253 replies to this topic

[Yugen-biki]

mleech

60 hours is correct. I let the mill go for about 3 days. My mill is very efficient, no problems at all. The C comes out very fine and when pressed with a spoon it gets all shiny.
The reason I mill about 100-150g at the time is because the mill can't take more.

I mill the C and S at the same time when milling C for use in BP. The KNO3 is never milled but recrystallised to a very fine particles in a sub-zero alkohol bath.

The BP comes out very good with not very much effort put down. I let the machines do the work

[LadyKate]

I've searched the web and I've searched the forum but no where can I find a specification for pyro golf. I found a book that had it referenced but I don't want to buy the book to get the information. Does anyone know where the rules are to pyro golf?

[RegimentalPyro]

There aint really that much to it. It's supposdly a contest to see who can make the fastest BP.

Take 5g of your best BP and load it into a suitable mortar tube. Angle the tube at 45deg and drop a golfball on top

Fire!

The BP who gets the ball furthest wins. For "better" results fire each BP sample 5 times and average the middle three.

N.B: The results depend on many factors such as tube diam, length and windspeed. Comparing results without keeping these factors constant is meaningless.

[paul]

I wouldn?t like to search a huuuuge area to determine how far a little white ball went.... I?d like to see the place where you could do such tests without the risk of harming any people or something.

[alany]

Fire it straight up and time the flight.

[LadyKate]

Fire it straight up and time the flight.

That's what I've been doing all along to test my BP (sending test shells up). I was thinking there was a formal set of rules to Pyro Golf - at least the way it is referenced in a couple of Blackpowder books seemed to make it much more sophisticated than just pumping one up in the air.

[LadyKate]

I wouldn?t like to search a huuuuge area to determine how far a little white ball went.... I?d like to see the place where you could do such tests without the risk of harming any people or something.

I have a rifle range that allows me to shoot my Coehorn mortars - which use golf balls for ammo. When I put a full load in the mortar, the golf ball simply disappears (it goes more than 600 yards). So, I think I would agree with you. Making a big hole in Juan would not be a good Pyro Golf outcome. Shoot safe - 5 grams of hot powder will make an artillery piece out of a tight fitting golf ball mortar.

Shooting straight up (like Alan said) is the way to time it anyway. You have to hear/see it hit the ground. A video camera would make the timing easy.

Edited by LadyKate, 19 August 2005 - 01:35 PM.

[LadyKate]

Here is a picture of the mortar I was talking about (off topic but this post was accidental and I didn't want to repeat myself)



The safety point was that a paper tube with a golf ball in it is not much different than this - the ball comes out fast.

Edited by LadyKate, 19 August 2005 - 01:34 PM.

[alany]

There is always ballistic pendulums for compact powder testing. You can capture the projectile in a can of plasticine or wadding which not only makes it much safer but also makes the math easier because the collision is essentially inelastic (assuming the target is the swung mass, the mortar can be instead but the results are probably less relable).

[LadyKate]

I just tried white pine for charcoal and was really impressed. I did a test burn only but the pulverone flashed nicely - this weekend I have five pulverones to check and this one promises to be one of the hottest.

Who would have thought that one of the easiest woods to get would make a great charcoal for hot BP?

BTW: My tests are on: Elephant 2Fg (commercial black powder) and pulverones from Pine, Maple, Bamboo, Airfloat from Skylighter, and Willow. The test is a 35 gram film can launched from a 1.5" schedule 80 pipe that is 15" long. The powder load is 2 grams. Any guesses on which charcoal will win? My initial guess would be willow or pine with Elephant third and bamboo a close fourth. Maple might be last but the commercial airfloat is pretty slow so it will be close race. I've tried some of these so my guess is based on a little experience. However, this time the equipment/load/and environment will be standardized so I could be fooled. This is not very scientific but it promises to be fun.

I also have straw charcoal but I think I may have pooched the making of it. It doesn't seem to be very reactive. If there are any secrets to making straw charcoal, let me in on 'em cuz I don't think I'm doing it right.

EDIT: It appears I was a little premature on my straw charcoal critique. The ball milled BP made from straw charcoal was very slow but once made into pulverone/granules it speeded up significantly. While I haven't tested it in a mortar(tomorrow!), it seems to be very gassy and reasonably fast.

Edited by LadyKate, 26 August 2005 - 03:23 PM.

[LadyKate]

The results of the tests were not what I expected - which should have been expected.

Here are the results: Charcoal Tests

Any ideas on why the granulated versions didn't perform as well as the pulverones in some cases?

Edited by LadyKate, 27 August 2005 - 03:37 PM.

[RegimentalPyro]

An exceedingly informative post LadyKate. Interesting results also.

As to why pulvorone outperformed the corned/granulated version, pulvorone has a large surface area - This is because the surface is extremely irregular. Corned usually has smooth faceted surfaces which leads to a smaller surface area

Please be aware this is just my theory rather than stated fact. I'm very open to other theories!

[LadyKate]

As to why pulvorone outperformed the corned/granulated version, pulvorone has a large surface area - This is because the surface is extremely irregular. Corned usually has smooth faceted surfaces which leads to a smaller surface area

Please be aware this is just my theory rather than stated fact. I'm very open to other theories!

I could buy that theory if the results were uniformly faster with pulverone - but they weren't. However, like you, I wouldn't want to make too much of it since the test has so many variables that it makes your head swim. It's probably best to stand back and view the rough results rather than try to make something out of a few hundreths of a second. It would be interesting if others have duplicated the phenomenon with their BP, though.

[alany]

The white pine result is quite encouraging! Was that Pinus radiata or strobus?

Pulverone is less dense so it will burn faster than dead-pressed and corned powder of similar particle size. There is just more surface area for the same mass. Not sure about moderately high densities like 1.7 g/cc, the optimum density might be a function of the charcoal's initial density or cellular structure.

It would be interesting to do density studies, say timing spoulettes pressed to different densities of the same kind of powder. I've done quite a few burn rate experments with this kind of constant surface area and the results are very repeatable and more easily controlled than mortar shots. What I'd really like to know is if spoulette burn times correlate with projectile flight times.

[paul]

It would be interesting if others have duplicated the phenomenon with their BP, though.

Yes, I did several tests with different charcoals, too but your post and the given information is GREAT

But I can agree that White pine and all conifers at all give great results when using for blackpowder. I don?t know if I would call this a phenomenon but you asked for that, and so I replied