How To Make The Absolute BEST Black Powder (For Firearms)

Summary

Highlights

• The basic formula for antique muzzle loading propellant is 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur.
• Refining potassium nitrate is crucial, even with high-purity purchases. It's easy to do with a pan and some distilled water. 🥄
• Charcoal quality affects powder performance; refined cellulose like cottonil works exceptionally well. 🔥
• Switching from lead to brass media during milling drastically reduces dirtiness of the powder.
• Properly milling for 24 hours enhances powder's cleanliness and combustion efficiency.
• Glazing the powder affects its overall performance; choose your timing wisely! ⏰
• Safety is paramount; avoid flammable environments and consider using protective gear. 🛑

Key Takeaways

• Making black powder involves precise ingredient ratios: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, 10% sulfur.
• Refine your potassium nitrate for optimal performance. 🧪
• Use high-quality charcoal sources like willow or even unusual choices like cottonil toilet paper. 🪵
• Invest in brass media for cleaner powder; lead makes it dirty. 🔄
• Mill the powder for at least 24 hours for best results! ⏳
• Glazing affects burn rate; experiment to find your best result! 🔬
• Always prioritize safety: no sparks, flammables, or smoking during production! 🔥

Overview

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction The Introduction chapter features Willard McBaine starting the presentation of 'Everything Black Powder'. He promises a comprehensive demonstration on producing sporting black powder that is cleaner and more powerful than Swiss black powder.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Powder Making Journey This chapter, titled 'Powder Making Journey', describes the initial challenges faced in making black powder. Initially, the quality was poor, but the need for any powder at that time made it worthwhile. Over time, improvements were made to enhance the power and effectiveness of the powder.
• 01:30 - 05:00: Important Ingredients and Refining Nitrate In this chapter, the author discusses the process of refining and improving nitrate for cleaner and more powerful burning powder. The author emphasizes their success in developing a consistent method that surpasses Swiss standards. The significance of following their specific process to achieve these results is highlighted.
• 05:00 - 08:00: Making and Refining Charcoal This chapter discusses the process of making and refining charcoal, a crucial ingredient in antique muzzle loading propellant. The basic formula for this propellant is 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10% sulfur. While these ratios can be adjusted slightly, the chapter emphasizes the importance of using the three main ingredients correctly. It hints at potential variations in the formula but suggests that the standard ratios are not as critical as often perceived.
• 08:00 - 09:00: Choosing and Using Sulfur In the chapter titled 'Choosing and Using Sulfur', the importance of using high-quality ingredients for creating a powder is discussed. The author advises against purchasing common household sulfur products, such as stump remover, charcoal briquettes, and sulfur powder typically used as slug repellent. Emphasizing the need for quality ingredients, the text stresses avoiding these products from hardware stores to ensure the effectiveness and safety of the powder.
• 09:00 - 15:00: Ball Milling Process This chapter discusses the importance of using and refining potassium nitrate for various processes like ball milling. The narrator emphasizes purchasing high-purity technical-grade nitrate from reliable sources such as eBay, Amazon, and Skylighter. Refining the nitrate is a crucial step, regardless of where it is purchased.
• 15:00 - 17:00: Screened vs Compressed Powder The chapter discusses the use of stump remover, which is often potassium nitrate, in making powder. It notes that not all stump removers currently contain potassium nitrate and may require refining to perform effectively. The speaker offers to create a detailed video explaining the process if there's interest.
• 17:00 - 20:30: Using a Puck for Compression The chapter discusses the process of using a puck for compression and highlights the importance of using distilled water to avoid contaminants. The speaker describes the procedure of dissolving potassium nitrate by heating it in distilled water and notes the presence of impurities even in supposedly pure potassium nitrate.
• 20:30 - 25:00: Determining and Adjusting Density The chapter titled 'Determining and Adjusting Density' primarily discusses the impurities found in prilled potassium nitrate. It notes the formation of an oil slick or scummy layer on the surface of the water when prilled potassium nitrate is dissolved. The process involves straining and removing these impurities, then turning off the heat while continuing to stir the solution as potassium nitrate crystallizes and precipitates from the solution. The chapter emphasizes the importance of removing impurities and constant stirring in the crystallization process.
• 25:00 - 33:00: Sorting and Glazing The chapter 'Sorting and Glazing' discusses the process of recrystallizing using a stirring method to prevent water entrapment in crystals. The recrystallized products are then placed on a tray or paper towel to soak up excess water. A cold distilled water rinse follows, which might not be crucial but is preferred by the process used. The material is then placed on a metal tray for further processing.
