Black Powder Thread #1

[saluterocket]

thank you guys for the information, i believe i have been pursuaded to purchase a hydraulic press, 4 tons should be sufficient, right?

 

mumbles- That is very nice research thank you

 

frozen tech- I could tell from the video, that the sample on the right is the corned black powder, it whent up so fast it only left a slight scorch mark on the paper.

[weknowpyro]

4 tons should be fine for granulated blackpowder. I have good results from just using 1 ton, it makes a considerable diffrence to the burn rate.

[Dr. Hextromeister]

http://media.putfile.com/ciamethod

 

 

Well, I decided to make a batch of BP using the CIA method ^.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the mill gets going i'll finish the job.

[Mumbles]

Strength of the press will depend on how big your BP puck former is. I'm honestly not sure how much pressure is required to get to the correct density. Just making guesses off my stuff, 1.7 denisty would require about 1000 psi. If anyone was a P2F guage they could test.

 

I just used a 1" piece of PVC with dowels as the end plug and rammer. A piece of 1" coupling was used around the pressing end of the PVC to act as a reinfocement sleeve. Probably $3 in materials tops. 15g of BP was wetted with 1.5g of distilled water, and pressed. The appropriate marks were made on the rammer to indicate density.

[Mephistos Minion]

I use a piece of 80mm PVC coupling and some hose clamps. The pressing is done by a bunch or plywood disks glued together. I have not pressed more than 100g so far, as I have not been making much stuff, but now that I am on holidays things will be different.

[Rocket007]

hi

 

What do you think? Can I use for my Ball mill a jar with 4 sides and 8 angle? (Do you know what I mean?) or must I use a cylinder jar?

 

 

LP:ROk:D

[optimus]

Is your jar anything like the 6-sided ones on THIS page?

[Rocket007]

this is my jar:

picture 1

picture 2

 

What do you think is it better then a cylinder jar or is it garbage?

 

LP.Rok

[50caliber]

How is it going to roll? are you using rollers or something else. It needs to be a cylinder shape to roll

[hst45]

Try this, cut two circles out of plywood of a diamater larger than the jar. Cut out the center of these two circles to the square-ish shape of the bottle, place around bottle, and glue in place. The bottle/jar should then rotate on these plywood wheels.

[Rocket007]

you dont understand me!!!!!!! i will know if i can use this jar for my ball mill jar. I know how to bring it to rotation.

 

SO, CAN YOU ANSWER MY QUESTION?

 

 

lp,rok

[50caliber]

Well if you can get it to rotate you could use almost anything

[Rocket007]

ok thank you for the answer. I will try both to see which is better.

 

LP.Rok

[ewest]

IIRC, I read somewhere that for small diameter jars a round one works well because when it turns, the grinding media will actually drop back down on to the BP and you get a crushing effect in the jar. For larger jars they use sloping sides like a 6 or 8 sided jar because you won't really get the dropping effect from the media but now with sloped sides you get a grinding effect which works well also.

 

I'm not sure about the 4 sided jar, but give it a try and let us know how it works for you. But to answer your question directly, no, it doesn't NEED to be round, multisided jars will work also.

[qwezxc12]

Anyone here use sodium carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) as a binder instead of dextrin?

 

I'm curious as to the percentage used; last batch I tried, I used 3% and it appears to be too much when granulating the BP through a -16mesh screen...the BP more or less 'glued' itself to the screen when being pressed through. It took forever to press, then scrape, etc. It dried just fine and appears to burn maybe a bit hotter than a dextrin (+6%) bound sample.

 

I used the same rough % water/etOH that I always use when using dextrin - and that crumbles through the screen just fine.

 

I'm going to to try it with 1.5% CMC next and see if that's enough to still make sturdy grains.

 

Anyone else have experience using CMC? If so, what % do you use and what's your preparation method?

 

Thanks!

[Pretty green flame]

hey @ qwezxc12,

 

i never used sodium carboxymethylcellulose, but sounds good.

basicly all binders reduces the quality of your lift.

best is, use a press. so you wont need any binder.

but if you use binder to make pulveron, get some sgrs(about 60cent/500g sgrs) at your local china-store. works way better than dextrin. i guess, it´s also cheaper than sodium carboxymethylcellulose

CMC should be used in 1% quantities, if we compare CMC and other binders in BP quality you will see that CMC will have hardly any effect on BP speed.

[Pretty green flame]

so, i should get some and try rolling some stars with it.

you think, it will work also PGF?

It might actually be too sticky for rolling stars, they will probably clump together and form a solid mass. For rolling i'd stick with tried and true methods (dextrin, red gum)

[qwezxc12]

....get some sgrs(about 60cent/500g sgrs)  at your local china-store. works way better than dextrin. i guess, it´s also cheaper than sodium carboxymethylcellulose

I have some sgrs that I did buy at my Pan-Asian Grocery (yay...go thai chilis and coconut milk curry!! ). I never thought to use it as binder for BP.

