The worst black powder charcoal

[TXpyro]

I know this is kind of a weird question, but what is the worst charcoal for making black powder? A BP with the worst burn rate? 

That would be a fun challenge. To see who can make the worst black powder. I was thinking lump charcoal green mix but I bet there's worse out there. 

[Zumber]

Its all about selection of materials and do you process mixture and other factors that affect burn rate.

Lightweight and finer mesh charcoal makes faster bp and hardwood charcoal burns slower.

Burn rate depends on choice of chemicals, degree of mixing,purity of chemicals,size and shape of particles,ambient temperature and pressure.

[Richtee]

Buy some of that airfloat stuff from Skylighter

[TXpyro]

2 hours ago, Richtee said:

Buy some of that airfloat stuff from Skylighter

Skylighter airfloat is not that bad. I've used it plenty of times and it works ok. It's not teeerrrrrible. 

Edited December 15, 2023 by TXpyro

[cmjlab]

DavidF shows how to get a pretty good lift from hardwoods like skylighter, and I believe he is just screen mixing (after "super milling" individual components).  He has some good info floating around here too, id highly recommend checking it out.  

[DavidF]

Thanks cmjlab. I did a lot of work to develop single component milling to be a competitive alternative to 3 component milling, for those that can't mill complete black powder safely. That's where I employed the 'super milling' of the charcoal component. I mainly used hot BP charcoals, but I also made some good black powder using red oak. It's been alleged that oak charcoal doesn't make good black powder, but the study in Pyrotechnica 17 says otherwise. The key is the milling. Oak charcoal doesn't make good black powder by today's commonly used BP preparation methods used by amateur pyros. It's good enough for commercial manufacturers though, because the commercial preparation method is different. So oak isn't good or bad. It can be either.

When I made lift using commercial airfloat charcoal, it was in response to a challenge. The statement was that commercial airfloat charcoal CANNOT make lift that would lift a baseball-sized shell, no matter how much was used. I found that statement interesting, because it was made by the same person that showed how to make black powder with Skylighter charcoal (commercial airfloat). We were not allowed to mill the charcoal component for this challenge. I was able to prove the first statement to be incorrect, using baseball testing. The goal was achieved by using a hot water preparation method and increasing the charcoal percentage in the black powder. The idea here was that airfloat charcoal has large particles in it that do not participate in the onboard reaction, but are thrown out as sparks, still burning. Adding more charcoal countered that issue. I was asked to write up the method, which I did. I have the article around here somewhere. The method was tested, and the resulting powder was found to be acceptable, but not as good as what I claimed. I attribute this difference to the fact that I used lift cups in my testing, which all shells have. The tester with the lesser results simply threw the powder loose in the mortar, which nobody would ever do IRL. I have no doubt that milling the airfloat charcoal first would make a better black powder, using the same method I used. 

None of the methods I employ use any original techniques. Every trick or tweak I've used has come from information already known that I read somewhere, and from suggestions from others. 

The worst charcoal tested in the Pyrotechnica study was rice hull charcoal.

[cmjlab]

Thanks David, though it may not make the greatest lift I DO respect the fact that you proved otherwise, and stuck to your guns on a topic that gets a LOT of people really upset if you say anything contrary to the "only methods that work"....  Someday I will be at the same level, for now I just slink away from arguments so I don't get booted out for disagreeing.  

I sometimes wish people would remember that we all learned at some point, and that even for the experts in amateur pyro, they had some old timers that eventually agreed to help them out without shutting them down for suggesting or trying something new...... Enough of my rant....

[JAWChemist]

Black powder with pulverized diamonds?

 

[TXpyro]

42 minutes ago, JAWChemist said:

Black powder with pulverized diamonds?

 

I think I saw "elemental maker" do that one time.

[JAWChemist]

@mumbles also mentions it.

[Sulphurstan]

On 12/15/2023 at 4:23 AM, TXpyro said:

I know this is kind of a weird question, but what is the worst charcoal for making black powder? A BP with the worst burn rate? 

That would be a fun challenge. To see who can make the worst black powder. I was thinking lump charcoal green mix but I bet there's worse out there. 

I once tried using lampblack, and it was REALLY bad.

 

[PyroGb]

@elementalmaker tried it with graphite that was bad also I could see charcoal briquettes being bad due to lots of impurity’s.

[FlaMtnBkr]

The BP I tried to make when I was 7 or 8 couldn't get much worse and barely burned. It was saltpeter and sulfur from the pharmacy and charcoal - from a bag of BBQ briquettes, because what other kind of charcoal was there? I also had a mortar and pestle and window screen to sift out the big chunks of charcoal that wouldn't break down.

Anyways, it barely would burn even though I worked pretty hard to make it. I can't imagine BP being much worse that actually burns. I'm also sure I'm not the only one to start their pyro career that way, at least back before the internet when info was almost impossible to find and the public library was your main source of info.

Edited January 15 by FlaMtnBkr

[PillaDoubleG]

I can agree with FlaMtnBkr, briquette charcoal is BY FAR the worst I've ever tried. It burned so slowly that I could've ran to the local river to get some willow, come back, and it would still be burning. I believe this is because they put in some sort of clay, so that the briquettes keep their form. Charcoal is usually very soft, not dense, and super fluffy. This charcoal was dense, very very hard (barely managed to grind it down), and not even close to fluffy. Sadly, since I was kind of an idiot, I used this charcoal for a few months. 

At least I learned from my mistakes.

[TXpyro]

Lump charcoal also makes awful Black Powder

[Chillardbee]

you'd be surprised that lump charcoal (not briquettes) made from hickory or mesquite turns out pretty decent. From what I've understood, pine seems to make the worst powder.

on another note, I just recently watched a youtuber that tried making charcoal from...ahhh...well... toilet paper. thinking that using chemically treated paper would effect the burn rate negatively, turns out it's cleaner than you think (afterall, we're wiping our butts with it, lol) anyway, this guy was making his own powder for his flint lock and test the muzzle velocity and this powder (fff grade)was every bit as powerful as the best swiss powders you could buy.

[TXpyro]

1 hour ago, Chillardbee said:

you'd be surprised that lump charcoal (not briquettes) made from hickory or mesquite turns out pretty decent. From what I've understood, pine seems to make the worst powder.

Sorry, I forgot to clarify it's "mixed hardwood" lump charcoal that makes bad black powder. Maybe it was my old ball.

[Mumbles]

I can't speak from any recent experience, but I was able to make passable BP from Cowboy brand lump charcoal.  If you go through and cherry pick the lighter, less dense pieces, it doesn't turn out too bad.  

[nordicwolf]

straying a bit from the "worst" powder to good powder, Method "G" at the link below "double & double component ball milling" outlines a way to create powerful BP but without the risks of milling all 3 ingredients simultaneously.  I have not tried this yet but it seems promising.

https://pyrodata.com/PyroGuide/index.php^title=Black_Powder_Manufacture.htm

On a related note about water and incorporation, I was purposely trying to make a slow burning BP for use in fountains, using a 60:40 ratio (no sulfur) in a ball mill because it was easy and far less messy than screen mixing.  Out of the mill it was pretty good, meaning slow enough for my needs.  Then for some reason I had the idea to use very hot water to make a ball of the comp then granulate it, the idea being to knock the dust down.  Well that hot water really sped up the previously slow mixture, significantly.  I had used hot water before to make a base comp but with screen-mixed materials, not ball milled.  I also did not do a before/after test, meaning, I did not try the screen-mixed comp prior to using the hot water to ball up and granulate.  I understand better now how the hot water can incorporate and really speed up the mixture.