Making Fast, Shootable Black Powder; Part 1

Summary

In this video by Hoffman Reproductions, viewers are introduced to the process of making homemade black powder, a practice that often surprises and concerns many due to safety risks. The host balances these concerns by emphasizing safety and sticking to proper methods. The video guides viewers through the essential ingredients, such as potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur, and provides practical tips for sourcing them. Additionally, it shares insights on creating high-quality charcoal, mixing techniques, and safety precautions, making the project achievable and safe.

Highlights

• Homemade black powder can be just as good as commercial products if made correctly and safely! 🏆
• Safety first: always wear protective gear and make black powder away from heat sources! 🛡️
• Using ingredients like pure sulfur and potassium nitrate is essential for effective powder! 🔬
• Charcoal made from grapevine or willow is considered top-notch for black powder production! 🌳
• Mixing ingredients with a ball mill ensures a fine powder, crucial for performance! ⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Making black powder at home is a unique and rewarding challenge that requires strict adherence to safety protocols! 🧨
• Sourcing ingredients like potassium nitrate, charcoal, and sulfur is easier than expected. Time to visit garden supply stores! 🌱
• Choosing the right type of charcoal, like grapevine or willow, can significantly enhance the quality of your homemade powder! 🍇
• A ball mill or rock tumbler is crucial for mixing ingredients thoroughly to create fast-igniting black powder! ⚙️
• Creating small, safe batches is key to preventing any mishaps; practice caution and use proper tools! 🚦

Overview

Making black powder at home is a fascinating yet intricate process that requires careful attention to detail and safety. Hoffman Reproductions guides viewers through this intriguing process while emphasizing the importance of doing it safely. It starts with sourcing the right ingredients and using them in precise proportions: 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10-11% sulfur.

Once you have your materials ready, the next step involves creating your own charcoal, which is recommended over buying pre-made types. The host suggests using grapevine, thanks to its porous nature, providing better powder quality. An essential part of the process is using a ball mill or rock tumbler to mix your ingredients thoroughly until they resemble a fine powder.

Safety is a top priority throughout the video, with numerous precautions highlighted to avoid accidents. Despite the risks, making black powder can be a safe and satisfying DIY project if done correctly. Viewers are encouraged to follow the instructions closely and to make small batches to minimize risks, all while enjoying the thrill of creating something powerful from scratch.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction The introduction chapter kicks off with a welcoming tone as the host greets the returning audience. The chapter sets the stage for the episode's main topic, which is about homemade black powder. The host acknowledges the interest that historical reenactors and black powder shooting enthusiasts have in the process of making their own black powder. The chapter is geared towards those interested in exploring the intricacies and traditional methods associated with historical black powder crafting.
• 00:30 - 02:00: Homemade Black Powder: Risks and Safety The chapter discusses the risks and safety precautions associated with making homemade black powder. It highlights the common perception that making your own black powder is risky, often resulting in surprise and concern from others due to stories of accidents. The chapter emphasizes the importance of caution, noting that while there are dangerous ways to make black powder, safety can be ensured with proper knowledge.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Recipe for Black Powder This chapter introduces the topic of making black powder, emphasizing the importance of adhering to safety measures. The speaker acknowledges concerns about the dangers involved but compares this risk to other everyday activities. The location is set in central Ohio, near Columbus.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Ingredients and Sources The chapter discusses the danger of careless actions, drawing a metaphor between driving on a busy outer belt and handling black powder. The speaker emphasizes the importance of caution in both scenarios, suggesting that careful adherence to safety protocols will prevent accidents, injuries, or fatalities. It underscores the notion that being aware and responsible is key to safe practice, whether on the road or when dealing with potentially hazardous materials like black powder.
• 05:30 - 13:30: Making Charcoal The chapter 'Making Charcoal' describes the traditional recipe for making homemade black powder, a practice that dates back hundreds of years, originally invented by the Chinese. The essential ingredients include 75% potassium nitrate, 15% charcoal, and 10 to 11% sulfur. The chapter suggests these proportions as a standard guideline for those venturing into creating their own black powder.
• 13:30 - 15:30: Mixing Ingredients This chapter discusses the importance of ensuring homemade powder ignites quickly, similar to commercially made powders like Goex. The speaker emphasizes the necessity of creating powder that is 'lightning deadly fast' and outlines that achieving this result is dependent on making it in the correct way. The chapter primarily focuses on obtaining the desired ignition speed by following the right procedures in mixing ingredients.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Milling Process The chapter titled 'Milling Process' discusses the accessibility and procurement of essential materials. It emphasizes the importance of using pure ingredients without additives, exemplified by sulfur powder. The narrator demonstrates that sulfur powder, essential for the milling process, can be easily purchased from garden supply stores nationwide or online, with an approximate cost of ten dollars.
• 18:00 - 19:00: Final Notes on Safety and Process The chapter provides insights into obtaining potassium nitrate, which is commonly used as a plant fertilizer. It can be purchased in bulk, such as in a three-pound bag, from garden supply stores or online. Additionally, the chapter highlights that products like Spectracide Stump Remover, available at retailers like Lowe's or Home Depot, consist of pure potassium nitrate and are sold in 16-ounce bottles.