• 33:00 - 36:00: Powder Testing and Chronicles The chapter delves into the process of refining potassium nitrate, emphasizing the importance of eliminating impurities and contaminants. The process involves allowing the nitrate to drain for a few hours or days, depending on the weather, followed by drying it in a toaster oven to ensure complete dryness. The chapter also mentions the necessity of making your own charcoal for the best results in powder creation.
• 36:00 - 44:00: Economic and Performance Considerations The chapter discusses techniques related to using charcoal effectively. It describes a simple method involving a one-gallon paint can with a quarter-inch hole in the lid to optimize the use of charcoal as a fuel source. This setup influences the velocity and quality of the output powder from the burning charcoal.
• 44:00 - 49:00: Troubleshooting Common Issues This chapter discusses various materials that can be used as carbon sources for finishing powder in different contexts. It mentions Willow as a popular and effective choice due to its widespread availability. Other options include Eastern red cedar and White Pine, among others. The chapter highlights the importance of testing different carbon sources to evaluate their effectiveness, noting that while many materials can be used, their performance may vary.
• 49:00 - 60:00: Ensuring Safety This chapter discusses the types of wood suitable for safety applications, focusing on the use of both soft and hard woods. It highlights the advantage of lighter woods and addresses a common belief that soft woods perform better. However, it mentions an exception with the use of Alder Buckthorn, a hard wood used in Swiss applications, known for its rapid growth despite its hardness.
• 60:00 - 70:00: Further Reading and Conclusion The chapter discusses effective materials for making charcoal, emphasizing the use of cottonelle toilet paper due to its composition of highly refined wood cellulose. Methods for making charcoal are suggested, including using a propane burner, turkey fryer, fire pit, or wood stove, with a preference for the latter.

How To Make The Absolute BEST Black Powder (For Firearms) Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 howdy I'm Willard mcbaine and you're watching everything black powder in today's presentation we're going to give you a comprehensive look on how we make sporting black powder that is cleaner and more powerful than Swiss black powder thank you
• 00:30 - 01:00 now I notice some new folks that might sound like a tall order and that's because it is when we first started this uh powder making Excursion a few years ago it was uh it was really really lousy black powder but at the time given the current situation any powder was better than none but quickly we got to where we wanted to make better powder more powerful powder
• 01:00 - 01:30 and so over the last few years we've got our process refined to where we can consistently and repeatedly make powder that is cleaner burning and more powerful than Swiss so here's how we do that now I got to tell you up front this is how we do it this is the method that we've come up with that allows us to do this repeatedly and consistently if you Devi
• 01:30 - 02:00 from any of this stuff you can pretty much count on not getting the same results oh man there's always a catch as most people know the basic formula for antique muzzle loading propellant is 75 Parts pottassium nitrate 15 Parts charcoal 10 parts sulfur and you could tweak the ratios a little bit but I'll get into that a little bit later because it's actually not quite as important as a lot of people think you're going to need those three ingredients to ask ium nitrate
• 02:00 - 02:30 charcoal and sulfur do not I repeat do not go to the hardware store and buy stump remover and Kingsford charcoal bricketts and the Sulfur powder slug repellent stuff don't do that I cannot stress the importance of having high quality ingredients for your powder it is it is very very important it is
• 02:30 - 03:00 Paramount it's very crucial I can't stress that enough I buy 99% pure technical grade potassium nitrate you can buy it on eBay you could buy it on Amazon uh and you can also buy it on skylighter I want to talk about the importance of refining your nitrate we refine all of our nitrates no matter where we buy them if you do have
• 03:00 - 03:30 stump remover that's actually potassium nitrate I've heard from a lot of people that even stump remover nowadays is not potassium nitrate you have to refine it you have to if you want powder that's going to perform reasonably well you have to this really isn't that complicated let me go over it really quick I can do an in-depth video on this if somebody wants to see it but pretty much what you need is
• 03:30 - 04:00 a pan a stove or some kind of heating element and your potassium nitrate now we use distilled water because we're really concerned about contaminants it might not be that crucial but we prefer distilled water you put your distilled water in the pan you put your potassium nitrate in the pan you heat it up until it's completely dissolved even with this stuff which they claim is 99% pure potassium nitrate you can see there are impurities in here floating around I don't know if they're grains of sand or
• 04:00 - 04:30 whatever they are but they're impurities something I've noticed when it comes to prilled potassium nitrate is you'll have like this oil slick scummy layer of stuff that will form on the top of the water so strain all that off get all that stuff out of there pick out any of those impurities turn off the heat and continue stirring as the potassium nitrate crashes out of solution it will continue to make crystals and stir it please you can leave it it'll make these
