slight clarification:
Quote:
in the making of BP, the three chemicals are mixed together with water and it's compressed into a large look like hockey puck.
Some powder makers use what is called a ball mill to break it down into the needed grain size. Goex uses the wheel mill.
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There's more to it than mixing with water and forming a puck. The water is present so as to insure that the mix will not ignite as it is being worked by the mill. Simple mixing results in "green powder" aka polverone. To be true black powder the ingredients must be incorporated - combined so that they cannot be separated.
The ball mill (wheel mill?) is used to incorporate the three chemicals. The process takes hours. After they are incorporated and while still damp the mix is pressed into a cake and then forced through a screen - actually a series of screens, iirc. It is the screening that determines grain size. Then it is glazed.
It is always possible that the large scale manufacturers use other methods - alcohol precipitation is one - but the method described is the classic means.
Does Goex use the alcohol method? It is much more risky than the mill.
There is continuing discussion on various fora about whether compression is needed at all. I thumb press my Postells into unsized cases...contact with the powder - yes. Compression? Not much, if any.
Pete