tomu

Never had any trouble getting the pressed pellets out. Distorting the tube could happen with the hammering methode, as occurs sometimes when ramming a rocket or fontain too hard.

But what really troubles me is your mentioning of breaking the bench vise. My God, I'm working now for a bit more than thirty years and never ever broke a bench vise. I must do something seriously wrong. It sounds that breaking a bench vise is a common occurence to you. What do I wrong? May be you can give me some advice on that matter. Where do you by your bench vises at toys 'r' us?

Or haven't you broken any bench vise either? May be you just heard from a friend who has a cousin, whos uncle has a friend, who knows somebody who has heard about of breaking a bench vise. Not that I believe breaking a bench vise is impossible, there might be somewhere a unfortunate chap who broke his, poor soul.

Yes, your are absolutely right about the hydraulic press, but not everyone is so fortunate to have one.

Sorry, I switched the letters. It should be BP for Black Powder.

A good compromise would be to dry mill all ingredients separately. And do the final milling/incorporating of the dry green meal with hardwood balls (they are sold in hobby shops) instead of lead or other metall media. Glass marbles come also to my mind as a possible media. No, glass marbles do not spark.

You will always get a mess when trying to mill the comp. wet.

The ball milling method of making black powder exits since the days of the french revolution. The french milled their PB dry with bronce balls in barrels for several hours. Don't you think that it wouldn't be known by now almost 300 years later if PB will explode when milled dry?

Up until the first world war artillery grenades filled with PB as explosive filler were shot (esp. shrapnel grenades). The grendades didn't blow up in the barrel. We guys shoot star shells filled with PB and sometimes even with flash comp. out of mortars. None of the shells explodes because of the heavy kick it gets when shot out.

And now you are seriously thinking PB may explode from dry milling. Ever tried to explode PB by a hammer blow. I mean lay a gramm or so of PB on an anvil and hit it as hard as you can with a sledgehammer. I wasn't able to get it explode this way even with commercially manufactured PB (WANO/Dynamit Nobel PB).

The charcoal/KNO3 mix will also explode/deflagrate when ignited even if you leave the sulfur out.

You can mill green meal dry in your ball mill without any risk of explosion. I do it myself and others aswell for several years now. Milling wet green meal makes just a holy mess.

Check Dan Williams phantastic homepage http://www.wecreate4...lackpowder.html
if you don't believe me. Sorry, just practical stuff and very little theory there.