• 04:30 - 05:00 big gnarly crystals and it looks neat but you don't want any of that water trapped in there so you want it stirred up and as it continues to recrystallize I pull them out and I put them on a tray or a paper towel just to soak up as much of the water as I can after all of it is crashed out we rinse it with cold distilled water again it's probably not that important but that's what we like to do after that we put it on a metal tray propped up against against
• 05:00 - 05:30 something where it can drain that stuff off we let it sit for a few hours sometimes a couple days depending on the weather after that we pop it into our toaster oven and we make sure it's completely dry Presto refined nitrate again this is important you will get impurities and contaminants in your potassium nitrate if you use it right out of the bag I don't care where you buy it from charcoal you're going to need to make your own
• 05:30 - 06:00 charcoal it's pretty much that simple now this really isn't that big of a deal there is a little bit of finesse that goes into it but what I prefer is a 1gallon paint can that has a quarter inch hole drilled in the lid that's it your carbon Source your charcoal which is the fuel that burns has a lot to do with the velocity and the fing that your powder is going to get that you're going to get out of
• 06:00 - 06:30 your finished powder a lot of common choices are Willow Willow works really well and it grows just about everywhere Eastern red cedar White Pine and a variety of other things uh for the folks that watch my stuff you see we do a lot of tests when it comes to carbon sources and you could use just about anything and it will work how well it'll work is a different story but you
• 06:30 - 07:00 can use just about anything it seems that for the most part the lighter the wood the better results you get a lot of folks will say like it's cut and dried that soft wood does better and that's generally true but Swiss uses Alder Buckthorn which is a very hard wood it does grow pretty fast but it's still very
• 07:00 - 07:30 hard what we have found works the best is cottonil toilet paper and I know to maybe some new folks that sounds really strange but trust me it works exceptionally well and the reason it works exceptionally well is because it's basically highly refined wood cellulose as far as making charcoal it's pretty easy you can do this with some kind of propane burner like for a turkey fryer you could do it in a fire pit we prefer to use a wood stove and so you
• 07:30 - 08:00 take your wood or whatever it is your charring you put it in your paint can seal it up and you put it on top of the fire there is a lot of literature out there that will say that you don't want it to get above 600 degrees Fahrenheit which can change some things the higher the temperature a lot of times the higher the ignition point will be so you kind of want to Char it at a
• 08:00 - 08:30 lower temp so don't make a roaring fire and just throw it in there and be done in 15 minutes it will work but a lot of times you'll have dirtier black powder and not quite as powerful mostly more dirtier more dirtier now the sulfur is the easiest part there's no need to refine anything you can buy 99% pure technical grade sulfur on Amazon it comes in a three or 5 pound bag it's cheap it goes a long
• 08:30 - 09:00 way just buy that you don't need to refine it it's the easiest part of the deal we started off using a Harbor Freight rock tumbler and you could do that but it's not ideal we made a ball mill out of a treadmill a while ago and it works exceptionally well the reason why a treadmill works so well
• 09:00 - 09:30 is you have control over the speed the reason why that's important is depending on the size of your ball mill jar and we have a few of them and the style where some of them have ribs in there we call them lifter blocks others are smooth the speed and not to mention the media and the amount of powder you're Milling in there is going to change a lot of things and if you're going to do this you really need to find a setup that's efficient you you want your ball mill running at Peak efficiency what I
• 09:30 - 10:00 found and I know it might not sound very scientific but I found it works pretty well is when your ball mill is making the most amount of noise that's the most efficient the way a ball mill works is you don't want it rolling slow where your media is just tumbling over itself you actually want it to go fast enough where it'll Chuck those balls up kind of like a like a wave and that will Mill things much more completely and much
• 10:00 - 10:30 faster the media used in your ballmill jar is very important we like most folks were using lead round balls soft lead round balls I should add and when we started making powder some years ago our powder was filthy I mean filthy filthy dirty the dirtiest black powder you've ever seen and so we kept refining the process making our powder stronger more powerful but we couldn't figure out why it was so dirty and then finally we went
• 10:30 - 11:00 away from the soft lead round balls and we started using cut up pieces of lead wheel weights and that was better but it still was very dirty and it wasn't until we stopped using lead media and we went to Brass media when our powder became cleaner remarkably cleaner now I know a lot of folks that say oh I use hardcast lead I use use a 50/50 lead tin mix and
• 11:00 - 11:30 I don't have any problems okay glad to hear it in my experience even with very hard lead or even pure tin it still makes dirtier powder the only way to fly in our opinion is brass it's the only way to fly Milling time I Mill all of my powders for 24 hours solid in years past I is really concerned with making powder in 8 hours
• 11:30 - 12:00 or 10 hours or as fast as possible I don't care about that nowadays I can make fast powder and I can make it quickly and I can make it really really dirty it will be absolutely filthy you could use soft lead and it will Mill very fast and it will be exceptionally dirty use brass have an efficient Mill and Mill it long enough we've done a lot of tests when it comes to Mill time 24
