How to Make Black Powder: 14 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow Community Q&A Black powder is a simple mixture of powdered potassium nitrate or saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. But simply mixing the ingredients together is not going to give you the results you are looking for. Follow these instructions on making black powder--just be careful as you are working with explosives. Whether your motivation is to save a little bit of money or the satisfaction of being able to make your own, you can certainly make your own black powder at home. Steps 1 Purchase the items you can. This is one of those instances where the better quality the ingredients you have, the better quality product you will produce. The saltpeter and the sulfur can be found in most drug stores. 2 Make your charcoal. Willow, birch, fir, oak, beech and ash, when charred properly, are good woods to choose when selecting wood for your charcoal. Place the wood chips in a large pot with a lid or a 55 gallon (208 liter)barrel with a lid, just make sure there is a little open area (a crack where the lid meets the container or a small hole) so some steam can escape.

Build a fire under your container. When steam begins to exit the container, light the wood inside and reclose the lid. Let the fires burn out and wait for everything to cool. What is left inside your container is your charcoal. 3 Grind your ingredients separately. Use a mortar and pestle or hand mill to grind the potassium nitrate. Set it aside. Grind the charcoal. Set it aside. Grind the sulfur into a powder as well, and then set it aside. It is very important to grind everything individually. You may also choose to use a ball mill. If this is the case, place your crushed charcoal and your sulfur in the mill, and run the mill for several hours. Once ground to a fine powder, remove from the mill. 4 Chill 2 1/2 cups (or 600 ml) of isopropyl alcohol for every 100 grams of charcoal/sulfur mix you have. Once cold, mix with the charcoal/sulfur mixture. 5 Measure your ingredients. The components of black powder used to be measured by weight.

This has been calculated out, nowadays, as 75 parts potassium nitrate, 15 parts charcoal and 10 parts sulfur (or 25% charcoal/sulfur mix). 6 Prepare your nitrate. Measure 1/4 cup (or 40 ml) of water for every 100 grams (about a 1/2 cup) of potassium nitrate in an old pan. Add your potassium nitrate. Bring to a boil. Stir continuously. Add little bits of water at intervals until the potassium nitrate is completely dissolved. 7 Add the charcoal/sulfur mix to your pot of boiling potassium nitrate. Stir until all ingredients are completely combined. 8 Take your chilled alcohol and your hot mixture outside. Add the hot mixture to your isopropyl alcohol. Stir together. 9 Chill this new mixture. The more quickly you can chill this to 0 °C (32 °F), the better. 10 Filter the mixture through cheesecloth or an old cloth. This will remove all the liquid from the solution. Throw out the liquid that got filtered out. 11 Lay the mix out on a piece of paper to dry in the sun.

12 Press the mixture through a sieve while it is still slightly damp. Spread it out on your paper again and allow it to dry some more. 13 Run the powder through the sieve or a series of mesh screens a few more times to get it completely broken up. 14 Store your black powder in a cool, dry place in plastic containers. Make sure to choose a place that is out of the reach of children. Community Q&A What are the safety precautions concerning black powder? wikiHow Contributor Glasses wouldn't hurt, but definitely wear gloves. Make it in a room with low wind flow and NO candles or propane heaters. Is black powder made this way good for black powder guns? wikiHow Contributor It will work, but the powder you make will be less dense than manufactured powders. You will need to use almost double what you usually load. The reason for the heavy density of manufactured powder is they are capable of a much higher milling pressure as companies use granite stones weighing tons, and they provide longer milling times for the ingredients. It's true, the finer the ingredients, the better the powder. Will activated charcoal work to make black powder?

wikiHow Contributor No, the chemicals will make your black powder either non-combustible, or it will give off lethal smoke. You can make it as a display powder, as it will look the same, but don't try to light it. How is it more dangerous than true gunpowder? wikiHow Contributor If you are referring to white gunpowder as true gunpowder, there is no clear difference in power. Both are dangerous, but white gunpowder is a lot harder to make and emits less smoke. If this question (or a similar one) is answered twice in this section, please click here to let us know. Video Tips Complete as many of these steps as possible outdoors and away from any flame or spark. The ingredients you are working with and the process of making black powder can be very dangerous. Do not store black powder in a metal can, they can create a spark and ignite the powder. Warnings Black Powder is explosive and hazardous. Please observe safety procedures and follow all applicable laws. Black Powder is a true explosive, not simply flammable. As such it is even more dangerous than true gunpowder (nitrocellulose).

