Making black powder?

J

jeager106

Moderator
You that make black powder.
Is it difficult?
Where to you get KNO3?
Sulphur?
Charcoal?
I believe from what I've read charcoal isn't hard to make & certain willows & alder are reported to make very good charcoal.
Y'all got me to thinking the unthinkable.
Making some for myself.:eek:
I read where real blk powder guys make percussion caps but where does one get rolled caps these days?
 
There are quite a few threads about this already. There are plenty of sites online where you can get pyro stuff for making black powder. You can also go to Lowe's and get sprectracide stump remover as it's almost pure KNO3. I make my own charcoal from pine 2x4 rather than mess around with finding willow (although I do have some willow just haven't cooked it yet). I'm pretty new to this as well, and I've got all the gear to make some sulfurless black powder. I'm hoping that will work well with my percussion guns and rifles. If not, I'll use that to make black match fuse, and get some sulfur to make some more black powder. I don't plan to corn it, just ball mill, wet, and screen.
 
myself i have found the hardwood or willow is best . for hardwood go to walmart and by you a bag of Royal oak True hardwood charcoal . its actual branches of hardwood not a bracket .

all the rest of the ingredients can be found at most farm stores or garden supply centers . but i would suggest if your buying you components , at least make yourself familiar with how to make or collect your own naturally. That way when the time comes when the components become harder to buy , your not left empty handed .
 
Cap I know how to make saltpeter and charcoal, but where can I find sulfur if I don't live near a volcano? :confused: ;)
 
I've used "dusting sulfur" from the hardware store before. It's not pure sulfur (it contains 10% Bentonite clay, I've been told) but it didn't seem to make much difference with the finished product.
If your BP is 10% sulfur, the Bentonite clay would only amount to 1% of the finished BP..... people usually add 3-5% Dextrin as a binder anyway.
 
yep no doubt about it that sulfur is the hard part to collect . but its not just found in volcanoes . Here in the US it was mined . But early on the sulfur for powder was collected in areas where there was salt or natural hot springs .
i have read that one can also use pete sulfer . its a white sulfer that builds up along swamps and bogs .
but i have never tried it . just read about it
 
Really want to know how its done. Go to Cast Boolits link I've provided (below). Scroll down to Muzzleloading.__ Left mouse tap Muzzleloading to open.__ Than look for a Sticky Thread called: My homemade black powder started by Atom73.
Let mouse Tap one more time. Read those 50 pages of comments and tips. By the time your done. I guarantee you'll know how to make it jeager106.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/
 
If you must, do it outside and away from anything that can be damaged. Dig a hole in the ground to put your tumbler into. Should it brew up, the energy is vented upwards and not outwards.
 
Not to sound like the safety police but "back in the day" SEVERAL plants making black powder BLEW UP. That was under ideal conditions by guys who did nothing else for a living.
One of the Old Foxfire books has a chapter on making black powder. Like anything else some of the homemade stuff wasn't that great. Trouble igniting, inconsistent pressures generated, etc.
 
The Brushhippie video above shows that it does not appear that hard to make, and seems to burn quite energetically (at least his later batch).

If I made it, I would make it in small quantities, say, 1 pound at a time.

I agree an outdoor bunker location for the ball mill would probably be a good idea.

My biggest concern with home-made black powder is that the recipie given does not include graphite. Modern black powder is graphite glazed (this is what the "g" in FFg stands for). This makes it very electrically conductive, which means that static discharges tend to be conducted through it easily with little resistance (and thus little heat). This means that modern black powder is very difficult to set off with static electricity sparks.

There are videos on the web of a guy trying to set it off with a tazer and failing. Another fellow set out to make an electrically-discharged muzzle loader and found that he ended up needing a lot more juice over a much longer period of time to get it to go off.

Unglazed black powder may not be as conductive and may be more sensitive to static discharge.

Steve
 
Well I'll say one more word and then hush. On the Lewis & Clark Expedition I think the powder was a constant problem. In the flintlock days the barrels were long to completely burn the powder but by the mountain man days the powder quality had improved to the point that barrels could be much shorter. So...have fun but the results might not be that great.
I also noticed an Ohio address. I'm in Dixie where you can pretty much do as you please- better check local laws on making black powder- just to be sure you are good to go. :cool:
 
Hobby Chemical Supply

I stumbled across this company while doing some hunting around on the net. Hobby Chemical Supply has a kit available for $20, I don't know what the shipping charges are. It has 5 lbs of potassium nitrate, and one lb each of charcoal and sulfur. There's a couple of videos on YouTube that show you how to make black powder without a ball mill. I haven't tried this myself; I'm fairly well stocked at the moment with BP. It looks fairly easy - I may try it just for kicks at some point.
 
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