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.

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. 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. Fun:How to make gunpowder - RationalWiki Fun:How to make gunpowder Jump to: navigation , search There's only two things in this world that can make you feel like a man. The first, alcohol is usually freely available excepting where the god squad has got there first.

The second is gunpowder, which due to a rather disturbing trend towards common sense in the world is largely restricted in most jurisdictions. Whether it's zombie attacks, nuclear holocaust, brutally overthrowing the government or just for the maiming of defenceless small furry animals, gunpowder is the mad note. It's one of the dozen or so things you need to remember how to make for when the world collapses, and we're all thrown back in to a medieval existence if you're to lord it over your fellow man. For those interested, everything you need to know to survive in these situations is described in Harry Harrison's Deathworld Two . Contents [ edit ] Basics Gunpowder consists of a nitrate, typically saltpetre (potassium nitrate), to oxygenate the reaction. Some easily combustible carbon, in the form of charcoal a touch of sulphur to make the whole mix burn fast. The ingredients should be finely ground, and fairly evenly mixed. The smaller the grains of the mixture, the faster and more evenly it burns and the bigger the bang. Even grinding the powder finely can still produce mixed results and two piles even taken from the exact same batch may burn at different rates.

In this case, "corning" may be required. This involves mixing the raw powder with water and letting it dry out to form a fine black cake. The resulting cake, when crushed, will be far finer and different piles of the mixture will burn more consistently. The basic ratio is 75% saltpetre, 15% charcoal and 10% sulphur. It'll take you about a year before you can get your first batches of gunpowder off the production line, due to the time it takes to make saltpetre (although It took Captain Kirk a single episode) Don't be discouraged over the long lead time, if the Chinese were making it 600 years ago, you'll look pretty damn stupid if you fail. [ edit ] Britain Elemental sulphur is typically deposited around volcanic vents and other such unpleasant places. Britain, being a green and pleasant land, doesn't have any of these so you'll have to make your own. What Britain is oversupplied with is slag heaps from former coal mines. Your best bet is to dig through a few of these until you have several kilograms of iron pyrite (ferrous sulphide).

Iron pyrite, otherwise known as fools gold, is a sparkly crystalline material. If the mine you're looting was formerly open to tourists, you'll probably also be able to find large quantities of it in the gift shop. You'll then need to build yourself a nice bit of eighteenth-century infrastructure. Start by digging a furnace pit big enough to hold your stock of iron pyrites and a goodly supply of wood. Leading out from the furnace pit, dig a horizontal flue some 12 metres in length. At the end of the flue closest to the fire pit dig out a little reservoir and at the other end construct a condensation chamber consisting of a brick building divided inside in to horizontal chambers, maximising the length the gas has to travel to escape. Once your furnace is constructed, set light to the wood in the fire pit and cover the whole thing over, then retire to a safe distance for a couple of days. The thing will give off a whole bunch of sulphur dioxide and probably some arsenide gases too for added lethality, so it's best to stay upwind. When the fire has comfortably burned itself out, dig the thing up and reap the fruits of your labours.

The reservoir should contain some nice pure elemental sulphur, and more should be deposited in the condensation chamber though this later will need careful washing to remove sulphuric acid before handling. [ edit ] The rest of the known Universe If you're not in England and no volcanoes are nearby, it's not to worry: you don't absolutely need sulphur. Black powder can be made simply with saltpetre and charcoal. The sulphur simply makes it all burn much faster, and can be substituted with something else which can burn fast enough to produce the bang you want. Experiment, just like the Chinese did a thousand years ago. [ edit ] Saltpetre Though there are naturally occurring nitrates such as bat guano that you might use in your gunpowder, the most readily available source is, well, you. Every time you take a piss, you're chucking a valuable resource down the drain. To harness the latent explosive power of your own urine, you'll need a big water bucket which you should then jam-pack full of straw. When you take a leak, do it in to a bucket and leave it standing around for a day or so to reduce.

