Blackthumb Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Very fast BP...great for lift and burst.Much less messy than dealing with the wood coals.Scrapped all my walnut, cedar, tree of heaven...etc. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMetcalf Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Very interesting... Especially as newspaper is mostly made from woods such as pine (which doesn't make particularly good charcoal for lift). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregh Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 (edited) I don't know about pine trees in the UK, but I use pine for my lift and burst, and it seems to work pretty darn good. Edited May 12, 2015 by gregh 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMetcalf Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I use pine for everything except lift (for which I use vine). Actually for the pulvorone I use to pack shells and coarse fountain effects I use supermarket lumpwood charcoal, which I'm assuming is mostly pine. Maybe I just need a better batch of pine charcoal! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackthumb Posted May 12, 2015 Author Share Posted May 12, 2015 Everyone seems afraid to try newspaper...To me, pyro is experimentation.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FlaMtnBkr Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 No charcoal for cooking is made of pine but hardwoods like oak. If you cooked over pine you would have black smoky food that tastes terrible with a hint of turpentine. Cooking over pine would be almost as bad as the guys I saw hose down charcoal with lighter fluid and then throw a bunch of food over the yellow petroleum flames of the fluid. Their food was likely ruined a few seconds later and by the time I stopped laughing it was too late and the damage had been done. Hopefully they figured out why their food tasted so bad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MWJ Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 FlaMtnBkr, that's funny as heck. I use Pine for everything but lift, for that I use ERC from Wal-Mart pet bedding. I have Royal Empress trees so I hope they will be big enough to harvest this year to try that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregh Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Like I have mentioned before, for me, it"s the fact I have 300+ lbs of pine charcoal. It"s kind of like the Frank"s Red Hot Sauce commercial... "I use that sh.t in everything!" I know there are other woods that make hotter BP, but is it worth the trouble for me to make 5 - 10% better BP? NOPE. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pex Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I use homemade pine coal for everything. Even lift 3.5 our mil give me a better lift powder than comercial willow. But i like the newspaper idee. I think i gonna give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMetcalf Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Well thank you for that pearl of knowledge FlaMtnBkr! So now I'm wondering why cooking charcoal makes poor lift? Is it purely because it isn't as fully carbonised as it could be?I have to profess, charcoal is one of the few things in pyro I haven't tried to make myself and have relied purely on other people's knowledge when deciding what charcoal to use for what. I just knew supermarket charcoal was crap for lift and assumed it was therefore pine... I feel an evening of charcoal research ahead! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gregh Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 I feel an evening of charcoal research ahead!That's the spirit! +1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wiley Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 White pine is a good one. I haven't used it, but some folks like Ned Goski and Dan Creagan have, with great success. Blackthumb, I tried newspaper charcoal and it produced BP that was very much inferior to BP made with western red cedar. Mill times and chemicals were all kept the same; just the charcoal was changed. Any ideas as to why that might be? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichardH08 Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Here's a bit of research from about a year ago, looking at BP made from a range of charcoals:http://www.pyrobin.com/files/An%20Investigation%20of%20the%20Influence%20of%20Charcoal%20on%20BP.pdf. But I have to admit that I haven't tried charcoal made from newspaper 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackthumb Posted May 12, 2015 Author Share Posted May 12, 2015 Wiley...don't know. I have been quite impressed in the results...what I like is that there is mush less airborne dust to deal with....all flakes.I have gone away from the closed ball mill....use star roller with media....tumble the kno3 and the newschar until it is mixed...container open...then add the other ingredients and place a lid on the 5 gal pail. Mill for about 2 hrs and done. Granulate thru a screen and the powder is as fast as that made from willow or tree of heaven. I do not see the need to use wood coal except for "effect" charcoal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
braddsn Posted May 12, 2015 Share Posted May 12, 2015 Blackthumb, I tried newspaper a few months ago, and my results were like Wiley's. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't terrible or anything, but it was nowhere near the bp I produce with ERC. One thing I will note here though: In my opinion, having the fastest black powder is overrated. Regardless of the speed of your black powder, you can dial in the amounts you need to accomplish what you need to do. It's good to shoot for fast bp so that you can be a little more efficient, but it's not a big deal if you have to use 15% shell weight to lift your shells as opposed to 10%. Who cares!?>! HOWEVER... when it comes to prime and star effect, charcoal quality IS a BIG deal. Using primes such as Monocapa, KP hot prime, etc require a very reactive charcoal. I have seen results first hand of prime with sub-par charcoal, and things go downhill fast. So for me, it's easiest just to use a hot charcoal for everything I do across the board. Plus, ERC is convenient for me because I have a sawmill. I do agree with the fact that newspaper is super-convenient, and will be a good option for a lot of folks for use in BP. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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