Thread: Proper black powder

Originally Posted by Tommy

I have a couple of small gem tumblers, what would be good to use during a wet tumble as milling stones? Glass (ie marbles)? Stainless balls?

Most people out there use large lead balls as they do not increase risk of sparks. Long tumble times are not as necessary when you wet tumble.

The problem with steel balls is the tiny risk of sparks.

Glass is really bad worse idea - remember your physics teacher use of a dry glass rod and a dry animal skin (claimed it was a cat skin!) to create static electricity?

I'd consider grounding the tumbler unless it is properly wired up with a return/ground wire through the plug, even use a little brass brush touching the tumbling cylinder as it goes round. You can get those out of an old tumble drier.

But keeping the mixture wetted is the main thing in avoiding static electricity charges building up.

Originally Posted by 40mm

You guys wanna be careful what you say online. it is illegal to manufacture powder without the proper permission slip from the gestapo. I mean from the Gummint.

It is illegal to buy or store black powder (legal definition: mix of salpetre, sulfur and charcoal) without a FAL, and you may not have more than 1.5kg of it sitting about.

But is it really illegal to manufacture small amounts of black powder IF you have a FAL + lawful purpose? I don't think so, but someone PLEASE correct me...

Most legislation I could find rightly (and practically) focuses on possession and establishing that someone has a lawful purpose for her possession of black powder. It's of course hard to prove someone manufactured the BP she was found in possession of, so more practical to focus on the element of her possession-without-lawful-reason of black powder. Likewise as with other explosives, the pertinent question is lawful possession and purpose. There are sensible health and safety rules for handling, storage and transportation you must adhere to.