Black powder milling Without ball mill

[Zumber]

Hello All members...!!

Since lots of members dont have ball mill or this is for those who are newbie.

I have been making fireworks shells since 24 years and still today I dont have ball mill.

Now question is how do I lift my shells?

There is one very old traditional method used in our village since 200 years.

All you need is a wooden base to which 1 inch trench is formed in pentagonal or hexagonal shape and in this trench wooden frames are fixed using white fevicol glue jointed to each other by making drill and using wooden pins insted of screw to form hexagonal or pentagonal frame housing for bp.

Everything is made of wooden no metal piece is involved in frame or wooden base to avoid sparking during ramming.

Height of frame and size of hexagon or pentagon frame determines amount of black powder carried by this set up.

This wooden base is then burried half in ground and secured well.

Then damped or wet black powder is poured in frame housing (dont damp too much consistency is important)

Then using heavy duty Iron rod (generally 2.5 inch in diameter and 1 to 1.5 feet height) black powder is rammed for 1 to 1.5 hour manually. As wooden base contains no any metal part there is no chance of sparking but still for safety reason black powder is wetted enough before ramming.

After ramming process it is granulated or if someone wants bp in powder form(say for rocket)
then bp is dried well in sun then sieved it again to get in powder form. This set up gives me 5 kg milled powder in 1 batch.

Safety is almost no 1 priority that why wet bp is milled insted of dry.

Here is picture of set up.

Thank you

 

 

[DavidF]

When ball milling was popularized, the role of water in the processing of black powder was completely disregarded as unimportant. Ball mills will clump if there's moisture in the powder. Powder is milled dry, and rockets are pressed dry. The water isn't just for safety. It has an important role in making better powder by dissolving some of the nitrate and giving better intimacy of incorporation. Commercial black powder manufacturers use moisture as an aid to incorporation and Estes uses moisture to effect compaction in their rocket motors. It's only modern amateur pyros that think water is the bane of black powder, because it doesn't suit the way of milling now in common use.

I would be curious to know how much of your lift you use to lift what size shells? Also, is one of your arms much bigger than the other? 😎

[Sulphurstan]

12 hours ago, Zumber said:

Hello All members...!!

Since lots of members dont have ball mill or this is for those who are newbie.

I have been making fireworks shells since 24 years and still today I dont have ball mill.

Now question is how do I lift my shells?

There is one very old traditional method used in our village since 200 years.

All you need is a wooden base to which 1 inch trench is formed in pentagonal or hexagonal shape and in this trench wooden frames are fixed using white fevicol glue jointed to each other by making drill and using wooden pins insted of screw to form hexagonal or pentagonal frame housing for bp.

Everything is made of wooden no metal piece is involved in frame or wooden base to avoid sparking during ramming.

Height of frame and size of hexagon or pentagon frame determines amount of black powder carried by this set up.

This wooden base is then burried half in ground and secured well.

Then damped or wet black powder is poured in frame housing (dont damp too much consistency is important)

Then using heavy duty Iron rod (generally 2.5 inch in diameter and 1 to 1.5 feet height) black powder is rammed for 1 to 1.5 hour manually. As wooden base contains no any metal part there is no chance of sparking but still for safety reason black powder is wetted enough before ramming.

After ramming process it is granulated or if someone wants bp in powder form(say for rocket)
then bp is dried well in sun then sieved it again to get in powder form. This set up gives me 5 kg milled powder in 1 batch.

Safety is almost no 1 priority that why wet bp is milled insted of dry.

Here is picture of set up.

Thank you

 

 

I think the old English methods back in time were similar, where the wet BP was not milled but "hammered", right?

[Arthur]

A VERY early European method of incorporating BP was the stamp mill, with several pots in a row each under a hammer that was lifted and dropped by a machinery involving a rotating cam. This method was extensive with some factories having hundreds of stamp mills, likely driven by a water wheel or a horse walking round in a circle.

These were superseded by the big wheel mill which would mill ingredients from lumps and at least thoroughly damp to wet. The milled product was placed onto metal sheets and in a press these were compressed into solid sheets which were then put through a corning mill and sorted for size, unwanted grades were re pressed.

[Zumber]

13 hours ago, DavidF said:

When ball milling was popularized, the role of water in the processing of black powder was completely disregarded as unimportant. Ball mills will clump if there's moisture in the powder. Powder is milled dry, and rockets are pressed dry. The water isn't just for safety. It has an important role in making better powder by dissolving some of the nitrate and giving better intimacy of incorporation. Commercial black powder manufacturers use moisture as an aid to incorporation and Estes uses moisture to effect compaction in their rocket motors. It's only modern amateur pyros that think water is the bane of black powder, because it doesn't suit the way of milling now in common use.

I would be curious to know how much of your lift you use to lift what size shells? Also, is one of your arms much bigger than the other? 😎

No my arms are normal.