Making Fast, Shootable Black Powder; Part 1 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hey guys welcome back and thank you for tuning in once again on our episode today we are going to dive into the realm of homemade black powder now when you mention to uh reenactors living history enthusiasts black powder shooters that you're thinking of making
• 00:30 - 01:00 your own homemade black powder as opposed to buying it uh you tend to be meant with a lot of surprised looks people think you're a little bit goofy in the head and then stories start coming at you about some good old boy somewhere that tried to make some kind of homemade gun powder and blew himself up or blew his house up or blew his garage up or something and i'm not trying to discount the caution but just like anything in life there is a very wrong and dangerous way to go
• 01:00 - 01:30 about making black powder and there is a very safe and right way to go about doing it as long as you stick to the safety parameters that i'm going to outline on the video today you'll be fine um you know some people feel like well it's dangerous so you shouldn't be doing it well there's a lot of things in life that are dangerous that we all do every day for instance we live in central ohio here 45 minutes to the west is capital city columbus now for anyone
• 01:30 - 02:00 who's ever driven on the elder outer belt of that city at rush hour even in the evening or morning it's very dangerous and if you're not very careful you could end up severely hurting yourself others or possibly even causing someone or yourself to die up to state the obvious what i'm trying to correlate here if you do that same thing with black powder you will be fine i promise and uh there again there are things that you do and you don't do and the process is fine so um
• 02:00 - 02:30 to make homemade black powder it's the same basic recipe that has been used for hundreds of years that everyone knows the chinese invented and it's the recipe if you're going to dive into the realm of making your own that we're going to use here today and the basic recipe and it's the one that i use is 75 percent potassium nitrate 15 charcoal and 10 to 11 percent sulfur now i say 10 to
• 02:30 - 03:00 11 percent because that slight little increase some people have found um the powder ignites faster that's what you're going to try and obtain when you make your own you want stuff that is lightening deadly fast if you try a little pile of commercially made powder like goex and ignite it it flashes instantly and that's what you're trying to get your homemade stuff to do and it is possible as long as you make it in the correct fashion so uh those are the basic ingredients
• 03:00 - 03:30 that you use and where to get all those things um surprisingly it's easy to obtain all those things go off camera for a second this is pure sulfur powder all ingredients that you're going to get you'll want to warm excuse me you're going to want to make sure that they are pure there's no additives this is pure sulfur powder you can find it at a garden supply stores around the country you can buy it online i think i paid like ten dollars for
• 03:30 - 04:00 three pound bag so sulfur potassium nitrate the same way it's a plant fertilizer and you can buy this again garden supply stores online one thing most people don't know this but uh at lowe's or home depot spectra side stump remover that you can buy comes in a uh 16 ounce bottle that is pure potassium nitrate and i've
• 04:00 - 04:30 made several batches of gunpowder using this stuff works just the same as buying it in bulk and you can get several pounds of powder out of one of these so if you got a lowe's or home depot you can obtain this and charcoal just as the name implies charred wood you can buy this but typically the stuff you make at home and i would recommend you make your own charcoal is going to outperform the stuff you can buy types of charcoal that work well for
• 04:30 - 05:00 black powder the number one that everybody says is the best is willow charcoal but that's kind of hard to obtain because those trees typically grow for decoration so unless you find somebody that is having one of those removed out of their yard that can be a little hard to get you want to stick with soft woods typically pine works very well cedar works very well and you can buy the pet bed chippings pine or cedar and char of those that works very well
• 05:00 - 05:30 also which i have found in the last batch i made that's been my best batch yet i used grapevine get the grapevine find the ones that are dead the little offshoot vines typically are 3 8 to a half inch snap them up and load a container with those and that works very well and it's cheaper than buying your own charcoal so some tools that you're going to need to do this they're pretty basic but you're going to need a kitchen scale that you can measure these ingredients
• 05:30 - 06:00 out because they are by weight so some kind of a mixing container this is just a simple plastic cup some little scoops come in handy for pulling the raw ingredients out and then i have my recipe written down here now to get back to the recipe real quick before we go into more tools um again 75 potassium nitrate 15 charcoal 10 to 11 sulfur um
• 06:00 - 06:30 and that is a ratio to whatever you want it to be if you want to start with say you're using grams for measurements and start with 100 grams and then do your breakdown that away or whatever i'm using ounces because the scale that i have it's just a cheap one and that has the ounces on there so i went with that so if you're wondering uh the ratio that i use it is it's a breakdown from eight ounces which