• 12:00 - 12:30 hours is kind of the happy medium you can't over Mill your powder you definitely can under Mill it you don't get it Incorporated enough you're going to get more fouling you have incomplete burn it's bad news we Mill all of our stuff for 24 hours often times we found the difference between goex velocity and swiss velocity is another 12 hours worth of Mill time a lot of folks will Mill it for 12 hours if you're trying this try it for 24 see
• 12:30 - 13:00 what you get if that's still if you're still having trouble try it for 48 because it could be an efficiency issue with your Mill also as far as your ball mill jar goes as you can see we use PVC that's what we prefer there is kind of a happy spot you have to get to with your Mill to make it efficient it's pretty easy to put way too much meat Media or way too much powder in there and you can
• 13:00 - 13:30 Mill it till the cows come home and it won't get any better what we found is about a third of the way up with media with your powder about level with your media that's what we found works pretty well give or take some years ago we did a video where we were talking about the CIA method and I mentioned that that makes the best black powder because at the time it did what I have found now is it's completely
• 13:30 - 14:00 unnecessary and I do not use the CIA method anymore there's no need if you Mill all your components together long enough at an efficiency rate that's at least decent the CIA method is completely unnecessary you get the same results from just Milling your components together long enough as you would the CIA method so it's completely unnecessary for the folks that asked me about that
• 14:00 - 14:30 so after your powder is milled for 24 hours it comes out of the mill looking like talcum powder very very light fluffy Dusty looking stuff here is a fork in the road you can make screened powder pyrotechnic grade powder or you can make compressed pucked black powder sporting powder most folks opt for the screen powder when they're new we did as well
• 14:30 - 15:00 this is done by taking your Mill powder and wetting it with 90 some OD per isopropyl or denatured alcohol don't use the 70% stuff and you roll it into a big meatball and you kind of grade it and push it through a screen onto a piece of paper or tin foil we prefer tin foil and there you have your screen black powder screen powder is what was used from when they start started using black powder and Firearms all the way up until about
• 15:00 - 15:30 the mid 1700s they would have used screened powder screened powder not being pressed or condensed is very light and fluffy so the volume amount to equal the same amount of weight so let's say if you were to take your volumetric measure and weigh out well measure out 100 grains and then weigh it you find it's probably closer to 65 via weight now if there's anyone who
• 15:30 - 16:00 doesn't know your volumetric measure in grains that's based on weight and the reason why is because modern black powder is compressed to a particular density and it's about anywhere between 1.75 and 1.8 grams per cubic centimeter it's based on weight so for all the people that are always yelling at me about you know oh it's measuring volume not weight yeah it's because your volumetric measure is
• 16:00 - 16:30 calibrated via weight so but that's because this powder is compressed screened powder is not so if you want to get the same amount of power you have to up your volume by anywhere from 50% or maybe even more depending most folks start off making screen black powder to us that's kid stuff we've been there and done that if you really want to make powder that is
• 16:30 - 17:00 better than this stuff you can buy you're going to have to Puck it or compress it now some things you're going to need for that are a pucking dye and some kind of press we use a 20 ton hydraulic press you can buy pucking dyes this here particular dye is um it's made for squishing pot plants or something to get the juice out of them I I don't know about that kind of [ __ ] but I find it works exceptionally well
• 17:00 - 17:30 as a pucking d for black powder so after your powder comes out of the mill you're going to get it wet a little bit I don't know why but I have so many angry comments about this particular topic here because I usually say in all of my videos I can't exactly tell you how much water you need barely any is really it I think it's five CC's about per 200 grams give or take but the problem is and the reason why I can't tell you exactly is there's too many variables the
• 17:30 - 18:00 ambient humidity of wherever you're at when you're doing it the ratio that you're using and the kind of charcoal that you're using all of those things play A Part as to why I can't tell you exactly the best way I could put it is you want barely enough water to when you mix it around in your cup or tray or whatever it is you're using it doesn't make any dust it's very easy to get it too wet you don't want it too wet you want it
• 18:00 - 18:30 just barely wet enough and again we use cold distilled water after you get it wet I recommend if you're starting out when it comes to pressing your powder to way out each scoop just to make sure you're getting your density even I I started off doing that too but I've gotten to the point where I just use a teaspoon I pick it up I flatten it off with my finger and I give it Two Scoops you put it in your
• 18:30 - 19:00 press and you can press it to a particular density one of the reasons why I like this particular pucking die is because the post on my press measures two inches and the diameter of the puck is 30 mm when I started off doing this I was using a 3-in wide aluminum pucking die and I quickly found that I was getting inconsistent densities and the reason why is because the post on your press is 2 in and the