Things You'll Need Black Powder Recipes ubub The Recipe for Black Powder As is generally known to many people, black powder is a mixture of saltpeter, charcoal and sulfur. To disappoint all of you who think, in the following paper I'm going to give away an optimum recipe with the best possible performance, I state here once and for all: The mixture of the three ingredients is of little importance. It is the method of making the charcoal that counts, as I will prove with this chapter. But back to the black powder recipe: You can change it over a wide range, and hardly notice any difference between performances. That explains why most of the historic recipes differ significantly. On the other hand, it is hard to find a historic recipe on how to char the coal, since that usually was a state secret. By the way, even a mixture of saltpeter and charcoal without sulfur explodes remarkably well. However, a mixture of saltpeter and sulfur, without charcoal, doesn't burn at all. The latter fact puzzled the chemists throughout the centuries, because sulfur alone burns pretty well and saltpeter generally accelerates all sorts of fires.

(Look this movie) Note: Charcoal does not consist of pure carbon (C) as most authors purport. Such a pure charcoal would require a charring temperature of at least 1,500 °C! And a black powder mixed with it would probably burn like the head of a matchstick, at best. As I'm explaining in my charcoal chapter, the formula of charcoal may be best described as C7H4O. With this and the following chemical equations we'll see why there won't be an explicit, best mixture of black powder: Depending on the portion of charcoal, its carbon produces alternatively carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide or a mix of both. To these you'll have to add the water vapor plus nitrogen, released from the saltpeter. So the sum of all the gases is nearly the same on all recipes. Indeed, the following three dimensional graph of the performance of different black powder recipes reveals a flat top over wide range of recipes. A recipe without sulfur yields only little less energy (Joule/g). But its advantage lies in its little smoke produced. Its fog then consists of potassium carbonate (potash). Unfortunately its ignition temperature is 100 °C higher than usual.

For cap lock arms that is no problem, but it is a nuisance to flint and match lock sportsmen. Here is the chemical equation for a regular black powder containing sulfur: 1) Reasonable recipes for mixing blackpowder are; A good standard black powder:..100 parts saltpeter + 18 parts coal + 16 parts sulfur A powder without sulfur: ............100 parts saltpeter + 24 parts coal As you may have noticed, I always give powder recipes on the basis of 100 parts saltpeter! Then, with the three ingredients, it leaves only two variables which can be compared or drawn on graphs easily. For the creation of the following graph showing the performance of black powder, I tested dozens of recipes and fired some hundred shots. The black powder samples were always mixed from saltpeter and sulfur supplied by the chemical industry. The charcoal I made from the wood of a willow tree, in fact from its young, debarked branches of approximately 3 to 4 cm diameter, charred in a tin can at 400 °C until nearly smokefree. Fig.

1: The performance of different powder recipes The muzzle energy was determined by the measurement of the bullet velocity, one meter ahead of the muzzle of a three band Enfield rifle, cal. 58 (14.7 mm) and a patched round ball of 17.3 g lead. The velocity was measured by a commercially available chronograph. With each recipe there were three shots fired and from these the median was taken. The load was exactly 2.00 g black powder. Then the muzzle energy was calculated as: Energy (Joule) = Mass of the ball (kg) • velocity2 (m/s)2 3) as given on the y-axis of the diagram Historical black powder recipes The first written recipe comes from Roger Bacon, a British monk and professor of philosophy at the university of Paris, in his "Opus Tertiary" (1264-1268),. There he wrote "As is widely known ..... " and then he gives the recipe. Note, he didn't claim the invention for himself and, therefore, he is definitely not the inventor.

His recipe is: Sed tamen 7 Partes Salpetrae, 5 Partes Coruli et 5 Partes Sulphuris et sic facies tonitrum et coruscationem, sic scias artificium. Translated: Take 7 parts of saltpeter, 5 parts of hazelnut (-charcoal) and 5 parts sulfur and that makes thunder and flash if you know the art. And later on in his text, he describes what bad boys were doing with it at night: - terrifiying their innocent neighborhood. They rolled paper to a tube, about the size of a thumb, filled it with powder, closed both ends with a piece of iron wire and then set it on fire". He didn't reveal exactly how the charge was ignited. By a fuse? On the basis of 100 parts of saltpeter, Bacons recipe is: 100 p Saltpeter, 71 p coal, 71 p sulfur. When tested, Bacons powder burned very slowly. I tested it on a handgonne (not a handgun). It didn't even propel the ball out of the barrel. All the pressure escaped through the touch hole.

So I assumed, Bacon as an Englishman measured his parts by volume and not by weight as we continental Europeans are used to do. Even today, all English give their cooking recipes in cups and spoons and not by weight. Did Bacon actually mean parts by volume (?), so his recipe would be by weight: 100 p Saltpeter + 27 p Coal + 45 p Sulfur Fig 2: And here is what I shot with Bacons recipe by volume: 3 shots bench-rest, at 25 meters with a muzzle loader pistol of cal. 38. Here are some other local recipes, used historically : Saltpeter Caveman to Chemist Projects: Gunpowder This is the old Caveman Chemistry website. Please visit the new website at Gunpowder and Explosives Introduction What if some evil-minded purpose bent on destructive acts reads this page? He (or she, to be as inclusive as possible) might make up some of the explosive mixtures discussed here and use it to hurt people. Perhaps this information should be carefully guarded, with fines and prison sentences for those who dare to reveal the secrets. But it is my opinion that evil-minded people don't need this information to perform acts of destruction.