At the end of the day, chuck the bucket of stale urine in to the barrel. Make this a fun part of your daily routine. After a year or so, take some wood ash from your fire pit, grind it finely and spread it over a loose wooden bed. Place the wooden bed over a water tight container, then take the straw out of the barrel and sluice liberally with clean water. Leave the water to evaporate, and you should be left with some white residue, which is saltpetre. [ edit ] Charcoal This is the easiest of all ingredients to get hold of. At the beginning of the apocalypse you can just loot it from supermarkets and petrol stations in convenient little bags. Later on, you can just dig charcoal burning pits. Stock the pits with some nice fragrant softwood, light them, cover them over with earth and come back in a week. Compared to the sulphur, simplicity itself. [ edit ] Responsible use of gunpowder Remember that Conservatives think you should be able to have lots and lots of gunpowder, but no alcohol and definitely no sex (sex outside of marriage only; sex with your spouse is encouraged).

For this reason, it's incredibly important to blow up anyone who looks like a Conservative first. It's just good manners. [ edit ] Alternative Method of Production First, make yourself a bow from string and sticks and some arrows with chicken feathers, sticks, and flint. Wait until dark, and go hunt creepers. Do not engage the creepers in melee combat: they will simply explode, killing you. Instead, find a creeper from a safe spot far away, and shoot at it until it dies. Go to the creeper's place of death and pick up the gunpowder it drops. Then, get off of Minecraft and follow the instructions above. [ edit ] Other things you may care to make Come the apocalypse, your pre-industrial civilisation will just be crying out for things they can use to maim opposing tribes. Remembering how to make gunpowder will, of course, greatly increase your status in the group but for the real renaissance man status, you may also want to make up some thermite. Thermite is a mix of iron oxide (rust) and aluminium filings, both of which will be really, really easy to get in the ruined cityscapes of the grim meathook future.

It has dual properties of not only being great for assisting in looting by adding cutting power to your blowing up things power, but it's also good for welding too, so you can use it to help make a nice steam engine and really get your industrial revolution rolling. If you like banging, why not try making love? All About Gunpowder All About Gunpowder Home / History / Explosives / All About Gunpowder Early history and the use of gunpowder in guns Although it is commonly stated that gunpowder was invented by the Chinese, it is certainly more true to state that it is a substance whose origins are lost in the mists of time, and that it has been subject to a series of technical improvements over the centuries to meet the requirements of the day. The Chinese don’t seem to have been acquainted with guns because, according to Brock, they were astonished by their first sight of artillery on visiting Portuguese ships at Canton in 1520.

Names associated with the early history of gunpowder include Berthold Schwarz, a thirteenth century Franciscan monk, who is reputed to have invented the principle of the gun in about 1320, and friar Roger Bacon, born at Ilchester, Somerset, in 1214. He left cryptic writings which have been translated to show the use of sulphur, saltpetre and charcoal mixtures to produce explosions and sparks. However, his proportions of 7 parts saltpetre, 5 parts charcoal and 5 parts sulphur would have been no more powerful than the fizz of a Roman candle firework, and I don’t see how he could have made an explosion with it. My childhood hobby was making fireworks, and I can vouch for the difficulty of making a good bang with such crude mixtures. They will, however, propel a projectile from a gun barrel, and guns were used at the battle of Crecy in 1346. The crude ingredients would have been mixed on the battlefield because, otherwise, the three ingredients would have partially separated out during a bumpy journey. In those days it wasn’t possible to make a really strong gun barrel.

The blast furnace, with its readily available supply of molten metal for casting, was not invented until Tudor times. Iron, which was available in relatively small quantities, was made in a bloomery furnace, which didn’t melt the metal, but produced an impure lump, weighing a few pounds, which had to be hammered into bars, squeezing the impurities out. The early guns were made very like wooden barrels, with bars welded together by hammering, all held in place with metal strengthening hoops. They had large bores so that they could fire heavy projectiles at relatively low speed. The development of gunpowder as we know it today would have depended upon the parallel developments in metallurgy. Crude mixtures of the three ingredients are, today, only used for pyrotechnics. Very good rockets can be made using 13 parts saltpetre, 2 parts sulphur, 2.5 parts fine charcoal and 2.5 parts coarse charcoal, compressed in a stout tube around a former which gives a hollow cavity up the centre, and confined with a clay orifice to allow the pressure to build up. The composition of proper gunpowder developed with time.