• 19:00 - 19:30 diameter of your aluminum Puck pucking die is three and you will get more Force right underneath the post on your press than you will on the outer edges and being aluminum it's going to flex and warp and I found what was happening is I was getting pretty big in consistencies from shot to shot what we call a Max spread or extreme spread I'd have a Max spread of a hundred sometimes more and I
• 19:30 - 20:00 couldn't figure out why I even got to the point where I was bringing my scale out and weighing out each charge and I still was getting wild inconsistencies and the reason why that is is because you're getting uneven density in your powder because those pucks that you take they get broken up into pieces and then sorted by size and that is your actual powder and if you have one granu that's compressed to a density of 1.78 and then the next one right next to
• 20:00 - 20:30 it is 1.75 the 1.75 grams per cubic centimeter kernel or granule of powder is going to burn faster than the denser powder takes longer more amount of time to burn the denser powder than the lighter powder and you're going to get inconsistent velocities from shot to shot so the reason why I prefer this is you get solid even compress throughout the entire puck now something
• 20:30 - 21:00 I've mentioned in other videos uh that I got a lot of had a lot of heat for was if you are using a big 3-inch wide aluminum diey or a wooden one something you've made whatever something that we would call inefficient try pressing it twice and I got a lot of people leaving me comments saying that that was stupid what a freaking idiot that that's not going to do any good you're not going to get any
• 21:00 - 21:30 more density you're not going to get any more compression all that's going to do is waste a bunch of time what an idiot that's possible if your Puck and your press is very efficient but the odds are it's probably not and so what I found is when you press it once and then break them right up we typically have to use a punch and a hammer to break up our pucks you don't want it so light to where you can break them by hand that's
• 21:30 - 22:00 generally around 1.4 1.5 and you're going to run into some issues not necessarily bad it actually could be good depending on what it is you're going for but I'll get to that in a minute it should be really hard to break it should be hard when you break them they should snap snap like a piece of porcelain almost what I found is when you break them up and we run run them through a grain grinder here and this is what we
• 22:00 - 22:30 use and uh this works really really well you could buy these on Amazon for 65 or 70 bucks and I highly recommend it because if you're trying to do this by hand and then it it it's really a pain in the ass this is really the way to go it has an adjustment here you can move it in or out for however SI whatever size you like it works really well so if you compress it with a wooden dye that you made or an aluminum one and you're using a 6 tonon aror Freight press or whatever you break them up and
• 22:30 - 23:00 then don't wait don't get them wet don't let them dry just as soon as you break those pucks up once take them right back over and press them again what I found is you get more even density more uniform density and even though you might not get that much more you will a little bit it'll have more uniform density and you can try this we tried this and I have seen other people that have tried this two where you press it twice and their Max spread goes from 100
• 23:00 - 23:30 or 90 down to 40 and that's good news now whether or not you decide to take the time to do that again that's up to you so this is why I prefer the smaller diameter and stainless steel something harder something that's not going to flex or warp nearly as easy as wood or aluminum how do you know what kind of density you have well we know that the
• 23:30 - 24:00 commercial powders are all between 1.75 and 1.8 grams per cubic centimeter how do you know that you're getting the proper density or if you're shooting for that rather you can calculate this stuff and you can go go online and punch in the stuff to get you close if you're new again I would recommend weighing it so you you can do all the math ahead of time if you have a 30
• 24:00 - 24:30 mm wide die you have a 27 gram Puck that's x amount of height you can calculate the density based on that and depending on what you're shooting for you can either scribe it on your Dy or measure it in some way however you like to do it and if you're new I would recommend doing that because
• 24:30 - 25:00 again if you have one that you compress the out of and it's 1.95 and then you have another one that's only 1.7 again you're going to get real wide spreads with your velocity meaning inconsistent shots you'll have one that hits two inches high and the next one will hit where you're aiming or vice versa so I would recommend running the math initially just to make sure you're in the
• 25:00 - 25:30 ballpark so after you've checked your density and you have your pucks I like to let mine dry there are folks that like to break them up when they still have a little bit of moisture in there I find that when you do that you just get more dust you get more waste it's not exactly waste you just throw it back in the mill but they call it waste so I like to let mine dry at least for a couple days 24 hours at the very
• 25:30 - 26:00 least I would like to go for three days if I can they'll dry after they're broken up too we we dry them but I like to let them sit for at least a couple days now the way we do this is we have a set of screens I'll put a screenshot of what the mesh size is for one2 and 3F uh this here is our 1f screen this here is our 2f screen and weuse use these micron filter bags that are used for filtering
