Thread: Home Brew Black Powder........Craft Powder?

Originally Posted by akaroa1

I once had the idea to build a 2 Pounder Whitworth Breech loading cannon with a 40mm Bofors barrel.
I found a number of barrels but their owners were reluctant to sell knowing they were going to be cut in half.

But I did play around enough to have a play at making double and triple helix threads in the workshop like the Whitworth Breech threads.
It's great to hand to an engineer and see their face when they realise why the thread looks a bit strange.
The multi helix threads are very cool, so that one turn of the breech block engaged enough thread surface area to contain lobbing a 4 pound projectile some distance

But not as big as an anvil

I just happen to know where quite a few bofur barrels are..not far from where Im sitting actually

my memory is telling me there is scene in movie of them doing it..sweet home Alabama is nudging me..... there are LOTS of videos of it about.

My "ball mill" is a 6" pvc pipe about a foot long, heated and crimped in a bit (to promote tumbling rather than rolling). Driven by an old vat-stirring motor. Half full of various lead ball sinkers. Can do +/-1.5lb of BP at a go. Run on a stension lead, round the back of shed incase of bangs, but never had one yet.

You can also skip the sulfur, if you want. Straight KNO3 and charcoal.
Any charcoal works, I'm fortunate enough to have crack-willow local, which apparently has the highest calorific bang-for-buck.

I've tried pucking and corning and not noticed any difference from .303 to .45-70 to 12ga to golf-ball cannon. So it gets used straigh out of the mill.

Out of curiosity where do you guys buy/obtain kno3 and Sulphur from?
Currently I’m using yara krista k plus (1:3 ratio of potassium to nitrogen?) and manutec sulphur but not the cheapest and if I can get better ingredients I would like to, I do question the 1:3 ratio of the potassium nitrate.
My first batch was kinda pathetic being very slow and hard to ignite but I’m putting most of that down to not being fine enough, but it worked as a proof of concept so I’m trying to improve from there :p
Also used weeping willow charcoal as we had one fall down in the last cyclone, although I’m thinking it’s a bit overdone so room for improvement

Out of curiosity do you guys press your powder into pucks when Corning or just wet and grate it through appropriate sized screens/mesh?

I think the key to doing this..is to be realistic,and enjoy the journey....you are making something that our forefathers have made for hundreds of years using very primative equipment in some cases..... you can make powder tht is right up there in QUALITY of the very best swiss powder HOWEVER doing it via simple methods..no milling and only basic mixing grinding your VOLUME per grain will be larger.....it matters not if front stuffing and in cartridges,you will just have a lesser charge..no issue. apparently when the US Army took guns off the plains indians they pulled the charges and found most were closer to 40 grns than to 70 grns... as our good man shows in the 45/70 subsonic thread..you heaving a big hunk of lead,it doesnt need to be super fast to kill super well.
if you want to do that use smokeless.....
I find BP loads much nicer to fire..way less noise and recoil.

As for getting a fine mix, I have seen it made in a blender. Long extension cord, in the middle of lawn. Turned on at the end.....
The end result, was used in a pack howitzer as blank loads. (a 9x19 case, with normal primer, filled with smokeless and hot glue to seal, as the primer)

I reckon this would be great if just doing charcoal and water. The blender method that is.

Next thing you know you will be imitating these guys

this is who I purchased my sulphur powder from.that is what it's labelled as too.i just went and looked....I've actually got all 3 ingredients sitting waiting for me to make another batch.

Thanks for getting back to me on that, they seem to of gone under, trying to access their website results in an account suspended message,
I've seen them mentioned before, seems to be pretty hard to get KNO3 and decent elemental sulphur now,
seems to be the only sources I can find are Yara krista K plus KNO3 fertiliser ($95 at PGGwrightsons for 25kg) and Manutec garden sulphur which is $25 odd for 500 grams from KiwiGardener, Manutec make larger packs but cant find any in NZ plenty in aussie though so may be able to import them.

flower of sulphur is 99.9% and buy off trademe...saw it listed yesterday.....salt petre is still being sold garden supply places,hydroponic suppliers even better still

if you go back far enough.....folks would have got sulphur from scraping it from volcanic vents..salt petre is poohs n wees crystalized

Sulphur is used for gardening. We get it here from bunnings. Try gardening supplies.

Have not delt with them. But importing to NZ could be a problem.

https://www.petandgarden.com.au/liqu..._bag_size-1_kg

we have bunnings here......

I've read flowers of sulphur isn't what you want and can cause the powder to self ignite, dunno how true that is but elemental sulphur is available although only 1 source I could find that was 100% not 90% or lower, the only 100% stuff I could find is manutec brand from kiwi gardener, only sold in 500g bottles annoyingly but manutec makes 3kg bags and can be found through multiple AU retailers for between $15 and $30 maybe could be possible to convince a company to import them?,
potassium nitrate can be brought in the form of krista K plus from farm stores like PGGWrigthsons for $95 for a 25kg bag,

if you were going through the effort of import (and potential legal implications ?) I think you'd want to get some chemical grade which isn't exactly necessary for BP to work so may as well buy from within NZ, im finding that its quite important to get the powder as fine as possible (duh) although im limited by my current grinding methods, I can still see yellow specs of sulphur throughout my powder and it leaves a nasty residue which im guessing is due to incomplete burn possibly due to not being mixed thoroughly enough but todays batch was ground as many times as I could be bothered and it ignites much easier, still not to the point where the powder flashes but much faster burn time of around a second, 95% + humidty at the moment so ill wait till we get some sun and see if drying it out helps it flash

Not true flowers if sulphur is pure sulphur in dust form, it's ideal as the crystal or prill stuff is a bugger to grind even in a lead ball mill. Also carbon black pigment for ink making is ready to go if you can get a source leaving you with just the saltpetre to grind to a dust.