Thread: Making Black Powder

There's an internet bloke by the monicker 'Mad Monk' who did a lot of research into modern and historic powders - and wrote about it in a series of articles. Some of those are quite old now - but you might be able to dredge them up.

His take is - Swiss is the best powder made today - and Goex used a 'special' charcoal they bought from a supplier who'd extracted whatever they wanted from the wood and dumped the 'char' to the Goex company.
Swiss used Buckthorn Alder - which is currently the Rolls Royce wood for Black Powder charcoal.
Goex used whatever they could get cheap, their primary client being the military - us gun enthusiasts being just a sideline.
I see Goex has different offerings on the market now - I think 'Swiss' has made them think about pulling their sox up.

There's been good and bad powders through history, but concensus usually points to the Brits making some of the best powders ever made. The Govt mills at Waltham Abbey made a lot of these powders in the nineteenth Century and they used different formulations for different guns. The Brits put a lot of investment into gunpowder - they had an Empire to rule.

Curtis's $ Harvey made an extremely good commercial canister powder they sold across the world under different guises - we knew it as 'Curtis's & Harvey #6'
Sometime in the mid/later twentieth Century they sold the powder making equipment to Wano (Germany) and they continued the C&H #6, but using a different charcoal - and it was shit.

The charcoal is the guts of any black powder - and buckthorn alder was King.
And cooking it was all important ........... improper 'cooking' could turn the best wood into something incredibly average - I've done it.

They have a competition over in the States where people fire golf balls out of mortars. Some of the homemade powders that are made today in the 'enthusiasts' garage blow any of the commercial makers into the sidelines - they're getting 'hang-times' no one's ever seen before.

So - lot of experimentation to go yet, there will be formulations (not all powders are 75/15/10) and new charcoal woods that will exceed current knowledge - so, an interesting one to pursue