• 26:00 - 26:30 honey and they work really really well we we really really like those and so what we do is we take a punch and a hammer and we break up these pucks and we open up our grinder and we put them in there and we just grind them now we start really wide and we work our way down closing it you know half a turn at a time and sorting them all by size it's easy to run it through again if you run
• 26:30 - 27:00 it through really tight you'll have a lot of dust so it's just easy to go incrementally from big chunks to one F to one F to two and two F to three and so on so that's how we like to do it so after your stuff is sorted we put it through this bag here and then this gets all the dust off it just takes all the dust off works out really well this here is our 3F bag I believe this is a six 00 Micron bag and so anything captured in there is
• 27:00 - 27:30 3F anything that comes out of there is 4f which we either use for pistol caliber stuff uh but most of the time it just ends up going back into the mill a lot of people leave me comments saying well can't you use the the the dust and the fines for priming your flint lock yes you absolutely could if you felt so inclined I have for a long time made a habit of priming right from my horn I always Prime with the same powder that I'm charging with but if you want to do
• 27:30 - 28:00 that you most certainly can after that the powder gets glazed now you might notice that on every can of sporting powder it's FG 3fg 2fg the G stands for glazed doesn't stand for graphite a lot of people think it does it does not it stands for glazed now the glazing process is something that I'm not really sold on
• 28:00 - 28:30 entirely as far as a hobbyist like myself is concerned the way glazing is done and the way we do it is we take one of our old Harbor Freight rubber jars we take our powder that's already been sorted by size and we put it in there and we roll it for between two and four hours by itself at a slower speed you don't need to roll it at 3 m an hour or anything like that you just want that powder to
• 28:30 - 29:00 roll those kernels and granules to roll against themselves and to knock off those sharp edges kind of give it a polishing that's why they call it glazing now in the past I have glazed my powder for 24 or 48 hours because I wanted to get that shininess that Swiss has a lot of people think that Swiss is graphite coated because of how gray and shiny it is it's not it's just polished really well but I found that it will actually slow down down your velocity a little bit not a tremendous amount 40 50
• 29:00 - 29:30 maybe 60 feet per second on average the more you glaze your powder so personally I found that two to four hours is is good enough really for the hobbyist these guys they polish their stuff because they don't want any trouble with static they want to make sure it pours nice which by the way my stuff glazed at two hours pours just as nice as that stuff it doesn't have any trouble pours right out of my horn or a brass flask no
• 29:30 - 30:00 trouble these guys have you know sea trainers full of it shipped all over the world my stuff you know doesn't have to travel that far so it's not that big of a deal to someone like me and I don't like the idea of anything slowing down my burn rate I should mention too that I haven't ever noticed an increase in spreads in velocity versus highly glazed and not glazed at all if your powder is M well
• 30:00 - 30:30 enough compressed evenly and sorted well I should talk about the Sorting it like I mentioned earlier with the density variation if you have one kernel of powder that's 17 you have another one that's 15 you're going to have varying burn times it's the same principle with if you have powder that has 2f and 3F size granules in there the 2f the bigger kernel is going to take longer to burn
• 30:30 - 31:00 completely than the 3F so you want to make sure that your powder is sorted by size very well I think this is one of my problems with goex I always have wider spreads with goex than I do any other powders and I think it's because it's just not sorted as finely as Swiss so you want to make sure that when you pour that stuff in the bag and
• 31:00 - 31:30 you're moving it around you want all those fines out of there anything that falls through that bag is 4f you don't want any 4f mixed in with your 3F there is a little bit of varying size that you can get away with but you want it as finely tuned as you can get because that's what makes the difference in powder that works okay and powder that is better than this stuff that's stuff this
• 31:30 - 32:00 stuff after your powder is glazed for a few hours or however long you like we dust it off again so we sort it by size because you will get some fines and some dust that comes off of there because it's rounding off a lot of those sharp Corners so we do it again sort it by size again make sure you get all those fines off of there and then you're ready to go so after you have your completed finished glazed powder the last thing to
• 32:00 - 32:30 do is to try it out and see what you get now when we first started all of this stuff we would light it on the floor and we would time it with a slow motion camera from how long it would take to get from one end to the other as far as the burn rate goes but I found that the open air burn rate doesn't exactly correlate to the velocity it's going to make in containment for example Swiss
• 32:30 - 33:00 had the slowest open air burn rate but it makes the best velocity probably has something to do with how glazed and Polished it is but either way now we prefer to use a chronograph when it comes to testing any powder personally I feel that tells me more than just shooting at a piece of paper the groups will be something you could work on or maybe improve with powder charge up or down different patch
