Tap Water BP

[Wiley]

Hey folks. Made some powder on Sunday, and got it sorted out today. I wanted to make it with boiling water, so I ran the tap until 140 degree water was coming out, put that in a pot, and set it on the stove. In just a couple minutes, it was boiling, which had been the idea all along. I didn't even think about the fact that I was using tap water while doing it, so pleased I was by the shortened time on the stove.

The powder looks great, and 4g of the -4+8 mesh stuff gives my 300g PVC shuttle a 4.6ish second ride. The material I tested in the same device last summer only gave 4 second flights, so this stuff is actually doing a bit better.

When lighting an open pile of it though, I couldn't help but notice the countless little balls of some slag-like material being tossed in all directions from the POOF, and then I thought about all the dissolved crap in the tap water I'd used to granulate it.

The powder seems to be just fine; a 1" long column of the -30 mesh material rammed into a 1/4" dia. tube burned in 2.33 seconds. However, for the sake of consistency, I think I'll use distilled water in the future and just burn more methane to get it boiling. Do you think that there will be any significant change in performance by making this switch?

2FA

3FA

The yield was pretty nice too:

2FA (-4+8): 64%

3FA (-8+15): 21%

5FA (-15+30): 6.8%

-30 mesh fines: 8.2%

617g of powder in total.

[schroedinger]

That really depends on your water. You should get an analysis from your supplier. The water i have is less then 200 mg salts /l. I need 6% water for corning, So 60 ml per kg bp, so we are talking 12 mg of introduced salt/kg bp. Nothing i would worry about. Impurities in kno3, or charcoal or just to slow drying are more impacting criterias.

Something that helped a lot more from my experience was to just use ethanol for corning, no water.

[Fulmen]

If I can drink it I have no problems using it for pyro. Distilled is never wrong, but let's be realistic about it.

[pyrokid]

I used to use distilled water for my processes but I switched to using whatever is available and I have noticed no differences.

[Arthur]

The water used at Royal Gunpowder Mills (Waltham Abbey, England) was, for hundreds of years, just water from the river that drove the water powered mills. I suspect that if you can drink it then the BP will be fine.

[lloyd]

Exactly right, Arthur!

L

[FlaMtnBkr]

What about microwaving your water to get it hot?

 

I have very hard water and most of it is calcium and I don't like drinking it but there is nothing wrong with doing so. And it's probably only because I've been drinking distilled or RO water for so long that any dissolved minerals taste weird. Anyways, I use it for any BP based product and it works fine. I've made plenty of very hot BP with it. And since you have a PVC tester I can give you an idea. I've made 9-9.5 sec powder using the 4g charge vof powder called for. Goex is supposed to be about 5 sec powder so you are close to commercial strength.

 

May I ask what your ball mill is and what media you use? And the charcoal? In my home made sponenmill with a 1 gallon PVC sponenjar (thanks Lloyd) with roughly 30 lbs of lead cylinders, 3-4 hours milling, and homemade charcoal, I can just about always make 5 s powder. Only the worst charcoal is slower, with wild grape vine and commercial airfloat being the only ones I can remember off the top of my head. But many other charcoals make closer to 7 s powder including black willow. My best charcoal by a good margin makes the 9+ sec powder and is just something growing in my yard that I tried and that I don't even know the name of. Just one of a couple dozen woods I tried that grow local to me. I have never tried paulonia to know how it compares. ERC and willow seem hot, as well as Chinaberry which is popular with FPAG, but I need to make a new tester and shuttle so I can test them, though it's no longer high on my list of experiments. I could also try alcohol instead of water and a few other tricks but as you can see I can already make plenty hot BP if needed and I don't need the additional cost. It could be fun to see just how hot I can make it but without some sort of competition it probably wouldn't be very exciting finding the limit by myself.

 

Also, if you have a PPM meter you can get an idea of how much contaminants you are introducing. PPM is supposed to be equivalent to mg/L of dissolved solids (but I haven't done the math to verify). My water is right around 300 PPM or 300 mg per liter of water. I use around 25% water when granulating powder so if making a kg of powder I will use around 250 ml of water so I end up adding roughly 75 mg of mainly calcium salts/carbonates. Which is still a very small amount (0.0075%) though I wouldn't, and don't, use it for colors.

 

So as has been mentioned and in my experience, it shouldn't be an issue.

[Fulmen]

Unless you're using lab grade KNO3 you will probably have more contaminates there than even water from a puddle will add.

[Arthur]

In life aboard ships and especially subs those who drink RO water for long start to get noticeable calcium loss so usually they take mineral supplements.

[Wiley]

FlaMtnBkr, my mill is one that I built, which turns two HF 3lb jars at 84 rpm. Each jar is loaded with 5 pounds of hard 1/2" lead media, which fills the jar half-full. I mill 127g batches of powder at a time, as Ned shows in his article on Skylighter. My charcoal is ERC pet bedding cooked in a TLUD. There is no doubt that the powder is hot; it compares favorably to the powder I was making with an actual HF mill. 17g of 3FA made from such powder lifted 260g 3" shells higher than I would like.

 

My PVC tester is non standard. The reason for that was that I couldn't find any of the special PVC without a good deal of trouble, and the copper tubing was just too bloody expensive. If I remember right, mine uses 1 1/4" electrical conduit in place of the copper tubing, and standard sh 40 PVC parts that fit over it. I'd have to measure it to remember what that size was. My shuttles weigh about 300g because the PVC is so much thicker. Here's some data from last summer:

 

2FA (4g)

3.84s

4.10s

4.17s

3.83s

3FA (4g)

5.23s

5.57s

5.81s

5.57s

That powder was all granulated with cold water, and tossed the same sort of sparks when a pile was lit in the open. The powder that I just made performed marginally better than the 2FA in those tests, which was perfectly serviceable in practice.

Edited February 27, 2016 by Wiley

[MrB]

In life aboard ships and especially subs those who drink RO water for long start to get noticeable calcium loss so usually they take mineral supplements.

 

Calcium... If there were significant amounts of calcium in my municipal water, i probably wouldn't drink it. Milk contains around 5-6 more calcium then water. Have a drink to your dinner, and you'll be fine.

I never had any supplements, and neither has anyone else in the area. We aren't exactly living in the extreme mountain environments, where the water is devoid of any minerals, and everything we eat, from cereal to candy has either a added mineral content, or a natural one, making supplements, especially for calcium, un-needed for pretty much everyone. People that live on RO-water for extended periods of time, and eat a low salt diet, gets a sodium supplement recommendation, but simply adding a pinch of salt to the food would do the job just as well...

B!