10 replies to this topic

[Green]

Hey all, i recently joined this forum looking for answers. (I hope this is in the right section, if not i am sorry)

 

But i made some black powder to make small firecrackers and fireworks etc also for other use but that's irrelevant. 

 

I produced a 100g batch with: 75g of Kno3 15g charcoal which i made and powdered myself and 10g of sulfur.

 

I made all 3 ingredients as fine as i could using a mortar and pestel, mixed them all together, then took it outside for a little burn test. It worked perfectly! I done further testing by making a little fire cracker using it before i use it for anything else, it it does not go bang, it just makes a high power flame. Very much like a rocket motor. But that's not what i wanted. 

 

Is there something i did wrong when making the black powder? any ideas? and if you have not already figured out i want to make a little firecracker before i use it for anything else. but it just does not go bang. :/ thank you to any and all that reply/view this thread!

 

 

-Green

[Green]

Welcome to the forum 1st the boring part. make sure you read as much on the forums as possible (click on the bottom to show all post (and not just the last 3 months) you may find all the best post are 4-6 years old due to all the regs and new laws causing a few people to go underground. but don't let this put you off. if you need the right paperwork to get you on the right side of the law there are a lot of people that can help on here.

 

that said onto the fun part.

 

ok so what you have made is a basic mixture of black powder but using a mortar and pestel is not good enough for fast BP. The 3 ingredients would not be grounded enough to give it a real energetic mix. so 2 things i would advise.

 

1) charcoal in a microscope has so many tiny little holes. what you really want is to really get the kno3 and sulfur into the charcoal holes. to do this you will need is a ball mill and lead balls. (i used to use a 12"  ball mill and mix for 2-6 hours.

 

This will make a lot faster burn rate but you then can make it even faster.

 

1) using detrian and little water make into a ball and granulate using a cheese greater onto some newspaper and dry.  

2) or using a 5 ton press create black powder pucks and break up into small tiny grains (using a mesh to sort the sizes)

 

but after all that if its not good enough look at your charcoal 90% of sellers say its willow charcoal but instead sell charcoal from BBQ which is a load of rubbish. if you are going to make good quality black powder you will need excellent quality willow charcoal.   

stay away from ebay for willow unless its highly recommended or buy from a pyro online shop. kno3 and sulfur will work even low quality grades

 

to make a bang you need to confine it in the tube and sealing both ends.

 

have fun and stay legal and safe.

 

 

Damn thats a nice reply! thank you! i make charcoal my self, much cheaper and quicker. also, ill look into investing into a ball mill. any ideas where i can buy one? i was thinking about making one using a old fan i have laying around. Thanks for the help though! 

[Arthur Brown]

Do a lot of reading before you make things.  This forum is a superb resource.

[Green]

Well i have a old fan laying around witch i was thinking about using the motor in that to make one, thank you for the information. Thank you. ill have a read around.

[megabusa]

A fan motor will most likely not have enough torque to power it. I assume you mean a desk fan, which stalls quite easily.

 

If you are not electrically minded, it would be safer to use a low voltage DC motor such as a windscreen wiper motor from a scrapyard.

 

I went to a lot of effort to make mine with a nice bench with quality rollers & bearings but had so much trouble with the jar slipping that I converted it to direct drive as a temporary measure, but 8 years on it's still like that & is very effective.

 

Mine consists of a large (2.6L, I think) polythene screw top chemical jar (very sturdy) which fits into a clamp around its base using a large jubilee clip.

The clamp is mounted on the motor / gearbox shaft & the jar also rests on a pair of wheels to support it. The jar lays on its side.

The whole thing rotates at about 50RPM which works fine for me.

The milling media is 120 lead balls which I made using a 20mm fishing weight mould.

30 minutes per 100g plus 30 minutes is what it needs for my setup, so theoretically I could mill 500g in 3hrs, but for 100g its only 1 hr.

 

 

The best advice is to stay safe (read on here & other forums) & don't attract attention to yourself. If you are testing stuff in the garden & the neighbours complain, the police could turn up just to have a quiet word to ask you to keep it down, but when they see what you are doing it all goes wrong ......

 

It is possible to do it legally, as posted on this forum, by getting the right paperwork but that will still only allow you to make & use up to 100g of any pyro comp at a time.

 

Cheers,

 

Phil.

[Green]

Yeh, i do mean a desk fan. ill keep that in mind but it is fairly powerful. ill have to try the design you suggested, ive tried with a couple different designs and none of them have worked, its really frustrating. yeh im only keeping it small and when i make a decently explosive substance ill take it somewhere out of the way (with owners permission) and have some fun. Have you tried the method of mixing all the ingredients in with water and basically cooking it on a stove?

[Arthur Brown]

A typical "rock tumbler" uses a small induction motor of about 40watts, hence it's not good at turning much load. But, for a compliant 100g production then you shouldn't need much of a mill and a rock tumbler rated at say 500g should turn enough lead or ceramic media to mill sub 100g batches. A rubber drum does reduce the noise dramatically, IMO well worth the money 

[starseeker]

I have been using a Evans rock tumbler for about 7 years now ,i use ceramic cycleb media and it has been great ,i can mill about 250g at a time (chemicals) and obviously 100g of B.P ,

 

A great little investment .

[Green]

damn, thanks for all the reply's! im looking to invest into one soon enough, hopefully!