• 33:00 - 33:30 so on and so forth but a chronograph will really tell you the meat and potatoes of what's happening right then and there the big thing is it will tell you what your spread is as long as you're loading somewhat consistently the chronograph will tell you what your spreads are and if you have spreads of hundred and something feet per second you have something going on with your powder there's some quality control issue with your powder and a chronograph will tell you that right now now you could put up a piece of paper at 50 yards or 100 yards and load your
• 33:30 - 34:00 rifle with whatever powder and charge that you're used to and see where it hits if you have it cided in for that and then try it with your powder and see oh it hits three inches low or it's way high or way low it can tell you that as well but a chronograph will tell you it pretty quick we feel that a chronograph is really the best way to make sure that you are getting quality and consistent powder so why would you go through the trouble
• 34:00 - 34:30 of making your own powder all this stuff sounds like a chore well it kind of is there's no doubt about it but this pound of 3F Swiss is almost $40 nowadays now shuten you could buy Shen for 23 or 25 bucks a pound and same with goex uh I haven't been able to buy any of the new goex I have talked to people they say it seems to be okay but but this stuff is not easy to come by nowadays and it's not getting any
• 34:30 - 35:00 cheaper and so if I'm going to go through the trouble of making black powder I want to make the absolute best black powder that I can make I can buy shuten it seems to be pretty available at least last few times I've checked but I don't really need to buy it I can make powder that's way better and way cleaner than shoots in so if I'm going to go through the trouble I might as well take the extra step step take the extra 15 minutes and make sure that I have the
• 35:00 - 35:30 best black powder that I can at least that's the way we look at it some common questions and problems that I hear from folks are hey I've done all of this stuff and my powder is horrible it like you light it on the ground and it makes yellow puddles and and leaves white junk on the ground and this is awful what am I doing wrong something serious a lot of times people pack their ball
• 35:30 - 36:00 mill jar with too much stuff and even though you can roll it for a long time it doesn't do any better I don't recommend if you're using one of those rubber ballmill jars from Harbor Freight I mean Rock tumblers I wouldn't do more than 200 grams in one of those things at a time it it just it's not big enough to do any more than that are your ingredients pure what kind of charcoal are you using where' didd you get your potassium nitrate did you refine it at all all of those things are crucial I really can't stress enough the
• 36:00 - 36:30 importance of using clean pure ingredients for your powder your Mill and Mill time if you are using a Harbor Freight rock tumbler they only turn one speed and it's too damn slow you might have to Mill it for a lot longer than 24 hours depending on the media and depending on how much is in there the media I can't stress enough how lead makes your powder dirty it just makes dirty powder brass is the way to
• 36:30 - 37:00 go when I started using brass what I did is I took a 9 mimer and a 40 case and I put some lead shot in there and I aoi them together and that worked out pretty well until I had one come apart and then after that I just bought solid brass balls they are expensive but they are worth it density when you press your powder a lot of folks that have tried
• 37:00 - 37:30 this have found that if you don't press it nearly as much if you're around 1 55 or so powder Burns really really clean and that is the case more dense powder leaves more fouling there's kind of a happy spot I found around 1555 the issue with that is and again this is kind of the advanced stuff is if you were to weigh out if you have powder that's all 155 grams per cubic centimeter and you were to weigh out and
• 37:30 - 38:00 check it versus The volumetric Measure you find you probably around 10 grams uh sorry grains shy of what your measure will say and if that's okay with you just up it up it you know five or s% or whatever it works out to that's okay if that's what makes it better for you running the cleaner less dense powder that you have to up the charge on fine there's certainly nothing wrong with that being that our standard is Swiss
• 38:00 - 38:30 which is typically 1758 that's usually where we compress our stuff so when you start changing the densities you'll find that more dense powder 185 189 I've even tried stuff as far as 192 and it is absolutely filthy I mean really really bad versus the less dense stuff again 155 six you'll find it burns much much cleaner but you'll have to up the powder
• 38:30 - 39:00 charge a little bit in your volumetric measure unless you're going to calibrate it by weight which is always okay too you'll find that the less dense stuff works well it works fine it burns cleaner ratios we typically run a ratio of 77 1310 that's 77 Parts potassium nitrate 13 Parts charcoal and and 10 parts sulfur basically what you're doing is you're just leaning out the ratio a
• 39:00 - 39:30 little bit more we've tested so many ratios and we've settled on 77310 because we found that generally speaking just leaning it out a little bit gives you a little bit more velocity and it burns a little bit little bit cleaner but it's much more important to make sure that you're using clean ingredients and they're Incorporated well enough because if you have one
• 39:30 - 40:00 batch that's 77 1310 that's milled for 12 hours and then the 75 1510 batch that's milled for 24 hours the the match that's bu longer is probably GNA outperform whatever the ratio is over here I mean unless you really fat finger it and [ __ ] it up so I wouldn't be too concerned about the ratios until you really make sure your stuff is really dial in and you're getting consistent batches each time then you can kind of