Guns are freely available, the grocery stores are full of poisons (in the automotive and household chemical sections, second aisle past the greeting cards, top shelf), and gunpowder is sold over the counter anywhere they sell reloading supplies. If you are worried about such evil-minded people, rest assured that they will find a way to do evil whether or not the information in these pages is freely available. If you are such an evil-minded person you will probably be bored with these pages unless you happen to be curious about the chemistry of your intended deeds. Gunpowder Gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists of the 9th century as a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. It was employed in military applications in 10th century China. By the 13th century the secret had spread to Islamic Asia where it was used against Europeans. Ever since, gunpowder has been a staple of the military and political establishments. Consequently the ingredients of gunpowder, especially sulfur and saltpeter, have had strategic importance. Sulfur is mined from underground deposits. Saltpeter is mined, typically from deposits in caves, where it is leached from guano.

In fact, salpeter was mined in Virginia during the Civil War and was central to the Confederate war effort. However the largest deposits of nitrate are in Chile and up until the first decade of the 20th century the mining and shipping of Chile saltpeter (sodium nitrate) were of strategic interest to the world powers. Saltpeter Saltpeter, or niter, is the common name for potassium nitrate. Biringuccio tels us how to extract it in his Pirotechnia: As I told you in the chapter on salts, saltpeter is a mixture composed of many substances extracted with fire and water from arid and manurial soils, from that growth which exudes from new walls or from that loosened soil that is found in tombs or uninhabited caves where the rain cannot enter. It is my belief that it is engendered in these soils from an airy moisture that is drunk in and absorbed by the earthy dryness... Biringuccio goes on to desrcibe a process for extracting saltpeter from this "manurial soil," i.e. soil that has formed from human or animal manure.

On the surface of such soil or in certain caves there will be a white crust on the surface of the soil. The important feature of this soil is that it should contain organic material which contains nitrogen: chiefly proteins and their decomposition product, urea. Bacteria in the soil oxidize these nitrogen compounds to a family of nitrate salts: sodium nitrate, potassium nitrate, and calcium nitrate, depending on the other minerals present in the soil. These nitrate compounds are among the most soluble of all compounds. The solubilities of sodium, calcium, and potassium nitrate in boiling water are 952, 376, and 247 g / 100 mL. That is, boiling water will dissolve more than nine times its own weight of sodium nitrate. The process for making saltpeter is very similar to that for making potash, the chief difference being the starting material. The soluble part of wood ash is mostly potassium carbonate and so when we purify it by recrystalization, the resulting product is purified potassium carbonate. The soluble part of these manurial soils are mostly mixed nitrates.

The reason for this is that while the original animal waste may have had a wide variety of soluble materials, as the water wicked up through the soil and evaporated, the less soluble parts fell out of solution as it became more and more concentrated. Only the most soluble parts, in this case the nitrates, made it to the top of the soil and when the last bit of moisture evaporated, they were deposited as a white crust on the surface. So the beginning of primitive saltpeter production is to collect this white crust leaving behind as much as possible the underlying soil. Of the three nitrates present, potassium nitrate is the one we need. To extract it, we use a metathesis reaction in much the same way that we have previously produced lye: Ca(NO3)2(aq) + K2CO3(aq) -----> CaCO3(s) + 2 KNO3(aq) This removes all the calcium as insoluble calcium carbonate leaving mostly potassium nitrate and a little sodium and potassium carbonate which can be further separated out by repeated recrystalizations in much the same way that we produced potash. Saltpeter has been mined in Virginia, particularly in the dry caves of the Shenendoah valley.

Most of the nitrate mined today comes from Chile and is called "Chile Saltpeter," which is chiefly sodium nitrate. However, most of the nitrate used in explosives and agriculture is today derived from nitrogen in the air (see acids ). Sulfur We have seen several compounds of sulfur in the form of the sulfide ores: galena, sphalerite, pyrite, and chalcopyrite. But for gunpowder, we need elemental sulfur. Sulfur is one of only a few elements found free in nature, i.e. as the element rather than as compounds of that element. It is a yellow solid with a melting point of about 120 C. It occurs in beds, chiefly in Italy, Texas, Louisiana, Java, Japan, and Mexico. Until the turn of the twentieth century, 95% of the world production was from Sicily, where it was mined in a manner very similar to that of coal. The vast sulfur beds of Texas and Louisiana lay beneath layers of quicksand which were impossible to remove by conventional methods. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Herman Frasch devised a method whereby this sulfur could be drilled similar to oil rather than mined similar to coal.

