Black Powder Thread #1

[Mumbles]

aquaman, please don't give advice when you know absolutly nothing about what you are talking about. Fe2O3 is a catalyst for whistle. It catalyzes the decomposition of perchlorate as do many other transition metal oxides. There arn't really any catalysts for BP. If it's not burning fast enough or "strong" enough for your purposes, you're not making it right. Granulating does increase speed. The fastest and therefore strongest stuff will be the fines. Granulate it through a window screen. After it dries, rescreen it. Save everything that sits on the screen, and everything that falls through. You want to put the stuff that falls through the screen in a shallow baking pan or something. Sliding it around the floor and you will get a gradient of sizes. Keep whatever you want. I would suggest keeping all the stuff you can see the individual particles of. If a small pile doesn't burn with a poof, you have shitty BP.

[BigBang]

There aren't catalysts to my knowledge, but you can make benzolift, which burns much fatser than regular bp. You could possibly add say 5 grams of flash per 50 grams of bp to speed it up, but I have not tried this. Worth a shot though.

[aquaman]

My bad, before posting that I got done reading the Sugar Rocket topic and in it there are few posts stating that you can add Iron oxide "to make your rocket propellant faster\better". It kind of stuck to me.

 

Joe609 try throwing your BP in a ball mill with lead media for a few hours. It should turn out much better than it was.

[joe609]

My BP is really good stuff i ball mill it overnight, i was just wondering because i heard somewhere that in some reloading black powders they add in other chemicals to increase burn speed.

[aquaman]

I am having a small bit of trouble right now. I tried ball milling some BP but I have noticed that it seems to clump/pack together on the bottom of the milling jar in like ten minutes. So is there a way to stop it from doing that? It's kind of like the problem on the last page but the media is free but the BP is like a puck at the bottom.

 

EDIT: Never mind. I found what caused it. It was too moist. I put it out in the sun for about 30 min (it's 60° outside) and now the powder is free flowing and isn't clumping together.

[justanotherpyro]

Believe it or not, when BP clumps like that it doesn't affect its performance. In my experience it actually helps it. I get these http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e301/jus...ro/ballofbp.jpg

sieve them through my kitchen strainer, and I get little clumps of BP that I can pass through a fine screen to make a fine powder if I need to. The little clumps make it burn faster in the same way that corning it does.

[aquaman]

It caked at the bottom and the lead media was barely touching the BP so it wasn't getting any finer. I probably could of let it go and see how it performed after about 8 hours but I figured it was too moist and let it dry in the sun. It's been going for about three hours now and no clumps.

 

BTW your picture looked like the bottom of my milling jar.

[justanotherpyro]

Yea my drum did the same thing. It does this now that I have twice the media as before.

 

I just took 500 grams out of my ball mill and found something very curious. There were several hard chunks of a mishapen material left in the sieve after sieving the media from the BP. I thought that it was lead that had popped out of one of my brass casings and had been beaten so much that it took on an odd shape. I just randomly took a torch to it, and the whole thing burned!

 

I have a few more, and they are basically rock hard chunks of glossy BP. they sound like rocks when I drop them on my desk. I *think* that the heat generated by my mill did it. The inside of the container is always warm and moist when I first open it up, this time it was warmer than usual. I know that the ball of BP is common, but has anyone else experienced this same phenomenon?

[Spoony]

When I make BP in my mill, it always gets made into chunks or a big cake of bp on one of the ends of my jar. Im not complaining though, I hit it with a hammer a few times and then its granulated

[Mumbles]

Justanotherpyro, it sounds to me like your chemicals are wet. The glassyness may be caused by it being pounded into a corner, breaking free, and tumbling around. We must remember, they are still similar to rock tumbler, well several of us still use rock tumblers. Perhaps the chunk was too large to be chrushed, and was just polished in a way, or the water evaporated from them.

[joe609]

For my Bp i use a ball mill i was wondering are there any better machines for grinding BP. Goex manufacture it using one of those massive stone wheels.

[Mephistos Minion]

Methinks unless you have the money to buy one of those big stone mills that goex use, then a ball mill is certainly the best option. Of course pressing and corning your meal into propper black powder grain sizes will furthur increace its quality.

[joe609]

Yer i supose your right, i'm on a mission to get my black powder as good as commercial stuff (if possible) or as near as.

[Mumbles]

Without proper measuring equiptment, it is hard to know. It is achievable to be able to use the same amount of lift as commercial though. You will generally have to press it though. It requires a bit more work that just ball mill and grate through a screen, but for some purposes, it is definatly worth it.

 

Also, using willow, or something like that doesn't hurt either.

[joe609]

Yer i never really thought that a gram or two difference mattered that much but im going to try and get some really accurate scales and i also use weeping willow charcoal.

 

Also i heard that adding stale urine to it helps, or is this an old wives tale?

[Pyrohawk]

Uhhhhh I'm gonna say wives tale...... I can see no reason why that would be done....

 

It doesn't have to be weeping willow. There are other more common breeds of willow such as Black Willow which is what I use when I want really fast BP.

[PyroJoe]

I read on some other pyro site that said pressing your blackpowder only makes the granules much stronger, but does not really increase burn rate. I honestly don't think pressing blackpowder is worth the time. You have to press it, let it dry for over a week, then you have to smash those rock hard pucks with something and most of the time end up loosing a lot of powder as bits of the puck fly everywhere.

 

Even if it does make a difference in speed, I would rather use a couple more grams of just normal granulated powder!

[Pyrohawk]

I disagree with that entirely. Pressing makes so much more impressive lift!! You can't even compare the two if you've tried both. To launch the shells I needed 1/4 the weight of my shell with granulated but with the pressed I only need 1/10 weight at most.

 

I used to have your philosophy with just using a little more granulated..... But now I swear by pressed as it is just so much nicer plus in my opinion easier. I hated messing with granulating when I can press faster and get a superior product!

[Mumbles]

I personally did a pressing experiment. It really does make a difference. The stuff that was pressed to 1.7 g/mL had almost 2x the hangtime of just granulated.

[weknowpyro]

Just because i have never pressed bp before i just want to ask some small questions. 1) Do you mill it then press it? 2) Do you have to use a hydrolic press? 3) How wet do you make it before you press it?

Thanks

[Pretty green flame]

Just because i have never pressed bp before i just want to ask some small questions. 1) Do you mill it then press it? 2) Do you have to use a hydrolic press? 3) How wet do you make it before you press it?

Thanks

1. Yes, you first mill and then press.

 

2. Yes, a hydraulic press is esential unless you can press several tons with your own body.

 

3. I heard around 4grams water per 100grams of Meal.

[weknowpyro]

Cheers looking at presses now but there quite expensive so i will have to save up. But in the mean time what alternative is there if you don't have a press?

[joe609]

How does pressing help? does it just further mix the three ingerdients?

[Mephistos Minion]

Ok, going on what I think is happening (this is just in my head, could be wrong). If you press BP to a higher density, the ammount of BP (and therefor gas produced) per grain is higher. Or something of the sort, please correct me if I am wrong.

[Pretty green flame]

MM, i guess that's true if you compare 1 grain of pressed BP and 1 grain of granulated, the pressed would yield more gas. But when you use your BP in a mortar you use the same ammount in mass and so you get the same ammount of gas.

 

I belive the corning proces presses the individual ingridients closer together so they can react more quickly.

 

Let's see what other memebers say about this.