Making black powder

HI
As you no im new to the forum
Well im about to make my first batch of Black Powder and i have all the chemicals nesicary but i cant seem to get any willow charcole so BBQ charcole will have to do for the first batch.
I've made my Ball Mill, not bad for a weekend make, and now im waiting for some non rainy wheather to place my ball mill in the safety of my garden and mix the chemicals. Im wondering one thing though about my mill. This question has been asked before but im confussed due to hearing different answers for my milliong media is it allrite to use marbels as ive heard some peole say its fine and others saying its dangerouse what is the real answer??
Also once i have my first batch of Black Powder done what shall i make that is a easy starter to pryro?
Thanks
Ben

I highly doubt that the glass marbles would spark, and would make OK BP but needs longer milling time then that required for heavy lead media. What I would be concerened about however is that your blackpowder will have glass in it. The marbles will more then likely splinter off into tiny shards. This may introduce a great deal of friction depending on what you might do with the BP.
And for a great first pyro item, a fountian of course! Get yourself a tube, plug one end with clay, ram your composition into it until you have a bit of extra space and finish it off with another clay plug. Plugs should be as long as your case is wide. Next drill a hole (very slowly and carefully) about 1/2 to 1/3 the width of the case into the center of one plug. Add a tiny bit of loose BP and insert fuse! I would reccomend you mix your BP with and extra 15-20% charcoal for nice golden sparks. Makes a nice fountian!
No clay? Just grind up some cheap kitty litter, works great.

I would advise against using marbles. Please go and find some brass rod from your local engineering supplier, and cut this up into 1/2" by 1/2" cylinders.

Makes great, hard wearing, and non-sparking media.

I would advise against using marbles too. Glass is not really known for being non-brittle. The obvious reason would be the fact that glass does not burn. If you had shards or even fine particles in your fire works there is a posibility of unintended injury. This is where the not burning takes effect, the glass will become a hard peice of shrapnel and more importantly, not burn up like metal. Even if it does not hurt anyone instantly by hitting them hard, there is still the off chance that it will end up in someone's eye. You do not need much to severly irritate an eye. Take the word of anyone who has had metal or glass in their eye. The bad thing is that it take a couple of days before you realise it is there. And by the time starts to hurt, and then you finially decided that it is actually worth going to hospital, it has embedded itself nice and deep. I had three bits of metal in my eye once. It took about two days to become uncomfortable, another day for it to become painful, half a day to decide I need to go to hospital, and then half an hour in Ashford Hospital's eye clinic. Only one of the bits was only just visable to the naked eye. The other two were microscopic. It would have been really nice if it took five minutes to recover, but it took about three months before my eyesight was back to normal. I'm not a H&S junkey myself, I'm not trying to belittle anyone by giving the school style eye talk, just advising safer methods to practice. I personally use ceramic media for all my milling. It is very very hard and any dust that might be produced is inert. Hardened metals are also good, because the bits will burn up when the composition burns, but the down side is posible contamination.

Edited by Andrew, 19 February 2005 - 06:34 PM.

ok i wont use marbles then i think i will make a fountaina as a first project.
Also when al93535 mentioned ussing cat liter instead of clay i prisume you grind it up and then add water and paste it on like ussing glue or clay?
Thanks
Ben

Edited by Ben, 19 February 2005 - 06:52 PM.

i do not add water to mine! No point! Jus pour it in and ram it hard!

And that really does the job for a end plug. I will have to try that..
Thanks Ben

Yes, just ramming it will make it clump together. Bentonite, red clay etc have this interesting property. Some feel quite 'waxy'.

i was unsure if rammed dry cat litter would work but believe me and all the others, its great. i rammed some 15mm tourbillions the other day with a cat litter plug and i could not push it out again. i use brass 1/2" rods for my milling media and its probably the cheapest way whilst staying safe (non sparking)

Hi RegimentalPyro.

Another way of making black powder would be to mix all the ingredients as you have done grind them aswell if they are quite corse,And then add just boiled water,Mix to make the whole mixture into a paste and so it is all wet,Then leave to dry once dry grind as you normaly would,Doing this should cause the potassium nitrate to disolve in the water,Then as the water evaporates it will form crystals of potassium nitrate onto the atoms of sulphur and charcole which should make the whole mixture burn quicker as the atoms have there own supply of oxygen from the saltpetre.


in theory.

Hope this helps.

Yer, I think thats basically the CIA method! I have never used the CIA method or really read up on it. But sounds exactly like it

Well, I have now joined the club as I made some BP today. Because I can't mill very far from the house I did the charcoal and sulphur in one jar and the potassium nitrate in another. I thought I might label them so I don't get them mixed up in future but it'd be pretty difficult to mix them up with all the powder and guff that's inside them (espesh the charcoal and sulphur - it really held onto the rubber).

Anyhoo, I made a miscalculation about how much potassium nitrate to mill meaning I had 25% too much so when I mixed the chemicals together (using a big spoon and some tupperware) I only used three-quarters of it. Although this was a really rough and ready guestimate at three-quarters, I figured that as this was my first whack at the pinata that I'd be happy with anything that burnt whether it be fast or slow.

To test it, I made a small pouch of a few grams in a tiny plastic bag which I fused with visco. It disappeared in a split second with an audible "woof!" and a cloud of white smoke. *very* encouraging. Tomorrow, when it's light, I'm gonna' try it on some paper to do the scorch test but fingers crossed, I might have blundered into a decent batch of powder. Next up will be ricing it. Not sure whether to use a binder of some sort or not.

Hi RegimentalPyro.

Another way of making black powder would be to mix all the ingredients as you have done grind them aswell if they are quite corse,And then add just boiled water,Mix to make the whole mixture into a paste and so it is all wet,Then leave to dry once dry grind as you normaly would,Doing this should cause the potassium nitrate to disolve in the water,Then as the water evaporates it will form crystals of potassium nitrate onto the atoms of sulphur and charcole which should make the whole mixture burn quicker as the atoms have there own supply of oxygen from the saltpetre.
in theory.

Hope this helps.

That's the method I found. What I found suugests that after you dissolve the nitrate and add on the C and S, add in some isopropanol to help ensure that the nitrate precipitates out of the solution.

O right ill bear that in mind thanks,Im guessing it is to drive off the water is it.

If you can, I think the ball mill method is the easiest, cleanest and fastest. Can't really complain about anything, except if you don't have a ball mill.