powder I've EVER shot, any grade, any brand. 16 rounds and NO carbon ring. When I finished I ran a dampened patch to the breech plug with almost no resistance, jogged it a few times, and pulled it out to find only one little flake of fouling, the rest was soft dust that wiped right out. A dry patch following that and I was ready to shoot again. Simply amazing. I primed both batches with the charge powder and it worked fine at only 9% sulfur, no problems whatsoever. Pan and barrel had only light soot, no white coating and not much smoke. The smoke cloud from the muzzle was perhaps half of what any other powder has produced and the MagnetoSpeed bayonet stayed quite clean after 20+ shots with only a slight carbon accumulation on the shield and virtually none on top of the sensor plane.

In conclusion, lower density makes cleaner burn. More KNO3 makes cleaner burn. Better milling makes cleaner burn and more power. Weighing charges, regardless of density, gives better consistency batch to batch regardless of process (same recipe, same weight, variable density, all yields same velocity).

 

[Brad]

Did you know that a thin sheet of lead works great in the jaws for holding the flint? Take a ball, pound it flat, and trim to size. Around .1 thick is right.

 

[Ian]

Never tried it but heard mixed reviews. Some say it goes dead after a couple of tightenings and won't hold the flint. I've found that oiled leather doesn't char like fresh leather does. The flint and leather in the photo was still filthy and charred from the last tests, normally I clean them when I clean the lock but didn't this time. The flint is actually cleaner after shooting today than it was when I started.

 

[Ian]

Just for comparison, here's the fouling I was getting before from the same charcoal at 75/15/10 with granulated KNO3 going in the mill and pucks dried before grinding/classifying.



Note the glassy flakes all over the first patch and gritty stuff on the second patch. Hard carbon ring in the chamber requiring the second patch be dampened to remove. Of today's patches only the first was dampened. This powder also made a buge cloud of white smoke and left a thick grey, crusty deposit on the bayonet.

 

[Ian]

Out testing homemade black powder again after work. Tried a new formula using Tree of Heaven obtained from a neighbor's tree with permission earlier this week and cooked in the retort night before last. Many folks rave about ToH and Pawlonia (sp?) for BP charcoal but I'm not terribly impressed. Not knowing how the ToH charcoal would behave, I mixed it at 77/13/10. It didn't do badly at all, but was a full 50 fps slower than my 78/13/9 Black Willow. The ToH started leaving a carbon ring on the second shot and the ramrod needed a bump to fully seat the ball the last 1/2" after that. It wasn't terribly dirty but not terribly clean, either, for the velocity I was getting (1650 fps). At 1650 my willow mix barely leaves a ring at all even after a dozen or more shots. At 1725 fps (55 grains weight and volume matching, polished powder) the willow starts to leave a chamber ring but it stabilizes after three shots and doesn't get any worse. The fact that the velocity of ToH was lower and it was slightly more dirty turned me off, experiment complete with the conclusion that 78/13/9 Black Willow is the best stuff by far I've come up with using my methods. Polishing the powder for 12 hours in a toy rock tumbler gained about 25 fps with no deleterious effects, cured the dusting issue, and makes the powder pour even better than it did before from a horn. I think I'm done with powder development at this point, having produced an accurate, reliable, repeatable method and recipe that equals Goex power, has accurate density, and is much, much cleaner.

Sooooo, here's what I do:

• First, use technical or "reagent" grade ingredients, 99% pure or better KNO3 and yellow sulfur.
• Make certain the ingredients are ground/milled finely enough before milling. I find that a couple minutes in a blender makes the table-sugar granulated KNO3 like powdered sugar and ends up making a much cleaner-burning powder after milling. I also process my charcoal in a blender, making sure the blender is clean of any oxidizer.
• Make certain the ingredients are DRY before milling. I dehydrate them individually and separately in my convection/toaster oven at 150F for an hour before putting them in the mill. Since charcoal is as dry as it will ever be coming straight out of the retort, I powder it as soon as it's cool enough to handle and immediately pour into canning jars with sealed lids for storage.
• When cooking the charcoal, never exceed 600F inside the retort, 550 is better. This retains the resins and such that make a better fuel. It may seem counter-intuitive that creosote makes cleaner powder, but it does due to (I think) supporting full consumption of the oxidizer.
• You can never mill too much. I found that using lead-filled brass cases made the best media (cylinders are better than balls) and that the drum needs hard sides. Rotating the mill drum at 60% of critical speed is good. Fill the drum half full of media and 1/4 more with ingredients to leave 1/4 air space. Mill for at least eight hours, returns diminish after that but I usually mill for 12 hours. It doesn't matter exactly how you get there, but those are the parameters that need met for truly good meal.
• After milling, the "green" meal should be a fine as talcum powder with absolutely no gritty feeling whatsoever when rubbed between the fingers.
• Sporting grade black powder needs to be corned. Screened powder is OK for having fun at the range and can be made durable enough for handling and storage by adding 2% soluble, glutinous rice starch for the last hour of milling, but it will never be close to the quality of corned powder.
• I corn my powder in a 1.5" diameter, aluminum cylinder and compress it with about as much pressure as a Hobo Freight 20-ton hydraulic press will muster, and leave it under pressure for at least 30 seconds. I make half-pound batches and one-ounce pucks.
• Moisture content of the green meal is absolutely critical when pressing it. Too damp squeezes out excess when pressing and makes weak grains. Too dry (as in zero water) makes light powder since it doesn't compress as much as properly dampened powder. To dampen it I add exactly 1.5 capfulls of water from a 16-ounce Ozarka water bottle. I'll have to measure it to see just how much that is in mL. I mix the green meal for about 5 minutes with a spoon to get the moisture distributed. In short, you need just enough water that the stuff quits making dust when stirred with a spoon. I like to see the bottom of the puck be wet when I take it off the press, but not see any liquid squeeze out underneath the die.
• I go about breaking up the pucks and grinding them right after pressing. If they are even the least bit too damp it turns into a mess, but if the moisture is correct (as determined when pressing) they can be ground immediately, the grains classified and put on a tray to dry, and the 20% or so 4F and smaller dust can immediately be re-pressed, cracked up, and run through the grinder again so the end waste is about 5%. I recycle the waste for the next batch to be pressed.
• For grinding, I have found nothing better than the cheap, hand-crank corn mills from Jeff's Dollarama etc. They are cheap copies of the Wonder Mill and run about $35-40. Ceramic coffee mills produce too much dust and take forever to grind a half pound, but can be useful for small runs.
• I dry the granulated, classified powder for about a day indoors under a ceiling fan. I've come to believe that direct sun is too much, too fast, based on the amount of dust left over when dried that way.
• After drying, I "dust" the grains by running through the classifying screens again and return the dust to the meal cup for pressing with the next batch.
• My latest refinement is to polish the powder. A toy rock tumbler really isn't the correct sort of tool but it does okay and is what I have available at the moment to use. The powder really needs to be polished in a large drum (six foot diameter/12 RPM is the commercial standard) so the grains can be thrown hard against the sides and really rounded off. The dust gets peened into the pores of the grains and seals them, I get almost no dust from the powder coming out of my rock tumbler after 12 hours, but if I don't polish it, it will produce dust continuously when handled, transferred, classified, etc.
• I classify my 3F as will pass a 20 mesh but not a 50 mesh screen. When making 2F, I limit it to 16-30. When making both from a batch, I classify with screens stacked 16-20-30-50, separate the 20-30, weigh it, and split it between the 2F and 3F. 4F, if I need any, is 40-100 but usually I just save the 50-100 and then run it through a 60 screen and recycle half the 60-100.