A well is drilled into the sulfur bed and superheated steam is forced down the well shaft. This steam melts the sulfur, which rises up a concentric pipe in the wellshaft. the molten sulfur is cooled above ground and returns to the solid form. By 1919, American exports of sulfur exceeded the entire sulfur production of Italy. Charcoal The third ingredient of gunpowder is charcoal. As we have seen, charcoal is produced from wood by heating it in a reducing atmoshphere, i.e. one low in oxygen. Charcoal is almost prue carbon, but the mechanical properties of charcoal, grain size, shape, and structure, depend somewhat on the wood used to make it. Willow is the traditional wood of choice, followed by grapevine, hazelwood, elder, laurel, and pine cones. Charcoal is not the only fuel we can use, however. Anything that burns can be used as the fuel in a gunpowder-like explosive. We will make gunpowder using either charcoal or sugar. Explosives When a gas expands suddenly enough as to create a shock wave we have an explosion.

For example, if you make mead in a glass bottle with the cap sealed, the pressure of carbon dioxide will build to the point that the glass can no longer contain it. The bottle will explode, sending glass fragments and mead everywhere. This may sound like fun but the joke would soon be over if someone were injured by this flying glass. When people talk about explosives they are usually talking about combustion reactions that produce a lot of heat and gas in a short time. The explosion comes from the expansion of this gas. So at the heart of chemical explosives is a fuel which burns. Lets consider a common fuel which has been important in this course: charcoal. Charcoal burns in air according to the following reaction: C(s) + O2(g) -----> CO2(g) This reaction is indeed energetic. We have seen how hot a charcoal fire can get when provided with enough air. But this is not an explosion because only the surface of the charcoal burns and it has to wait for fresh air to be blown in before the next layer of charcoal can burn. There are two ways we can deal with this problem. First, we can grind the charcoal up into a fine powder so that as much surface area as possible is exposed.

Second, we can mix it with a solid oxidizing agent so that the burning charcoal does not have to wait for fresh air. Many oxidizing agents could be used but one of the best is a compound we have seen before: saltpeter or potassium nitrate. Potassium nitrate reacts with charcoal according the the following unbalanced equation: KNO3(s) + C(s) + S(s) -----> N2(g) + CO2(g) + K2S(s) You will need the balanced redox equation for this project. If we don't get the amounts in exactly the right proportions, not only will we waste valuable raw materials like saltpeter and sulfur, these excess materials will carry away heat from the reaction and so less heat will be available for heating the product gases, which will then not expand as quickly. The result: less bang for the buck! You will use the principles of stoichiometry to answer two important questions: How much fuel do I need to react with 1.00 g of sulfur? How much saltpeter do I need to react with 1.00 g of sulfur? Here the fuel may be charcoal or sugar. The relative amounts will be different for these two fuels.

Once you have solved these problems, you will have your formula for gunpowder. Let's suppose we want to make gunpowder from 1 gram of sulfur. How much charcoal and saltpeter would we need? If we use exactly these proportions and if the reaction actually proceeds according to our balanced reaction, then all of the sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal will be consumed producing the maximum amounts of heat and gas. In other words, the most bang for the buck! In the case of such a perfect mixture, very little residue will be left behind. Oxidants All of the explosives we will discuss require two parts: a fuel and an oxidant. Just about anything that burns can act as a fuel: charcoal, alcohol, fuel oil, sugar, and even metal powders like aluminum and zinc. There are fewer oxidants to choose from. Some of the most popular are saltpeter and ammonium nitrate, both manufactured from nitric acid. Historically, saltpeter was the oxidant of choice because it was the only oxidant (other than air) which people knew about. Explosives which use saltpeter as the oxidant tend to be relatively slow burning.

That means that the combustion takes place in a leasurely few thousanths of a second. While this still sounds pretty fast, it is slow enough that if the container has a hole or loose plug, it will blow the plug out without destroying the container. If the container has a hole, we have a rocket. If the container has a plug, we have a gun. In either case it is important that the gun or rocket not be destroyed as this would undermine its usefulness. So saltpeter-based explosives have been historically used as gunpowders and rocket propellants. Their function is simply to produce hot gases to propel a projectile. Production of a shock wave is not required. In fact it is to be avoided so that the projectile is not destroyed. Another popular oxidant is ammonium nitrate, in part because it is such a good oxidant but chiefly because it is such an inexpensive oxidant. It is manufactured entirely from nitrogen and oxygen from the air and hydrogen from water. Consequently there are virtually no materials to buy. The only expenses are the capital invested in the plant and the electricity needed to run it. Unlike saltpeter-based explosives, those based on ammonium nitrate detonate.

