The morning journal-courier., 1908-02-24
IN A POWDER MILL How Powder and Other Great
 Explosives Are
 Made.
CARE TO AVOID DEATH
The Greatest Danger in the Making of the Black Pow
 der.

in small arms to some extent and in the big cannon, and dynamite and other explosives of the same nature, which are used for blasting when things are to be torn into small pieces. Though black powder is a weak thing as compared to dynamite or smoke less powder, it is more dangerous in the making, because it may be explod- ed almost anywhere along the line of its manufacture, both by concussion and by fire
 The formula for making ordinary black powder is about the same now as when it was discovered some 800 years ago. Seventy-five per cent. of saltpeter is mixed with 15 per cent. of charcoal and 10 per cent. of sulphur.
 Safety in the making of the powder is increased by the use of the best materials. The saltpeter as it is bought contains five per cent. of sodi- um, chlorides, sulphates and other things that must be taken out of it before the start is made toward really making black powder. The saltpeter is dissolved in hot water, is boiled. filtered through bags of coarse cloth into crystalizing vessels, and the crys- tals are washed in distilled water. They are stored while still moist
 For the making of charcoal wood of ten-years' growth is ordinarily used, care being taken that the sticks are small and straight and without bark Alder and willow are most used in this country. The sulphur is puri- fled by distillation in a large retort.
 The three ingredients for black DOW der, usually in fifty-pound charges. are put into cylindrical drum and mixed. The mixture is hand-sifted to remove any foreign substances that may have crept into it, and is placed in an incorporating mill. While this is working the mixture is kept moist with distilled water to keep powder dust from developing and flying.
 The cakes that come from this mill are reduced to meal by being passed through rollers and this meal is then put into hydraulic presses, which once more send it out in cakes. These are once again run through rollers, which convert it into grains of the size de- sired. For sporting arms the grains arc small. For blasting they are larger.
 The grains are put into revolving wooden barrels with graphite. Thus are the porous surfaces of the grains glazed that they may not gum togeth- CT. When the powder has been glazed it is subjected to 5e degrees of heat, Fahrenheit, for about twenty-four hours. It is then ready for use.
 Brown or cocoa powder Is made of 19 per cent of saltpeter, per cent. of sulphur and IS per cent. of char coal It usually has two per cent, of moisture when in actual use. This DOW der gives off thinner smoke than the ordinary black powder. It's use has been displaced by smokeless powder. Mining or blasting powder usually has less saltpeter in 1t than military DOW der, so as to make it slow in burning.
 Smokeless powder, which is a com. paratively recent development. is at tended. at some stages of it's making. by danger thousand times more ter rife than meets ck-powder work CT The discovery of smokeless powder began with 1900. although nothing worth while was done with it until after the discovery of gun cotton in lS45 Indeed, the present employment of the powder did not begin until 1886.
 Smokeless powder looks nothing like the ordinary black powder. Ii is made of entirely different things. and the person who tries to get a mental picture of it by piecing to- gether old pictures of black powder will not come anywhere near the mark A piece of smokeless powder designed for twelve-inch gun aboard a war vessel looks like three-inch section of tallow candle that had been dyed dirty ambler color. When they show distinguished visitor around in n smokeless powder mill they always light one of these grains and let it ourn in saucer. They tell him that he could go to bed by if,
 To make smokeless povder tho, start in with cotton. It comes raw and fresh from the southern states in bales Of about half the size of a bale Of hay. It has already been washed and steamed to free it of grease and other impurities. This cotton goes into the picking house, where it is cut and subdivided into small pieces If comes out or the subdividing hoppers as fluffy and light as thstledown.
 II IS shot through big pipes to a i drying room, where 12O degrees of heat Fahrenheit, removes all mois- ture Charges of one and two hounds of cotton are weighed and taken to nitrate houses. There armies of noton- tiai devils of destruction hang around all the time. The hunks of cotton fleece are immersed in crooks part1v fllled with slilphuric and nitric acids. me proportion varies from one part Of nitric acid to from two to four parts Of sulphuric acid, depending up- on the strength desired
 AS soon as the acid fluid is poured over the hunks of cotton. the nitric acid begins to combine with tbe cotton heat is developed The crooks are put Tn troughs, through which flows a stream or cool water six inches dpep. me crooks are kept in that stream or water from six to twenty-four hours, and yet one drop of water fall ing inside of vessel would set off the pulp, and sheet of deadly flame would shoot out and upward.
 The ruober-booted men in the ni- tratlng house push these crooks on to hand cars, and on these they are gin- gerry transported to another house called the washing house. It is now Vitally important to wash out of the | cotton all the acid that has not been chemically combined with it. An eve ] ot Tree acid left in the mass might