Replace Ball mill in making fast BP(as lift charge)

[dgsh009]

Hello all readers

We know ball milling ingredients of BP makes them small as possible, if we can grinding and screening all chemicals fine(airfloat/80 mesh) powders,
Does it fast enough for making lift charge?
is there any method and experience to get good performance without ball mill?
granulation for second(even third) time maybe effective?

please share your experiences and guide me.

thank you

Edited May 7 by dgsh009

[Carbon796]

You are going to want to, track down some of Dave F's excellent work/tutorials.

Edited May 7 by Carbon796

[Mumbles]

Yes, it is possible. However, you likely aren't going to be able to easily get away without ball milling the individual components. Most other grinding means will not achieve a fine enough result. Dave F's work is wonderful and gets away from milling live compositions, but largely does not avoid milling entirely.

[dgsh009]

42 minutes ago, Mumbles said:

Yes, it is possible. However, you likely aren't going to be able to easily get away without ball milling the individual components. Most other grinding means will not achieve a fine enough result. Dave F's work is wonderful and gets away from milling live compositions, but largely does not avoid milling entirely.

thank you.
i think milling has huge effect on homogeneousity, that makes BP faster and clean burn (no residual)
 

[Arthur]

The original mills for BP in the era of cannons in warfare was called an incorporating mill. The powders were both milled to a fine powder AND intimately mixed in the mill. 

[DavidF]

Thanks guys! The first thing that comes to mind is the pounding moist powder in a wooden box method posted somewhere, maybe by Zumber? 

Also, there's a hot water method I experimented with, but it relies on the charcoal being as fine as possible (airfloat at least).

It's probably best if you tell us what materials you have available, especially the charcoal- and what kind of charcoal.

The most important thing is the intimacy of incorporation, however that is achieved.

It's quite probable that the workarounds to making BP without a ball mill turn out to be the harder road to take!

Getting totally clean-burning BP is not possible without some form of 'particle size reduction'.

One way to get more zip in BP made with slower charcoal (like mesquite) is to simply use more of it than 15%. I'll see if I can find the description I posted about the hot water method.

I have written up a few sets of baseball flight tests and rocket motor tests in the past and posted them on Pyrobin. Pyrobin is no more, apparently. I would love to be able to upload them here for anybody to view, but I don't know how to upload a Word document or a pdf file to this forum. Any suggestions appreciated.

Edited to add a brief summary of the hot water method I mentioned: 

 

Edited May 8 by DavidF
Additional content

[Zumber]

5 hours ago, DavidF said:

Thanks guys! The first thing that comes to mind is the pounding moist powder in a wooden box method posted somewhere, maybe by Zumber? 

Also, there's a hot water method I experimented with, but it relies on the charcoal being as fine as possible (airfloat at least).

It's probably best if you tell us what materials you have available, especially the charcoal- and what kind of charcoal.

The most important thing is the intimacy of incorporation, however that is achieved.

It's quite probable that the workarounds to making BP without a ball mill turn out to be the harder road to take!

Getting totally clean-burning BP is not possible without some form of 'particle size reduction'.

One way to get more zip in BP made with slower charcoal (like mesquite) is to simply use more of it than 15%. I'll see if I can find the description I posted about the hot water method.

I have written up a few sets of baseball flight tests and rocket motor tests in the past and posted them on Pyrobin. Pyrobin is no more, apparently. I would love to be able to upload them here for anybody to view, but I don't know how to upload a Word document or a pdf file to this forum. Any suggestions appreciated.

Edited to add a brief summary of the hot water method I mentioned: 

 

Here is the link of traditional method of preparing black powder since many year and still today as a alternative for ball mill.

Yeah airfloat (ball milled) charcoal (gum arabic tree) is commercially available here 40 kg bag which is best for lift charge.

@dgsh009 for good quality black powder, all chemicals should be fine enough and homogenously mixed either with the help of ball mill or similar methods like shown in the link.

Remember 80 mesh charcoal is not airfloat. Atleast it should pass - 325 mesh.

Alternatively you can dissolve KNO3 in hot water ( 75 part of KNO3 in 25 part of hot water) and add 15 parts of airfloat charcoal in it and leave it out for 2 hours to soak nitrate into charcoal pores then mix 10 parts of Sulphur in it and mix it for half hours and pass it through 40 mesh screen and dry it.

Next day you can ball mill it or homogenously mix all ingredients together like wooden box method till you get faster bp.

Grain size of charge at the time of final use is really important. You should consider this.

[dgsh009]

58 minutes ago, Zumber said:

Here is the link of traditional method of preparing black powder since many year and still today as a alternative for ball mill.