Baptista Porta reached approximately the modern proportions in 1515. Typically, European manufacturers used saltpetre 75 parts, sulphur 12.5 parts and charcoal 12.5 parts, all, of course, by weight. The ingredients would have been of high purity, and the charcoal would have been obtained from alder, dogwood or willow, although charred straw was used for brown gunpowder. Sodium nitrate, “Chile saltpetre”, was sometimes used instead of potassium nitrate. It was cheaper than saltpetre, and made a slightly more powerful product, although it tended to absorb moisture from the air. It was used to blast the Suez Canal. To understand the manufacture of gunpowder it is necessary to consider the factors which favour rapid combustion. The three ingredients are solid, relying on each other to supply fuel and oxygen. Clearly, the finer the particle sizes of the three ingredients, and the closer they are to each other, the better the mixture will function.

That is why modern gunpowder undergoes the process of incorporation in a mill, like the 18th-century one at Chart Mills, or the 20th-century one at the Oare Gunpowder Works, both in Faversham. This process reduces the ingredients to a very small particle size. The resulting ‘mill cake’ is then broken up into chunks before it is pressed, typically in an hydraulic press with a pressure of about 70 tons per square foot, though originally screw presses similar to those still used by bookbinders were used. This compacts the particles, resulting in “press cake”, about five eighths of an inch thick, which has a density of about 1.7 times that of water when dried. There is an optimum density, the rate of combustion decreasing beyond that point. Having obtained this material, it is necessary to regulate the speed of combustion for various purposes. This is done by converting it into granules. When gunpowder burns, it does so from the surface, the flame rapidly propagating throughout the particle. It is a physical fact that the larger a particle is, the smaller its surface area will be compared with its mass (weight).

For example, a sugar cube of 1cm side has an area of six square cm. If eight cubes are stacked to make a large cube with 2cm sides, its area will be 24 square cm, while it weighs eight times as much. The ratio of area to volume is 6 for the single cube, but only 3 for the big cube. A cube of gunpowder the size of a sugar lump would, therefore, burn roughly twice as fast as a cube with sides twice as long. From the press-house the “press cake” is taken to the corning house, where the powder is automatically sieved into grains of different sizes, according to the application. Next, it goes to the dusting house, where powder dust is removed by centrifugal force in “reels”, gauze-covered drums revolving in sealed housings. The dust can be recycled. The powder is then taken to the glazing house, to be polished in revolving drums, and glazed by the addition of graphite powder. This makes the particles less likely to absorb damaging moisture. It also makes them slippery so that they easily run into all the space into which they are put.

Finally they are dried in “stoves” at 40 deg C till their moisture content is 1% - just enough to prevent them disintegrating into useless powder dust. Typical gunpowder looks like black granulated sugar. It is very easily ignited by a spark, but it won’t burn if it gets damp. It is relatively insensitive to mechanical shock. Gunpowder made by the corning process wasn’t any use for the very large and long range guns which were used in the second half of the 19th century. The use of good quality wrought iron and steel, the introduction of the principle of loading from the breech end of a gun, instead of down the muzzle, and the introduction of rifling, transformed gunnery, and hence required new types of gunpowder. At the time of Waterloo, cannons still used cannon balls, and they had very limited accuracy. Using a cannon was very much like playing snooker, for the gunner used ricochet effects to bounce the cannon ball along a line of defence, killing as many people as he could. Much effort went into designing fortifications to minimise this effect, which resulted in forts having complicated polygonal shapes.