That is, they consume their fuel in millionths of a second so that the entire reaction is complete before the gas has a chance to expand. Consequently a shock wave is generated which shatters anything nearby including the container. Such explosives cannot be used as propellents or gunpowders as they will destroy the rocket, gun, or cannon. The principle use of these explosives is in blasting, either for mining or for construction. Because ammonium nitrate is so cheap and easy to get (anyplace that sells fertilizer), it is attractive for industrial uses. But these same reasons make it attractive for terrorists as well. You may recall that ammonium nitrate was the oxidant used in the explosive that destroyed the World Trade Center in New York and the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. You might think that it would be a good thing to ban ammonium nitrate altogether, but there are so many good and legitimate uses for this material that I believe this would be a mistake. Other Pyro Pages The gunpowder quiz will consist of three questions on the following topics: Know where saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal come from. Know the chemical names and formulas of saltpeter, Chile saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal.

Be able to balance any redox reaction using saltpeter as the oxidant. Be able to use stoichiometry to determine the amounts of saltpeter,sulfur, and fuel to use in making gunpowder. Take a practice quiz online. Instructions You will build a rocket motor from scratch using the propellant from your quiz. All of these propellants have saltpeter and sulfur, but may contain either charcoal or sugar as fuels. In your quiz you will have determined how much saltpeter and fuel to use for each gram of sulfur in the propellant. Begin by adding 1.00 grams of sulfur and the corresponding amounts of saltpeter and fuel to a plastic bag. Thoroughly mix these ingredients by kneading them inside the bag. If they are not thoroughly mixed, the propellant will not burn efficiently. The original plans for these rocket motors were developed by the Teleflite Corporation and posted in many places on the internet. Since then, Teleflite has requested their removal but copies linger. Michael York (Caveman '96) modified these instructions in Spring 1998 and Caveman assistants Richard Furr and Mike Latham put together this slideshow of the construction of rocket motors from scratch.

Click on the picture to go there. Criteria for Success You will have passed the gunpowder quiz and built three rockets using homemade propellant. We will then launch them. To pass, at least one of your rockets must get off the ground. Gunpowder Facts, History and Description By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. Updated February 26, 2016. Gunpowder or black powder is of great historical importance in chemistry. Although it can explode, its principal use is as a propellant. Gunpowder was invented by Chinese alchemists in the 9th century. Originally, it was made by mixing elemental sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter (potassium nitrate). The charcoal traditionally came from the willow tree, but grapevine, hazel, elder, laurel, and pine cones have all been used. Charcoal is not the only fuel that can be used. Sugar is used instead in many pyrotechnic applications. When the ingredients were carefully ground together , the end result was a powder that was called 'serpentine.' The ingredients tended to require remixing prior to use, so making gunpowder was very dangerous.

People who made gunpowder would sometimes add water, wine, or another liquid to reduce this hazard, since a single spark could result in a smoky fire. Once the serpentine was mixed with a liquid, it could be pushed through a screen to make small pellets, which were then allowed to dry. continue reading below our video 4 Tips for Improving Test Performance How Gunpowder Works To summarize, black powder consists of a fuel (charcoal or sugar) and an oxidizer (saltpeter or niter), and sulfur, to allow for a stable reaction. The carbon from the charcoal plus oxygen forms carbon dioxide and energy. The reaction would be slow, like a wood fire, except for the oxidizing agent. Carbon in a fire must draw oxygen from the air. Saltpeter provides extra oxygen. Potassium nitrate, sulfur, and carbon react together to form nitrogen and carbon dioxide gases and potassium sulfide. The expanding gases, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, provide the propelling action. Gunpowder tends to produce a lot of smoke, which can impair vision on a battlefield or reduce the visibility of fireworks. Changing the ratio of the ingredients affects the rate at which the gunpowder burns and the amount of smoke that is produced.

Making Gunpowder From The Foxfire Book, Volume 5 - � 1979 The Foxfire Fund; Published by Doubleday Books "Black powder is and isn't hard to make depending on which end you look at it from. It is a long and tiresome task if you make more than ten pounds at a time. "Out on the West Coast, as in some southern states, the trend by the government is to prevent its sale with mountains of red tape. Making your own black powder, however, is not unlawful as yet, as far as I know." "By weight measure, black powder is made of seventy-five parts saltpeter finely ground, fifteen parts charcoal, and ten parts sulfur. All ingredients must be fine ground separately. This can be accomplished with either a mortar and pestle, or with a hand-cranked flour mill. Never mix all three ingredients before grinding unless you want to turn your mill into a deadly grenade, or your mortar into a cannon that can blow off your fingers or even your hand." "Then the ingredients can be mixed with a small amount of water so the mixture comes out with biscuit-dough consistency.