 

You're right it is cheaper than sodium CMC, but I already have a lb of it that I bought after reading Wichita Buggywhip's BP test data. She stated, as PGF mentioned, that it had no discernable effect on burning speed. I guess 3% was too much.

 

....CMC should be used in 1% quantities, if we compare CMC and other binders in BP quality you will see that CMC will have hardly any effect on BP speed.

 

I'll try 1% in the ballmill and grain it and see how it holds up.

 

Thanks guys.

[qwezxc12]

Pretty Green Flames - thanks for the advice on the CMC ratio. I wanted to post a follow-up...I actually tried this a week or so ago, but now I'm out of town and have nothing to do other than work, so posting is the only way to keep the pyro jones away

 

I ran a 200g batch of my BP through the mill with 3g CMC (1.5%) for binder. It worked much better than my attempt with 3%...and for ~$9.00/lb, it will make a heck of a lot of lift. Perfect! I also tried a new method of making it. It's a hybrid combination of pressing and screening while damp, instead of corning; the best of both worlds maybe?

 

I activated the meal/CMC per usual with 10% 75:25 water/ETOH, and mixed thoroughly in a zip-lock bag to distribute the moisture. The moistened mix was screened 2-3 times to break up any wet clumps. A portion of the resulting damp fluffy screening was loaded into a 1"IDx6" PVC tube to the top and weighed. The added weight of the 10% water/ETOH weight was subtracted out (I assumed the liquid to be 1g/ml).

 

I then marked my 1" ram to a depth to achieve 1.7g/cc "dry density", pressed the column, and popped out the cylinder of BP. I did this for the remainder of the damp mix. Rather than let these pucks dry, then smash and screen the bits, I grated the compressed pucks through a -16mesh screen into granules. The resulting 'pressed' pulverone was dried under moving air and was completely dry (by weight) in a day. The pressed grains are denser and harder than non-pressed and performed better than my plain screened puverone. I like this method as the control over the mesh of the lift is absolute; there's no corning dust or waste fines from breaking up dried pucks, then screening. I also think the screening process produces grains with more surface irregularities that might help flame propagation - more like 4Fa instead of FFg.

 

I posted some videos in the Aerial Shells thread a little while ago. While the shells were nothing spectacular , all those shells were shot with this lift - 3" canisters weighing 188g & 213g were lifted with 18g and 21g respectively. It's not uber-milled Balsa or Black Willow, I know. My goal isn't the fastest BP possible, but cheap, easy, and consistent from batch to batch...pretty good for newspaper-charcol and a Lortone tumber, I think.

 

Does anyone else granulate lift like this? I can post pictures when I get back if anoyone is interested. Somewhere, I also have videos of 3' trough burn tests.

[KevFla2001]

I was recently able to find some Paulownia wood and make my own charcoal with it. Does anyone know if the 75/15/10 formula still applies since Paulownia is so much more reactive than average charcoal? Is the stoichiometric percentages for BP better to use than "standard" percentages?

[Pretty green flame]

I was recently able to find some Paulownia wood and make my own charcoal with it. Does anyone know if the 75/15/10 formula still applies since Paulownia is so much more reactive than average charcoal? Is the stoichmetric percentages for BP better to use than "standard" percentages?

Use standard, will be the best.

[KevFla2001]

Would you recommend changing grain size for the Paulownia BP lift charge? I currently use 12-30 on 3" and under shells.

[Pretty green flame]

Would you recommend changing grain size for the Paulownia BP lift charge? I currently use 12-30 on 3" and under shells.

Well i haven't used this stuff before but i've seen movies of it so i'd recomend 2Fa equvivalent (IIRC it's -4-12mesh)

[Mumbles]

It's hard to give you advice without knowing the current wood used.

 

Probably the best thing to do is to just test. Make a few 100g batches of different mesh sizes. Make one in your normal mesh size and see how it works. With 3" shells you could probably get away with a violent lift, as it isn't as vital for smaller shells. With larger shells, you would definatly need to tone it down. Cutting out finer material to say -12+20 would be good if you find yourself getting flowerpots.

 

Anyway congratulations on finding a pawlonia source. I hope to see some nice shells in the future from you.

[KevFla2001]

I think I'll just make my normal 200g batch since that's all my ball mill will handle, then sieve out 12, 16, 20, and 30 mesh sizes and test each separately and together, and see how well the shells handle the finer mesh. I'll let you know the results sometime soon, as my digital scale is out for repair and I'm stuck doing nothing without it.

 

Mumbles, what do you think about the differences between the PGI lift formula for BP vs. the standard 75/15/10 and the stoichiometric? In your opinion does it really make any noticable difference?

 

Thanks to all for the help