Black Powder Thread #1

[Dr Boom]

Just a tid-bit I thought I'd throw out to everyone that wants a ball mill or nice mixer.

 

Tired of paying 150$ - 300$ for a good mill? how about one with a timer? maybe could do 15-25 lbs at once? Man, we're talkin' bucks now.

Well, maybe you've heard and maybe you haven't but an old clothing dryer works mighty fine! (Heating element removed of course!)

If you are industrious and can acquire an old dryer- check it out!

Use aluminum flashing to cover the inside holes and use Liquid Nails® chaulking to adhere it. If you are wondering about the motor to turn the drum- it will run on 110v. (you may have to do some changes to the starter box if so equiped)

 

Alright, so you have your industrial strength trumble-drum; now what? Well, assuming you are going to mill some powder you need to be able to remotely turn it on and off. I use 2- 100ft. extension cords and have the trumbler behind a mound of dirt should things go arrye.

 

A good note that a friend of mine brought up is the fixed paddles inside that usually move the clothes around, ours are diffinately not doing that anymore, need to be reduced to around half the size. This is probably the most difficult thing to do in the drum itself. I used a cordless battery powered grinder to cut half of it away and bent the rest over with visegrips. A good filler of silcon or Liquid Nails® would be wise to put in before bending closed so no loose materials work their way into the cracks.

 

My firend has a section of aluminum braided wire ( the kind used for lightning rods) attached at different points around his trumbler and is staked to the ground- He also mentioned that his "animal water feeder" bottle that is attached to the door of the dryer adds a bit of water (store alcohol is better IMHO) and keeps the dust down, cause it will make some dust. I've used solid fishing weights in mine and have had no problems with it other then being noisy.

 

Anyone that hasn't looked into this, I highly recommend it. Anyone with one already- how do you like it?

[justanotherpyro]

A pain in the ass to empty out, thats for sure.

[Bug_X]

I have search but could not find it.

 

What pressuer (kg/cm2) do you need to get a GOOD press cake?

 

I think Dan Williams use

 

6 ton is 6000 kg

powder die is 3 inch I.D. = 7,6 cm

 

The area is (7,6/2)*(7,6/2)*3,14 = 35 cm2

 

Tha pressuer is 6000/35 = 170 kg/cm2.

 

This is when he use the tool maximal.

 

But have mutch do you need to get 1,7g/cm3?

 

/ Bug

[moonshot]

What kind of media do you guys use in your ball mills? Here are my conclusions based on lots of testing.

 

Antimony hardened Lead: Fastest grinding media of all, due to its density, and is very cheap if not free, but it contaminates the powder, adding lead oxides to the list of combustion byproducts. I dont know about you, but I am personally not in favor of breathing a neurotoxin each time I set off a firework. Lead is out of the picture.

 

Brass: Nearly as effective as lead when it comes to grinding efficiency, and does not contaminate the powder. However, it is horribly expensive. It costs around $80-$100 to properly charge a 6" mill jar. Ugh. Not practical.

 

Glass Marbles: Not very efficient, but they get the job done, and cost almost nothing. However, they will leave ground glass in your composition, making it slightly more friction sensitive. I have figured out a way to get around this. Coating.

 

I recently purchased 1000 glass marbles at a garage sale for a buck, and I wanted to attempt to coat them. I first placed them in a mill jar with some course sand to roughen up the surface of the marbles. They were washed clean with denatured alchohol and dried. I then modified a coffee can to act as a milling jar with a 3" diameter hole in one end, and tossed about 100 marbles into the jar. Some random chunks of PVC pipe were placed in a steel bucket and melted over a bunsen burner until a slightly viscous slurry was formed. Im sure a barbecue would work just as well. The burner was then switched off. I turned the mill on and tipped it at a 20 degree angle with the hole facing upward. The now thicker slurry was poured into the mill as it rotated. The plastic adhered to the rough marbles well, and they were evenly coated. They were continually tumbled until the plastic completely hardened to prevent them from adhering to each other. I repeated this procedure 10 times (took me around 4 hours) and had 1000 coated marbles. No chance of spark, no lead contamination, no shattered glass in the comp, and it only cost $1!

