All the old books on pyrotechnics describe making and using low grade black powder for fuses and for launch powder. The brownish color of the powder you collected in the bag is a common indicator of this type of powder as it means the charcoal making was hurried and not too complete. This saves time and energy when all you need is something adequate rather than great. Sometimes they also make a version of black blasting powder for this. Blasting powder was common in the 19th century before dynamite was invented and it was made with sodium nitrate for cost reasons. Sodium nitrate attracts moisture much more readily than potassium nitrate, so it isn't always as reliable. Sodium nitrate is also referred to as "Chile saltpeter" in old texts because the country of Chile (also Peru) have large deposits they mine. I don't know which one is used in your domestic fireworks.
The notice you got from the Castboolits.gunloads.com says your IP address is banned. This is not because they don't want you to see the site, but because they were getting spam posts from South America and probably banned whole blocks of IP addresses there, and not just your's in particular. We also block a lot IP addresses and ranges of IP addresses on this board because of a history of spam posts coming from them, but we do this based on a history of spam posts from them, and the reason your IP address was not blocked here is that we haven't had a problem with spam in your IP address range here.
I'll drop a line to the admin over there and ask if he'll unblock your IP. We'll see what happens.
Nothing I've seen thus far in this thread describes things I learned about making really good black powder back in the 60's; stuff you couldn't visually tell from what came out of a DuPont can back then. There are lots of resources in books and on the web about this stuff, and I realize I am probably therefore stubbornly holding the door closed on an empty barn. But since I did that stuff as a teenager, so I figure the main terrorist threat to misuse of the information would come from disaffected teenagers educated in schools that sheltered them from developing coping mechanisms for handling losing, rejection, or hard work, and who never learned what a library card file is and who therefore can't research anything that isn't posted somewhere on the Internet. I just don't personally want to offer them helpful hints that show up in a Google search. They're going to have to work for it like I did, and if they do go to all that trouble, they'll probably have learned something about purpose and focus that makes them a little less disaffected. One can only hope.
For the above reasons and concern over Mr. Morris's point, I'm going to close this thread and ask everyone to take addition helpful hints to PM's to the TheGuyOfSouthAmerica.