All this ended with the introduction of rifling in cannons, from which an elongated projectile was fired spinning like a top. These flew much trued than cannon balls, and it was possible to hit targets at long range. However, their direction of bounce was unpredictable. Things changed about the time of the Crimean war (1854-56), when the French used rifled guns fired from armoured floating batteries. In 1858 they launched an ironclad warship, “Gloire”, mounting rifled guns, which threatened to make the British navy redundant. This caused a rush to re-arm with rifled muzzle loaders, which needed very large grained gunpowder. For these, the press cake was cut into strips, then into cubes, to form cubical or pebble powder. The sides of the cubes were usually 0.6 or 1.5 inches. Unfortunately, these gave a very rapid build-up of pressure, which accounts for the bottle shape of guns of that time, the breech having to be very thick to withstand the pressure. A certain General Rodman had a brainwave which enabled this problem to be overcome, as follows.

A prismatic moulded powder was made by pressing incorporated powder into moulds using hydraulic pressure. This gave prisms which would have a hollow cavity 0.4 inches across through the hexagonal block. Typically, each grain would be 1 inch high and 1.3 inches across. When these burned, the surface area on the outside would decrease as the combustion progressed, while the surface area of the internal cavity would increase. This caused a much more even rate of combustion than could be achieved for solid particles of powder. There were two grades, prismatic black, made with wood charcoal, and prismatic brown, using straw charcoal. It was possible to regulate the pressure much more evenly as the projectile went up the barrel using prismatic powder. The idea was first adopted by Russia in 1860, the British, as usual, being the last to take it up. The same principles are employed today for solid fuel rockets. Gunpowder will, in a confined space, build up a pressure of about 42 tons per square inch. The shock wave associated with the explosion can make the figure even higher.

Typically, for a rifled breech loader gun of ten inches diameter, 250lb of gunpowder would be used to fire its 500 lb shell. A rifled muzzle loader would use about half that charge. Guncotton was invented in 1846, was almost five times as powerful as gunpowder, and didn’t produce the dense clouds of smoke associated with the earlier explosive. In simple terms it is cotton wool steeped in a mixture of sulphuric and nitric acid. The first guncotton factory in the world opened at the Marsh Works, an existing gunpowder factory in Faversham, in 1847. However, the sophisticated manufacturing process was imperfectly understood and within a few months there was a very serious explosion which resulted in over 20 fatalities. Manufacture of the product in Faversham then ceased till 1873 when it was resumed on a different site at Uplees.

It was only a matter of time before gunpowder became redundant for gunnery, and it was displaced by cordite, which is a mixture of nitro-glycerine, guncotton and petroleum jelly, about the end of the 19th century, although some Belgian forts still used gunpowder in 1914. Use of gunpowder for blasting rock Breaking rock in mines and quarries was a very laborious. Bronze Age man used antler picks to hack his way along mineral veins in the old copper mines on the Great Orme in North Wales. In Tudor times, hammers and wedges were used to break new ground, assisted by the process of fire setting. This involved lighting a fire against the rock surface to heat it, followed by rapid quenching with water or vinegar. The state of the underground workings can only be imagined, with the smoke that would have been generated by the fires making the tunnels almost unbearable. Quicklime was also used. It was put into holes drilled in the rock, followed by water.

The hole would have been rammed tight with clay, and the miner would hope that the expansion of the lime as it hydrated would break the rock, rather than just push the clay plug out. Gunpowder seems to have been introduced for mining by Dutchmen in the 17th century. Miners would hand-bore holes using drills and hammers, usually up to two feet deep and about one inch across. These would then be charged with powder, and a long thin metal “pricker” would be passed down the hole, communicating with the main charge. The hole would then be rammed with clay, the pricker would be pulled out, and lengths of straw or reed full of fine powder would be put down the resulting narrow hole to act as fuse. Touch paper, which is paper soaked in saltpetre, would be fixed to the end of the straw, then the miner would light it and run. It was a much more effective way of mining than the old method, which was discontinued. This rather dangerous method continued until about 1870, when safety fuse was introduced. This consisted of a tarred rope with a core of powdered gunpowder.

