do you make your own powder?

[troy_mclure]

if so where do you buy the supplies from?
what do you shoot it out of?

better than store bought?

[horseman308]

Pretty sure it's illegal to do that. I don't know about this forum, but on other sites it's against the rules to even discuss it, given the fact that this is public and you never know who's reading it. Just sayin'.

[darkgael]

on other sites it's against the rules to even discuss it

Absolutely forbidden on a number of fora to which I contribute, despite the fact that Google has a lot.
It is a complicated and not particularly safe process requiring a ball mill. The big manufacturers do it in isolated facilities by remote control and even they have problems occasionally.
It is legal.
Here's are links to where legality and quality are discussed: http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/i...hp/t-6769.html
http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/...ack-powder.asp

The quality is usually low. You can buy much better stuff than you can make.
The cost of chemicals and equipment will buy an awful lot of much better commercial BP.
Pete

[zxcvbob]

I made a pound of it last year; two 8 ounce batches. I used stump remover for the KNO3, garden sulfur, and homemade white cedar charcoal. Tumbled it dry in a rubber-drummed rock tumbler about 1/3 full of .457 lead balls, then dampened with 70% rubbing alcohol to make a clay and pressed it thru a kitchen wire mesh strainer to make what's called pulvorone. It actually worked pretty well; I think the limitations were the impurities in the stump remover and low density of the pulvorone. I need to find some better potassium nitrate before I try it again. Also I need to add a binder, or press it, because the half pound of the stuff I have left has crumbled back to a fine dusty powder.

The pressing and corning steps to making black powder of the proper density give me the willies. Not sure I'll ever try that.

I shot it in .45 Colt cartridges. Just filled them to the top and pressed/crimped a bullet in place to compress the powder a little. The first time I tried it it didn't work very well because the powder was still too damp even tho' it looked dry. I tried it a month later (the color had changed from black to very dark gray) and it was *much* better.

[Chaz88]

Home made powder is not particularly good in firearms. It is good if you make your own fireworks. Much thought and study needs to go into making your own pyrotechnics. It is fun but dangerous. But you will be a hit on the 4th of July.

I am not going to give the formula or procedure. It is not that hard to find. Word of caution, many of the formulas on the NET are a bit off and lead to pore results.

[troy_mclure]

ive got several recipes, all in black powder shooting books.

i was just wondering where guys bought the "ingredients", and the quality they got.

[Hardcase]

When I was a kid, you used to be able to buy the ingredients at the drugstore...and I'm not that old!

Of course, I didn't have an Internet to get myself in trouble - I had to rely on word of mouth to get that done. And, amazingly, I was capable of causing plenty of it.

Somewhat tangential to the topic, when I was 11 or 12 and firecrackers were still legal, some of my buddies and I decided to drop one through a hole in this steel plate out in front of the old mercantile* shop down the road. We figured that it would be nice and echo-y. In fact, that steel plate was the cover for the fuel storage tank fill tubes. It wasn't exactly echo-y. Fortunately, the place neither blew up nor caught on fire, but the huge spout of flame that blew the steel plate a couple of feet in the air scared the bejesus out of us.

BTW, when I say "my buddies and I decided", what I mean is that I said, "Hey, let's see what happens if I..."

I guess that today I'd be in jail for doing that.


* Not that old, doggone it! It's still the Mercantile, just like it was a hundred years ago.

[darkgael]

Troy:

i was just wondering where guys bought the "ingredients"

Did you check the links yet?
Pete

[Delmar]

I have been using stump remover but it is not the best. Here is a source of KNO3 that is supposed to be pretty good,
http://www.aquariumfertilizer.com/in...ShowItemStart=

Hi quality sulfur is easy to come up with on Ebay or any of the pyrotechnic websites like skylighter.com

I took down a willow tree this summer, so I am planning to make my own charcoal.

[Tom2]

When I was a kid you could buy little bottles of chemicals in hobby shops for chemistry experiments. I bought the ingredients, more or less, and mixed up a small batch of crude powder. I took it to a friends house and we lit fire to it, it burned pretty fast and furious but I did not attempt to take it any further than that, as I recall. No fireworks projects or anything. Even at that age my dull sense of caution won over I guess.

[fastforty]

Well, if you asked Captain Kirk, you've find out how fast & easy it is to gather up the materials just laying around on the ground. Even with some weird lizard-man chasing after you, you should be able to put together enough to stop a tank within a few minutes

[zxcvbob]

Even with some weird lizard-man chasing after you

The Gorn. (I have no idea why I remember that)

[B.L.E.]