Yeah airfloat (ball milled) charcoal (gum arabic tree) is commercially available here 40 kg bag which is best for lift charge.

@dgsh009 for good quality black powder, all chemicals should be fine enough and homogenously mixed either with the help of ball mill or similar methods like shown in the link.

Remember 80 mesh charcoal is not airfloat. Atleast it should pass - 325 mesh.

Alternatively you can dissolve KNO3 in hot water ( 75 part of KNO3 in 25 part of hot water) and add 15 parts of airfloat charcoal in it and leave it out for 2 hours to soak nitrate into charcoal pores then mix 10 parts of Sulphur in it and mix it for half hours and pass it through 40 mesh screen and dry it.

Next day you can ball mill it or homogenously mix all ingredients together like wooden box method till you get faster bp.

Grain size of charge at the time of final use is really important. You should consider this.

good method , but it needs powerful person for ramming 2 hours.
your charcoal (gum arabic tree) is 325 mesh particle size ?
i think to achieve fast and clean burn BP , granulation without (or with small percentage) dextrin for 2 or 3 times maybe effective.
dissolving methods are not operational in limited and small area.

[Zumber]

Charcoal is commercial ball milled they call it double filter, yeah you will need 2 to 4 percent binder to granulate.

You must have remote area for this hobby also it needs a lot of endurance, enthusiasm/ money and patience & hard work.

[Carbon796]

2-4 percent binder for granulation, is excessive for BP. And, will slow down even further, the already slowish BP. 

[rellim]

No binder is needed for granulation. Wet the powder with 50% alcohol until it can form a putty-like ball, then grate over a 6 or 8 mesh screen. Blade milling components with a spice grinder will likely work well enough if you don't mind the mess. Good charcoal is essential. Commercial air float does not work well and is rumored to be made from floor sweepings.

[Carbon796]

Alcohol granulation is charcoal dependent, on whether it works well or not.

[dgsh009]

thanks guys.
Is it effective to buy a 300 mesh sieve to reduce the BP particle size for faster & cleaner burning?
(now i screen all the bp ingredients with ~100 mesh screen before mixing)

[Zumber]

It's almost not easy to screen and pass bp through 100 mesh while sieving, it is very time consuming. Finer than -100 mesh screen will even be much complicated.

[Zumber]

2 hours ago, rellim said:

Commercial air float does not work well. 

It is very good, almost all factories here uses commercial charcoal and order in quantities of ton.

[dgsh009]

16 minutes ago, Zumber said:

It's almost not easy to screen and pass bp through 100 mesh while sieving, it is very time consuming. Finer than -100 mesh screen will even be much complicated.

if we use grinder before use screen , was it solve the passing problem?

[LiamPyro]

For reference, here is some relatively fast BP!

 

 

[dgsh009]

Videos did not load here for me.  Do you have ytube links?

[Carbon796]

29 minutes ago, Zumber said:

It is very good, almost all factories here uses commercial charcoal and order in quantities of ton.

Most likely he is referring to commercially available, air float charcoal in the USA. Which was traditionally made from mixed hardwoods. And, does not produce quality BP. But is the common bases for polverone/glitters/C6,8 and other general purposes charcoal based effects.

[Carbon796]

24 minutes ago, dgsh009 said:

if we use grinder before use screen , was it solve the passing problem?

Nope. A 100mesh screen is relatively useless. It is an unnecessary accessory. For general purpose manufacturing/building.

[Zumber]

11 hours ago, Carbon796 said:

Most likely he is referring to commercially available, air float charcoal in the USA. Which was traditionally made from mixed hardwoods. And, does not produce quality BP. But is the common bases for polverone/glitters/C6,8 and other general purposes charcoal based effects.

He is from India IIRC.

[Zumber]

11 hours ago, dgsh009 said:

if we use grinder before use screen , was it solve the passing problem?

Grinder works upto certain level beyond that you need to use ball mill or equivalent method to get finer partical size.

[Carbon796]

10 hours ago, Zumber said:

He is from India IIRC.

Who ? 

[Mumbles]

I believe Zumber was talking about dgsh.

As a quick quality test, I like to burn a sample of the material on a clean sheet of paper. If it's good quality, it will burn pretty cleanly and not scorch the paper much or cause it to start smoldering. I was never going for maximum speed, but if it passed this test it was always good enough for my lifting and breaking purposes.

[Carbon796]

I believe he is also.

But, my quoted text ( that zumber is replying to ) is of zumber's reply to Rellim, not dsgh009.