• 40:00 - 40:30 start messing with the ratios or at least that's what I would recommend when I started all of this a few years ago we weren't concerned about contaminants in the slightest we absolutely didn't care we were just excited to have powder that worked but it's gotten to the point where I'm really really a stickler about anything that even could be a contaminant for example the rubber ballmill jar from
• 40:30 - 41:00 your Harbor Freight tumbler you could get rubber in there that could be a contaminant your lead Media or your tin media you're getting lead and tin in there that's a contaminant we use distilled water instead of water out of the tap because I don't know what the in the tap water it could be all kinds of weird stuff so I'm really concerned about contaminates because contaminantes just make your powder perform worse and make it dirtier so if you jump through all of these hoops and follow all these steps just
• 41:00 - 41:30 like I said you can expect powder to outperform Swiss don't come at me with some [ __ ] story like I did all of this just like you said and my powder's lame and then when I ask you you know what are you Milling it with and you say rocks out of the riverbed I I go no go get out you disgust me if there's anything I can point to that made a huge difference as far as the
• 41:30 - 42:00 power performance and cleaniness of our homemade powder it would be when we went from screen powder to pressed that would be a big one uh for example I haven't made screened powder in probably uh close to three years I we just we just don't do it anymore there's just there's absolutely no need and the other would would be when we went from lead media to Brass it really makes a tremendous
• 42:00 - 42:30 difference the other things making sure your charcoal's done at a low enough temperature or the correct temperature I suppose making sure you refine your nitrates making sure it's m properly long enough those things are minor but everything combined is what makes a difference if you only did one thing you might not notice a tremendous difference it's everything combined that makes the
• 42:30 - 43:00 difference between powder that is okay and powder that is better and cleaner than Swiss now you're probably thinking that this guy stood here for 45 minutes with a long winded speech about how to make black powder and didn't mention any of the safety precautions right yeah well let me go over a few of the big ones mostly all of the standard issue safety stuff applies when dealing with anything
• 43:00 - 43:30 flammable for example don't be smoking or hitting the pipe while you're making or sorting your powder don't have anything throwing sparks don't have gallons of gasoline or acetone or anything around that could catch on fire or anything like that pretty standard basic stuff probably a good idea to wear gloves eye protection face shield one thing I can recommend High is some kind of mask or respirator I prefer these 3M
• 43:30 - 44:00 kind here because this is what I use when I paint these work really well when you are dusting your powder that stuff is so light and fine even if you think you're not breathing it in you are and when you get home at night and you're taking a shower you'll be blowing black boogers out of your nose ask me how I know that something you might notice about our ball mill we use the ball mill here with the rubber cap that we put on and fasten with a zip tie a lot of folks that are serious about this will use
• 44:00 - 44:30 something like this Rebel 17 here that bolts together with wing nuts and the reason why I don't like those is simply because if you were to have a mishap and have a spark in your Mill that would go off like a bum where ours having a rubber lid that's secured with a zip tie if we were to have a spark in that Mill I don't believe it would make enough pressure to
• 44:30 - 45:00 really make a rapid chemical decomposition that would do some real damage still would be scary I would imagine it'll blow that cap off and blow fire and uh brass media out of there but it wouldn't be an explosion now I've never had that happen knock on wood and I don't plan on it but it's just a safety precaution that I think is a good idea so so that's why we go with it you need to make your powder
• 45:00 - 45:30 as safely as you see fit for example if there's something about the way I do things that you don't think is safe or you don't like or makes you uncomfortable then don't do it that way but don't do something dumb like use steel ball bearings in your Mill that's asking for trouble if you want to have a brick wall between you and your pucks while you're pressing them fine if you want to have a biohazard suit or something while you're doing it fine whatever works for you but again I will
• 45:30 - 46:00 say that this particular method gives us the best results and if you deviate from it you can expect to get different results some literature you might be interested in if you want to read some more on this topic are two particular books one is like fire and powder written by my friend and fellow YouTuber Brett Gibbons over at paper cartridges and this one here the men manufacturer and proof of gunpowder written by uh Captain FM Smith of the royal artillery
• 46:00 - 46:30 this book goes over the manufacturer of gunpowder at the walam Abbey plant in England in the mid 1800s which was the height of development for black powder worldwide even to this day the powder we get nowadays isn't as good as this stuff Swiss is about the same quality as what these guys were making then just a little bit lighter density and so on anyway if you're interested
• 46:30 - 47:00 you could read about the stuff there uh a lot more in depth than I can do in a 45 minute video here on YouTube so I highly recommend these if you're interested so as usual folks if you thought this video didn't suck do me a favor and hit the like button consider subscribing and if you did think it sucked go make your own damn video