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Lead Percentage/PPM in BP


usapyro

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I'm kind of curious the percentage or PPM of lead in BP after milling with standard Antimony hardened media from a source like Skylighter, or an older source from a long time ago like American Pyro.

 

Not too worried about it for long term health reasons. It's not soluble, as long as you don't eat too much BP and get it into your stomach acid, lead isn't a problem. People in cities with bad pipes are much worse off.

 

But, I was kinda shocked when I was reading about how one person managed to get their lead amount up to over 3% ball milling straight charcoal with lead media! Which even caused their powder to slow way down.

 

Now that is a problem...

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The lead media I got from APS was advertised as hardened, but was in fact soft lead. When I milled black powder with actual hardened lead (not from APS), a 750 gram batch gained 5 grams in 2 hours, 15 minutes of mill time. When I milled 500 grams of charcoal with the same media for the same time, it gained 20 grams. Stainless steel is a much better choice for milling charcoal.

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A very famous United States Marine is often quoted from the battlefield of Belleau Wood as saying "Come on you sonsabitches! Do you want to live forever!"

I still wear PPE but I don't sweat it or panic at the MSDS anymore.

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Holy crap... That is a lot of added lead David! Lol... I had a weird feeling my balls have been going down... I remember more media in my jars. I guess there was.

 

I can see why powder mills were not ball mills... And were those circular V trough mills. (Forgot their name.)

 

The cheapest practical solution to achieve "near perfect" BP is to mill each chem individually as fine as possible with Stainless Steel media, then ball mill all together with good old hardened lead to reach full speed. The KNO3 and Charcoal. Sulfur is kinda a "Soft" material and doesn't ever need pre-milling as far as I know.

 

Still, 5g is still a lot of dead weight, even for that much comp...

Edited by usapyro
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