That's all for now folks, another little adventure completed and in the books. Next project is learning how to knap gun flints efficiently.

 

[Ian]

Rob jogged my brain, I need to comment on woods for charcoal. Folks seem to get wrapped around the axle thinking that finding the right wood will make the fastest, cleanest, bestest powder but I don't subscribe to that. The "best" woods have pretty much been sorted out and the real secret to making top-quality black powder in small batches at home lies in how finely you are able to mill it and how well you are able to corn it. Controlling variables precisely (puck density, for example) will probably make the difference between good 1,000-yard consistency and vertical stringing, but I'm not into that for 50-yard shooting with a front-stuffing rock lock. There doesn't seem to be any universal magic in the ratios, but there does seem to be a preference for each type of wood that I used to get the most power and least filth. I think experimenting with the charcoal/KNO3 ratio a little to fine-tune to a specific wood (or specific tree?) is in order for anyone trying to make the best stuff they can for gunpowder. For fireworks, 2x4 stud scraps are supposed to work very well.

So far I've found that Red Alder lumber scraps make clean powder that is 100 fps slower than Goex. Chinaberry is as good as Black Willow, and Tree of Heaven is not quite as good as either but not bad. That's all I've tested and since I'm fully at the opposite end of the country from any Alder Buckthorn bushes. I'll stick with Black Willow for now because it works great and I can get plenty of it from just down the road.

 

[L Ross]

Rob jogged my brain, I need to comment on woods for charcoal. Folks seem to get wrapped around the axle thinking that finding the right wood will make the fastest, cleanest, bestest powder but I don't subscribe to that. The "best" woods have pretty much been sorted out and the real secret to making top-quality black powder in small batches at home lies in how finely you are able to mill it and how well you are able to corn it. Controlling variables precisely (puck density, for example) will probably make the difference between good 1,000-yard consistency and vertical stringing, but I'm not into that for 50-yard shooting with a front-stuffing rock lock. There doesn't seem to be any universal magic in the ratios, but there does seem to be a preference for each type of wood that I used to get the most power and least filth. I think experimenting with the charcoal/KNO3 ratio a little to fine-tune to a specific wood (or specific tree?) is in order for anyone trying to make the best stuff they can for gunpowder. For fireworks, 2x4 stud scraps are supposed to work very well.

So far I've found that Red Alder lumber scraps make clean powder that is 100 fps slower than Goex. Chinaberry is as good as Black Willow, and Tree of Heaven is not quite as good as either but not bad. That's all I've tested and since I'm fully at the opposite end of the country from any Alder Buckthorn bushes. I'll stick with Black Willow for now because it works great and I can get plenty of it from just down the road.

Isn't Waco the king of conchoidal fracturing around this site?

 

[Cricco]

I’m currently making my own BP, using a very similar process. I’m having great results with charcoal made from coconut.

 

[Ian]

I’m currently making my own BP, using a very similar process. I’m having great results with charcoal made from coconut.

Do you make it yourself, or buy the aquarium filter granules?

 

[Missionary]

Coconut ! Now that is thinking out of the box.

 

[glassparman]

I'd be afraid to blow my coconuts off!

 

[RBHarter]

We pour smokeless from a plastic bottle to a plastic tube that we know collects static cling , but rolling it around raw in a vulcanized rubber drum with lead or copper balls, maybe marbles in a base and electrically grounded drum is scary ?

Once long ago I went into trucks with a pneumatic nailer and a gross load of war surplus granulated trinitrotoluene knowing if stuff happened I probably wouldn't know about it and if I did I wouldn't have time to make a move . Having a boiler under 27 grain towers 150 feet from 10,000 gallons of diesel with an 8" gas main in between scares me every day in my little glass box 50' from the diesel .