 

I havent milled anything with them yet, but I will let it run while I am at school tomorrow (I am feeling extra brave, due to the fact that I know PVC cannot spark). My other concern would be static buildup, but Black Powder cannot be set off with a static discharge, due to the fact that carbon is an excellent conductor of electricity, and does not heat up sufficiently to cause ignition. PVC is quite impact resistant, so I think it is a suitable plastic. Another choice would be Nylon.

I started by using lead tire weights. I cut the steel clamp part out with a pair of wire cutters. As a grinding media it works great but you can tell its wearing down and adding lead to the powder. My favorite is brass and if you look around at wholesale steel yards that deal in misc. metals you can sometimes find it fairly reasonable on price. I'm not as worried about the smoke from the lit device as I am about airfloat dust while ramming rockets so I always use a dust mask when doing this. There are ceramic media that supposedly work well but I haven't tried any yet. For me brass is best.

[moonshot]

The first charcoal I made was from dried Douglas fir cones. Easy to get I just picked them up off the side of the road where I live and put them in a big three gallon ceramic plated coffee pot. I cooked them on a gas barbecue all day long mashed them with a 2x4 and screened the results through a 20 mesh screen. I milled this 75 15 10 and got a meal powder that I thought was pretty fast at the time, (Don't we all?). It worked good for rocket propellant but too slow for breaks.

Now I'm using dried grapevine I get from the local arts and crafts store in the form of woven graprvine wreaths. Totally dry and not coated with any shellac or varnish. Makes a much faster meal powder. Catos my rocket tubes but good for breaks and lift when granulated. Does anybody else find that meal seems to get stronger with age? I rammed some rockets with my fir cone mix for the 05 4th of July. It worked great but my 06 rockets catoed with the same mix. Just wondering.

[Rocket007]

picture 1

picture 2

 

what do yoou think about my pulverone? I mean the size.

 

Rok

[itwasntme]

picture 1

picture 2

 

what do yoou think about my pulverone? I mean the size.

 

Rok

Can you put a size reference such as a ruler or a coin? Do you have a more clearer picture?

[Mardec]

Looks very nice Rocket 007

 

How did you granulate it?

[Rocket007]

i wet the BP then i push it through a screen. then i let it on the sceen dry for about 3 hours and then i scrap the BP from the screen and let it ful dry .

 

Lp, Rok

[Rocket007]

Here is a better picture. Now i become some pine and black alder charcoal. i will send some videos of the burn rait of granulated Bp with beech, pine and black alder charcoal. The charcoal i become from preety greeen flame so: thank you. I give 3% dextrine to my Bp how many do you give to it?'

 

picture

 

Lp, Rok

[Mumbles]

I would try to use a few percent less water. You want granules, not those long string things. If they are turning out like spaghetti like that, it means it is too wet. You want most of it to fall off when you press it through, Another tip is dont press down on it, but grate it. I form my BP into balls, and rub it across my screen, and get good results.

[Mephistos Minion]

Now that I have my press built I can make some good lift. I have a powder dye already made. I will post some side by side results or screen and press lift from teh same meal batch in a few weeks.

[joe609]

I made some BP with Alder charcoal the other day Weknowpyro got it from an old black powder factory/museum where they had the trees growing out back the meal burns as fast as my willow granulated its amazing stuff

[Mumbles]

Alder is supposed to be just as fast, if not faster than willow. Black Alder in particular.

[Cherbanov]

I am using currant carcol to make my BP. it is very fast i used it in my BP gun that i have. i tryed to make my lift powder by using a steel pipe

and a round bar of metal. i filled the pipe with blackpowder and slam it with the roundbar, when i was pushing it out of the pipe the black powder did go in to nice little disks, and wen it was dry i sett some of.

and it did burn WERY WERY fast not like flash but it went of instently.

you all now that my spelling isent that good but i hope ju understand anyway. soon i will lunch my first 3" shell hope it make a nice break

[itwasntme]

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=4887239

Anyone ever use this rock tumbler? I was going to buy it today but got a coffee grinder instead, I didn't know if it was anygood for pyro. I would make only about 30G of BP(on a budget and can't use much chems) at a time using about 15 lead balls if I can find them if not, use marbles. I don't want to buy the media online as lead is very heavy and shipping is very expensive. Thanks for any reccomendations/suggestions.