Usually when I mix the ingredients, I add just enough stale urine to make the batch bunch about like biscuit dough. The urine, substituted for water, gives the powder more oxygen and higher performance." "Flowers of sulfur is ideal for gun powder, and it can be bought in most drug stores in four-ounce bottles or pound cans." "It can also be found in pure deposits around volcanoes, and in early times, because it was found where molten lava issued from the earth, the sulfur condensed around the rims of the volcanoes was called brimstone." "Today, in certain places around the world, sulfur is recovered from un- derground deposits by pumping live steam underground through pipes. The sulfur melts and, being lighter than water, is easily pumped out at another point close by. Then it is pumped into big ships that haul it to industries all over the world. That's why you can buy a hundred-pound sack for about three dollars in most places. "Saltpeter, the chemical that produces the oxygen for the other ingredients when lit off, can he made by putting urine and manure of any kind in a big cement tank mixed with water until you have about three hundred gallons mixed up.

Then you put on a tight lid and let it sit for about ten months. You have to have a drain pipe and valve at the bottom, and a stainless steel filter screen installed beforehand or you'll have one big mess on your hands. At the end of that time, you run the liquid that drains off through ashes into shallow wooden trays lined with plastic sheeting and let them stand for evaporation in the sun. When the water evaporates, potassium nitrate crystals (saltpeter) will form in the bottom of the trays." "In the old days in cities, most outhouses were fitted with trays or drawers under the seats that could be pulled out from behind the building. They had night-soil collectors who were paid so much every month by the outhouse owners to keep those drawers emptied, and they'd come around with a special wagon into which they dumped the contents. When the wagon was full, it was hauled out to where another fellow bought the contents and dumped it into concrete tanks where the bacteria works it just like yeast works wine or bread dough.

Then the liquid was run through ashes into shallow tiled or plain concrete evaporating trays or basins to recover the saltpeter." "Today, saltpeter can also he bought in most drug stores in bottles or cans." "Charcoal provides the carbon needed when the powder is lit off. When burning, the carbon assists in making potassium carbonates and carbon sulfates during the one one hundredth of a second that it is burning. Most of this is released at the muzzle of a smoke pole in the form of powder smoke. Some remains in the barrel in the form of fouling and should be swabbed out about every third shot if the shooter wants the round ball to continue to shoot true." "The charcoal should never be made from hardwood as hardwood has too much ash. Such woods as chinaberry, willow, cottonwood, soft pine with no knots, or redwood and Western cedar make the best grade charcoal. A fifty-five-gallon drum with a snap-on lid and a match-stem-sized hole in the lid set over a fire Pit is a good charcoal maker. Take the wood and chip it or cut it into inch chunks and put a bucketful in the drum.

Then build a hardwood fire under the drum and when smoke begins to spurt from the vent, light the wood with a match. When the flame goes out, your charcoal is made. Rake the fire out from under the drum, plug the vent with a bit of asbestos fiber or a nail that fits in tight, and let the drum sit overnight to cook. You can then crush and powder the charcoal with a mortar and pestle, or run it through a hand-cranked grain grinder to a flourlike fineness. " "By the way, Just yesterday I took time out and made batch of powder, and this time, when I mixed the ingredients, I added homemade alder charcoal instead of redwood and improved the powder's performance 100 per cent. I recently bought a tight little sheet-metal heater stove for camp cooking and by accident discovered that getting a load of alder going good and then closing it UP tight and dampering it until it went out and turned cold converted the alder into nice pure charcoal. " "When making black powder, never add any other ingredients or explosive powders unless you wish to turn your muzzle loader into a grenade that can kill you or cripple you for life.

Keep your black powder stored in steel, airtight cans in a cool, dry place, and out of the reach of children. My parents failed to do that, and I've carried powder marks on my face for the last thirty years. A ten-year-old may think he knows what he's doing, but ten years don't give him enough prudence to think many things out ahead of time before he lights that match." "The nice thing about shooting black powder is that commercial black costs about two cents a round, and homemade about a half-cent a round. " As the demand for powder grew in the Southern Appalachians, fairly large operations came into being for its manufacture. As Jim Moran told us, "Powder was made in this area. The big powder mill that was around here is gone now--the place burned up and all. But it was on Boozy Creek, and it was operated back in the early 1800s and possibly before by the Hughes family. They were also gunsmiths. They were somehow connected with the blockhouse which was on the Wilderness Road. That was where Boone wintered after his son was bushwhacked on the Wilderness Road. Now that was quite a settlement around there.

One winter I went up on Timbertree Branch near the blockhouse site and there were about ten or fifteen cabins around there made out of poplar logs. They were only about twelve feet square--didn't have any windows or anything in them. I think they were the residue of that holdup of immigration when those people got that far and they were afraid to go on. I went back over there about five years ago, but there's none of that left there now." "But these Hughes, they ground that powder on millstones. I found that out. I know one man who found the old order book for the powder mill. He had it photostated. That mill blew up twice. One time they found shoe tacks in the charcoal. The story was that it was sabotaged. One time it blew a fellow's hand off." "Willow charcoal is what they used for the powder. And then saltpeter- you know you hear about saltpeter caves. Over around Saltville they've found a lot of the vats and stuff where they leached that out from bat guano. That was done during the Civil War.