I played around with making homemade gunpowder during my teenage years, I didn't understand at the time that those ingredients proportions were by weight, not volume so all I got was something that fizzled, made a lot of smoke, and left a puddle of molten salts behind.
In those days, saltpeter was sold in the spice rack of the grocery store, for curing meats.
The local feed store sold powdered sulfur.

Goex, Swiss, Scheutzen, et al make such good powder that is so affordable that I don't see the point of trying to make my own and most likely ending up with an inferior product.
I once developed my own Ektachrome color slide film, but, while successful, it was so much bother that I figured out that letting a lab do it for me was a bargain. Ditto for making my own gunpowder.

[Chaz88]

Even with some weird lizard-man chasing after you
The Gorn. (I have no idea why I remember that)

Yep. I watch mith-busters also. Not sure why they had such a hard time getting the proportions correct.

[troy_mclure]

Troy:
Quote:
i was just wondering where guys bought the "ingredients"

Did you check the links yet?
Pete

nope, both blocked by my works web blocker.

[zxcvbob]

Try setting your DNS servers manually to OpenDNS (208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220). http://www.opendns.com/

That will bypass many web filters.

[darkgael]

Troy: Skylighter is a source for very pure components.

[Delmar]

The quality is usually low. You can buy much better stuff than you can make.
The cost of chemicals and equipment will buy an awful lot of much better commercial BP.

Define "low quality" if you mean by that, it is harder to ignite, that would be a problem. If you mean that you need to use a little more powder, that would be no big deal to some who want to shoot cowboy loads. I make white powder for my .50cal muzzle loader. It's a whole lot of fun. You can always buy commercial when you want to cause thunder!

[rattletrap1970]

The only thing I use stump remover for is Niter Bluing. I see absolutely no reason to mess around making your own powder.

[Rangefinder]

I'm getting the impression more people are responding to this than actually know much about it. For those that DO know what they're talking about---thanks for helping put out the rumor fires...

A: It's not complicated.

B: It's not illegal

C: Both potassium nitrate and sulfur show up by the pound with a simple little Amazon search.

Yes--I've done it. After working out a good ratio and grain size, I had really good luck with an old .45 caliber smoke pole I had.

[zxcvbob]

I once developed my own Ektachrome color slide film, but, while successful, it was so much bother that I figured out that letting a lab do it for me was a bargain.

And after having done so, you probably appreciated the film lab a lot more. Plus, if all the film labs went out of business, you could blow the dust off your vats and chemical bottles and you'd know that you could develop your own.

(if you developed your own Kodachrome, I would be *really* impressed )

[Delmar]

And after having done so, you probably appreciated the film lab a lot more. Plus, if all the film labs went out of business, you could blow the dust off your vats and chemical bottles and you'd know that you could develop your own.

I think a lot of people underestimate the value of trying something just because you are interested in the process.

[Delmar]

I see absolutely no reason to mess around making your own powder.

I don't think anyone is trying to convince you that you should.

[Rangefinder]

Speaking clearly for myself---I'm a "HOW" type of guy. I am generally not satisfied simply with the knowledge that something works. I like to know how it works---been that way my whole life. It's the same reason I got into metallurgy. I like a nice piece of hand-forged damascus steel in the form of a blade. Is that enough? Nope--I had to learn how to pattern-weld the stuff myself. Fun stuff to play with. Same goes here. It's enough for some to run down to the store and buy a pound of BP to spend an afternoon shooting their muzzle-loader. Fantastic! Have a great time. ME? I like going further. Do I need to? Nope. Do I do it all the time? Nope--I usually use the commercial stuff. But it's fun as hell to use my own batch and get measurable success. My overall objective at some point is to build my own smoke-pole from scratch (not from a kit, mind you---from the ground up). Learning how to make BP is just one small piece of that puzzle. It's fun, and it's rewarding. Is it practical? Depends how you look at it. Knowledge is priceless--I like to keep well-stocked.

I guess that today I'd be in jail for doing that.

LOL Yah, I know the feeling... Back in the day when I first started playing with "chemical mixtures", I left a couple pretty good-sized smoking holes out in a rancher's field that drew more attention than I wanted back then--I seem to remember a few broken windows that may or may not have been distantly related to said experiment... Today I'd have an entire BATFE task force hunting me down... How times have changed, huh?

[darkgael]

I'm a "HOW" type of guy. I am generally not satisfied simply with the knowledge that something works. I like to know how it works---

Yes....understand that way of thinking. It was my whole rationale about making BP when I was doing that. Can I do it? Yes, I can. And now that I know that, I don't but....if I ever have to, the ingredients are on the shelf.
I agree that the recipe is simple and the process, on paper is fairly simple....but...you need a ball mill or something similar (not that a mill is terribly expensive but, then, neither is Goex). And the whole corning process...I found it harder to do than expected; at least, harder for me to get a consistent result.
Pete