[Ozzy]

Lol leads balls would kill that rock tumbler go to harbor freight or somthing and please dont use a coffee grinder for BP its makes shitty bp and is dangerous. But i do coffee grind my C/S THEN KNO3

[ULTRABUF]

itwasntme, I have used that rock tumbler. I used lead sinkers and didn't "properly charge" the mill, but it worked ok I guess. But the thing is that the bp gets stuck to the sides of that a lot, and there are like protrusions going inward and bp gets stuck on these. It makes usuable bp, not great bp. It turns a bit on the slow side, so this may explain the quality problem. I think I got better results from my crap mill that I made with a playdough jar, lol.

[itwasntme]

itwasntme, I have used that rock tumbler. I used lead sinkers and didn't "properly charge" the mill, but it worked ok I guess. But the thing is that the bp gets stuck to the sides of that a lot, and there are like protrusions going inward and bp gets stuck on these. It makes usuable bp, not great bp. It turns a bit on the slow side, so this may explain the quality problem. I think I got better results from my crap mill that I made with a playdough jar, lol.

Thank you. Would the harbor frieght one work for small loads of BP such as 30 grams? I use the coffee grinder for grinding sulfur and it does a great job! It is so fine that when touched it packs down with a crunch of wet snow. It doesn't do such a great job on the charcoal. I used it for KNO3 and it made it really fluffy and fine. My sugar rockets were like on stearoids and they spun for some reason when they took off! My dad was amazed by the power of them, he thought they were using Goex because of the smell!(telflite fuel) That's how much difference they make. I highly reccomend buying one. Sorry for going off topic.

[ewest]

Yes the Harbor Freight one would be good for small batches of BP. I have a Lortone rock tumbler that looks almost exactly like the Harbor Freight 3lb ones and I make 100-200 gram batches at a time in mine.

 

For media I bought some .40 cal lead balls, but fishing weights work good too. I also read somewhere you can use quarters and nickles, but I've never tried it.

[Mephistos Minion]

I do not understand how some can be content to make such small batches. I supoise it must varty with circumstances, but milling less than 500g of BP or starcomp just seems like a waste to me. Unless it is just a test etc. My mill can take about 600g at a time of pine BP, that is with my small barrel (new bigger on is on the way).

 

I finished my press, and have pressed my first BP puck. I used too much water I think as when I tried 10% I couldnt get it to mix enough, so I added another 5%. It pressed fine but was really wet. It is dying now, pending corning. I used willow BP that I milled ages ago. I found it out at my property and I forgot how fast it was as meal. I cant wait to compare it to the corned stuff. I also have about 500g of BP made with shitty BBQ bag charcoal. I think it is damp as it is really heavy for its volume. I will dry the powder adn see if that makes it burn better. Then I will compare this meal with pressed and corned of teh same BP batch.

[Mumbles]

About 8% is key when pressing BP. It won't feel that wet, but that is what it is supposed to be. It will come out very hard, and be dry soon. I've even heard of people pressing comets with 4% moisture. I think that used Gum Arabic solution. They said it could probably be fired right away.

[itwasntme]

I do not understand how some can be content to make such small batches. I supoise it must varty with circumstances, but milling less than 500g of BP or starcomp just seems like a waste to me. Unless it is just a test etc. My mill can take about 600g at a time of pine BP, that is with my small barrel (new bigger on is on the way).

 

I finished my press, and have pressed my first BP puck. I used too much water I think as when I tried 10% I couldnt get it to mix enough, so I added another 5%. It pressed fine but was really wet. It is dying now, pending corning. I used willow BP that I milled ages ago. I found it out at my property and I forgot how fast it was as meal. I cant wait to compare it to the corned stuff. I also have about 500g of BP made with shitty BBQ bag charcoal. I think it is damp as it is really heavy for its volume. I will dry the powder adn see if that makes it burn better. Then I will compare this meal with pressed and corned of teh same BP batch.

I'm still in the testing mode of BP. I'm young(15) and don't have a job so chems arn't that easy to come by. Also, I live in a very populated are so making a lot of BP at a time is not a good idea as people dont like booms around here.

[Cherbanov]

i am bilding my first press now, how do i press the BP with ore without dextrin? i got my self a 5 ton press is it to small? granulat+dextrin and press without dextrin?

[Mumbles]

Press it with dextrin in the BP. How big of a press are you making diameterwise. This will determine if your 5 ton press will be suitable.