In fact, they've uncovered one of those caves in the last ten years or so and found the vats still intact in the cave. That's Saltville, which is about thirty-five or forty miles north of here. And the same thing in Big Stone Gap. Powder for the Battle of King's Mountain was made on Powder Branch near Erwin, Tennessee." Another of these operations was located in Mammoth Cave. Recently, in a remarkable experiment there, potassium nitrate crystals from saltpeter were produced again in the traditional method. Carol A. Hill, one of the coordinators for the Saltpeter Research Group, describes the procedure that was used that day: "Before the 187Os, caves were the primary source of nitrate used in the manufacture of gunpowder. Saltpeter mining was one of the first major industries of the new frontier, and one of the principle objectives of exploring new territory was to find saltpeter caves. Caves were mined by individuals and also commercially for national defense purposes during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War.

Many homesteaders in the Virginias, Kentucky, and Tennessee had their own individual saltpeter caves and from them would make their own gunpowder in home-constructed V-vats or 'hoppers.' "Making a V-vat entailed using a peg-and-hole construction. The holes were made with a hand auger; the pegs by whittling down the end of a log with a hatchet and then by trimming with a knife . The frame was then pounded together with a wooden mallet . A froe was used to make the side boards. Bolts of wood that were straight-grained and well seasoned were the best for this purpose. The glut was used as a wedge to split the log base of the collecting trough. The trough was then hewn out with a foot adze and hatchet. After the hopper was constructed, twigs were laid in the bottom of the vat, and then wheat straw was laid on top of the twigs and along the side boards to help keep the vat from leaking. "Cave dirt was tested for its nitrate potential by the following procedure: A footprint or mark was made in the dirt and left for twenty-four hours.

If the print was scarcely visible by the next day, then the dirt was deemed high in niter. A mattock was used to break up the cave dirt, and a wooden saltpeter paddle was used for digging and scraping The dirt was removed from the cave in gunny sacks and poured on top of the twig and straw in the V-vat. Buckets of water were then poured over the saltpeter dirt to leach it of its nitrate or 'Mother liquor'. The mother liquor (also sometimes called 'beer' would run down the sides of the V-vat and into the split-log base and out into the collecting trough. A dipper gourd was often used to transfer the mother liquor into a container. This same liquor was poured again and again over the saltpeter dirt because releaching caused more nitrates to be dissolved. According to the old reports, releaching went on until the solution was of sufficient density to float an egg. "The next step was to combine the mother liquor rich in calcium nitrate with wood ashes that contain high amounts of potassium hydroxide. The best woodashes for this purpose were made by burning hardwoods such as oak and hickory.

The mother liquor was either poured directly over the woodashes or the woodashes were leached in barrels and the leachate directly combined with the mother liquor. Upon combination, a white haze could be seen , and this white precipitate (calcium hydroxide or 'curds' as it was called) would slowly sink to the bottom of the barrel. If the solution contained an excess of calcium nitrate, the product was termed 'in the grease.' An excess of woodashes produced a condition called 'in the ley.' The wood ash leachate was poured into the mother liquor until the white curds could no longer be seen precipitating out of solution. The remaining solution thus contained the still soluble potassium nitrate. This solution was dipped out into an apple-butter kettle (or"evaporator'), and a fire started under the kettle. Turnip halves were then thrown into the boiling solution to help keep it from foaming and to take up the dirty brown color. Oxblood (or alum) was also added to the boiling liquid and caused the organic matter to rise to the top of the liquid and form a scum which, with continued boiling, was constantly ladled off.

After a few hours of boiling, the hot liquor was poured through cheesecloth in order to filter out the remaining scum and organic material. Upon cooling, fine, bitter, needle-shaped crystals of niter (potassium nitrate) formed in the liquor. These crystals were then collected and dried. Potassium nitrate crystals were far superior to calcium or sodium-nitrate crystals because they are non-deliquescent (do not take up moisture from the air) and, hence, would not make the gunpowder wet and unusable. The nitrate crystals thus obtained had to be further refined and purified. This purification procedure was done either by the individual and homemade into gunpowder, or it was done after the saltpeter crystals were sent to a refinery where the final gunpowder was made." e-WV | Saltpeter Mining Share Saltpeter Mining Saltpeter or potassium nitrate was of key importance to the survival of early settlers in what is now West Virginia. Saltpeter was used by settlers to salt meat and to make dyes, and it was a key ingredient in gunpowder, which was made by mixing small amounts of sulfur and charcoal with saltpeter.