It burned at a fixed rate, which would give the miner a good chance of getting away. Prior to that, it was not unusual for a charge to explode prematurely, blowing the miner’s eye out, or worse. Hand boring continued for about 300 years, but rock drills were introduced about 1890, reducing the labour considerably. However, they caused a lot of dust which the miner would inhale. Many died from silicosis, and the early drills were called widow makers. It was thought that the effects of dust could be minimised by growing beards to trap it. That explains why many of the old miners had magnificent specimens on their chins. The problem was not overcome until drills which used a jet of water to keep the holes wet were introduced. Unfortunately for the gunpowder industry, dynamite and similar explosives proved to be a much more effective at breaking rock. They explode with great violence, giving a much more powerful shockwave than gunpowder does. A stick of dynamite on a railway line would probably cut the metal, while gunpowder would do little damage.

However, it is the relative gentleness of gunpowder which causes it still to be used where intact blocks of rock are needed, as in the state quarrying industry. Gunpowder was used in coal mining, but it suffered from the severe disadvantage that it could set fire to methane, or fire damp, which occurred in the mines. This would cause catastrophic explosions. A material called Bobbinite was permitted for use in coal mines until 1931. It included a material called Maizite, which looked like rice. That component reduced the risk of igniting gas. They were shaped like long cotton reels so that a shot hole could be charged and a fuse passed down the middle. They were packed in special brown paper, four to a pack. Presumably that was the normal charge for a shot hole. Pyrotechnics It is not my intention to devote these pages to a description of the uses of gunpowder in pyrotechnics. Suffice it to say that gunpowder still has an honoured place in that branch of the arts.

Although it was the explosive used in bangers and the like, it has been largely superseded in that role by more powerful flash powders, which use metals such as magnesium or aluminium as fuel. However, it is used for lifting charges in mortars, as used to fire shells at larger displays, and for bursting charges in shells and rockets. It also occurs in various pyrotechnic mixtures. The real problem with gunpowder is that it contains sulphur. That material gives very friction-sensitive mixtures with some other firework components, particularly those for producing colour. It is courting death to mix them together. Certainly, weed killer and sulphur is extremely hazardous. All firework factories have a rigid separation between areas for mixtures containing sulphur and those that don’t. Article reproduced by kind permission of Michael Baldwin. References NB The first titles are on sale at the Fleur de Lis Heritge Centre in Faversham, which also stocks a wide range of other books on the history of explosives.

The Faversham Gunpowder Industry and its Development, Arthur Percival, Faversham Society, Faversham Papers No 4 (1986) Gunpowder: Terminology and Incorporation, Edward Patterson, Faversham Society, Faversham Papers No 27 (1986) Oare Gunpowder Works, Wayne Cocroft, Faversham Society, Faversham Papers No 39 (1994) Gunpowder Manufacture in Faversham: Oare and Marsh Factories, Edward Patterson, Faversham Papers No 42 (1995) Black Powder Manufacture in Cumbria, Edward Patterson, Faversham Papers No 43 (1995) Guns, Gunpowder & Saltpetre, Ronald D Crozier, Faversham Papers No 58, Faversham Society (1997) A History of Fireworks, A. St. H. Brock, Harrap (1949). Chemistry as applied to the arts and manufactures, William Mackenzie, London, Circa 1885.

Chambers encyclopedia of universal knowledge, William and Robert Chambers, London and Edinburgh, (1890). Fireworks Principles and Practice, 2nd Edition, Lancaster, Rev. R., Chemical Publishing Co. Inc., New York (1992). ISBN 0-8206-0338-2 Front line Kent, Victor Smith, Buckland Press, 2001. ISBN 1-901509-64-8 The old gunpowder factory at Glynneath, Pritchard, T., Evans, J., and Johnson, S., Merthyr Tydfil and District Naturalists’ Society, (1985). Mining in the Lake Counties, Shaw, W.T., Dalesman Books (Clapham) (1983) ISBN 0 85206 2910. Gunpowder Works - Glossary of Terms Canals Gunpowder works were served by a network of narrow-gauge canals, rather than by metalled tracks - off which iron wheels might strike dangerous sparks Charcoal One of the three main ingredients of gunpowder.

A form of the element, Carbon, it burns readily and is used in explosives as a reducing agent Cooperage 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." 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

Question: What is traditionally added to sulphur and saltpetre to make gunpowder?
Answer: Charcoal