The earliest explorers in the region brought a supply of gunpowder with them. Soon, it was discovered that naturally occurring saltpeter could be found in the many limestone caves and sandstone shelters. Noncommercial mining of saltpeter began prior to the American Revolution , and the caverns of Western Virginia were a major source of saltpeter for the colonial army. Commercial production continued through the War of 1812 and then fell off after the war ended. During the Civil War , the Confederates made extensive use of these mines to make up for the loss of other saltpeter sources due to the Union blockade. Twenty-two caves in present West Virginia were mined between 1862 and 1865. Confederate miners often produced the saltpeter entirely underground to avoid detection, but many mines were discovered and the workers imprisoned. Schoolhouse Cave in Pendleton County is the only cave known to have been mined for saltpeter by Unionists during the Civil War. Following the war, saltpeter mining was discontinued as new technologies rendered the mines obsolete. Saltpeter was produced by simple but effective methods. Earth was shoveled into wooden hoppers and water poured in to leach out the saltpeter.

The water was then evaporated, leaving the valuable saltpeter. Many artifacts of the process have been found in West Virginia caves, including hoppers and tools. Such artifacts may be seen by visitors to Organ Cave in Greenbrier County . Chemical Composition of Black Powder or Gunpowder Black Powder Composition Chemical Composition of Black Powder or Gunpowder This woman is making firecrackers using gunpowder. It's risky to handle gunpowder, so don't mess with it unless you know what you're doing!. De Agostini / C. Sappa, Getty Images By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D. Updated July 14, 2016. The composition of black powder or gunpowder is not set. In fact, several different compositions have been used throughout history. Here's a look at some of the most notable or common compositions, plus the composition of modern black powder. Black Powder Basics There's nothing complicated about the formulation of black powder. It consists of charcoal (carbon), saltpeter ( potassium nitrate or sometimes sodium nitrate ), and sulfur.

Notable Black Powder Compositions Typical modern gunpowder consists of saltpeter, charcoal, and sulfur in a 6:1:1 or 6:1.2:0.8 ratio. Historically significant formulations have been calculated on a percentage basis: How to Make Gunpowder: 8 Steps (with Pictures) - wikiHow /3/3b/Make Gunpowder Step 1.360p.mp4 Look for "stump remover" in garden stores. Saltpeter is often sold under this name. You may also find it labeled as saltpeter, niter, or potassium nitrate. [2] Buy it online. If you do a search for saltpeter, you'll get plenty of results, and you can easily have a bottle delivered to you. Make it yourself out of a cold pack. Cold packs which can be bought for a few dollars to help with sore muscles contain sodium nitrate and water, and can be used to make saltpeter. Make it with urine. This is definitely the most difficult way to source saltpeter, but some black powder enthusiasts prefer to make their powder entirely from scratch.

To do so, one process is to fill a drum with manure affixed with a drain, valve, and filter at the bottom. Urinate into it, then top it off with water. After about 10 months, dry it out on trays. [3] 2 Obtain charcoal. You can use standard charcoal that you buy to cook with your grill, which you'll need to grind to a fine powder. If you're a purist, make your own charcoal by filling a metal drum with 3-inch pieces of willow or another wood, then placing the drum in a bonfire with a loose lid on top (to allow for airflow). Keep the bonfire piping hot for 4-6 hours, then open the drum. The wood will have charred into fine pieces of homemade charcoal, perfect for use in gunpowder. 11.9% sulfur 3 Mix the ingredients together. Moistening the powders before mixing is the safest but not only procedure.Place them all in the mortar, moisten for safety, and grind them together with the pestle for 10 minutes or longer.

If you're using a ball mill, mill the charcoal and sulfur together for 4 hours first, then add the saltpeter and mill the mixture for another 24 hours. /5/5f/Make Gunpowder Step 6.360p.mp4 Be extremely careful around the black powder once it has been mixed. Do not smoke or light a flame anywhere close to the powder, and keep it away from heat. 4 Consider adding water. Some say adding up to 8% water can improve the gunpowder's burning. Continue mixing the gunpowder, adding water in small increments until the gunpowder is the texture of thick clay. Form it into a ball when you're finished. /7/76/Make Gunpowder Step 7.360p.mp4 If you mix the gunpowder with water, you'll need to corn the gunpowder, or break it up into small pieces. Run the gunpowder ball through a kitchen sieve to break it into small pieces, then let the pieces dry out on a piece of paper. Again, be extremely careful around the gunpowder. Exercise caution at every stage. 5 Store the black powder safely.

Place the black powder in a special container designed for gunpowder. Consider storing it in a fireproof box in a shed or another area outside your home. In any case, store the black powder in a stable area where it will not come into contact with a flame or be exposed to high temperatures.

Question: What is made from sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter?
Answer: Gunpowder