• 06:30 - 07:00 will give you a half a pound of powder it is uh six ounces of potassium nitrate uh 1.2 ounces of charcoal and .80 ounces of sulfur but and that's the basic recipe that i use now some people like to put an additive into that called dextrin and basically it's an emulsifier or thickener it just helps the powder granulate better or clump together better which is important for
• 07:00 - 07:30 one of our later steps if you're planning to shoot this powder out of a firearm i would not recommend using dextrin because it fouls up very very badly it's hard to clean and for firearms it's not a very good mix if you want to use red gum which you can obtain from pyrotechnic supply houses and it's the the bark of a certain type of tree that grows in australia that works well i use a product called
• 07:30 - 08:00 quebracho bark and that is the inner bark of a tree that grows in south america i buy it in powdered form and i will put a little shot of that into my mix about a half a teaspoon and then when i am kneading the lump of black powder which i'll show you later in our video put another half a teaspoon and that helps the powder stick together and granulate much better so just a few words on safety
• 08:00 - 08:30 obviously you want to practice common sense you don't want to be making gunpowder around heat sparks things of that nature keep it away from kids all that but the biggest thing and this is what i tell people why this uh procedure is safe want to wear eye protection where you're doing it goggles but you mix your powder in small proportions okay i've never made more than half a pound at a time and i've even cut that recipe down again
• 08:30 - 09:00 so making half of that amount four ounces is what you'll end up with or if you want to do a little more eight ounces typically people that have injured themselves they're breaking some sort of safety rule they're doing they're adding something they're working around something that could ignite the powder or they're making huge batches you know if a batch of eight ounces flashes and it can only do that at the very end of the process because these ingredients mix together raw will not do that they
• 09:00 - 09:30 have to be milled you'll get some singed eyebrows maybe some burns but it's not going to explode that small amount in the way that we make it it's relatively safe i say relatively because you know i can't guarantee somebody wouldn't have a mishap with it but if it would flash it's not going to level your garage or you know blow your hands off or anything like that it's just going to produce a fireball and lots of smoke so with that in mind i will go ahead and
• 09:30 - 10:00 show you some of the tools that we use to do this and continue on with process okay so one tool you are going to have to get and invest in if you want to do this and do it properly hand mixing black powder it doesn't really work you need what's called a ball mill or a rock tumbler which is what this little deal is and it's nothing more than a small little motor that gently tumbles a canister and one thing that makes this process safe is the fact
• 10:00 - 10:30 that this little motor spins at a very very low rpm only like 70 rpm and it's just gently rotating this mill around the canister itself is rubber so there's no danger of sparks or overheating and what i have in there are about 50 60 caliber lead round balls you want to use lead or some people use marbles
• 10:30 - 11:00 and again they will not spark they will not overheat and this is what you're going to put all your raw ingredients in to tumble and what it's going to do is it's going to take your raw ingredients and basically turn them into a talcum powder okay so to start i've got a small fire burning here i'm going to take our canister and this batch is going to be all grapevine so that's a great line just broken up in small pieces and i leave them the bark on there just load the pot up and you want to fill it
• 11:00 - 11:30 that one's a little bit tough fill it to about three quarters of the way up load the whole thing all right so that's all we're doing when we make the uh charcoal it's just cooking away on the fire there uh you want to make sure that the lid is on nice and tight so that the contents can't ignite and it takes anywhere depends on what kind of wood you're using anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes to do a batch
• 11:30 - 12:00 and you see the smoke pouring out of there and rotate it occasionally let it cook on the bottom there for a while roll it over on its side for you know every 10 minutes or so you'll know it's done when the smoke stops coming out of the top hole there and when it is done get it off the fire with a couple of pieces of wood obviously it's hot set it aside and make sure you plug the hole right away with a whittle down stick so that no oxygen can get to your charcoal and about 10 minutes set aside and it's cool enough to handle don't open it
• 12:00 - 12:30 until the outside is completely cool to the touch you don't want your charcoal to reignite when it's reintroduced air but that's all you're doing and it makes great charcoal for use in homemade black powder so we'll let this cook and i'll show you the finished product all right so this is the finished product this is a smaller batch that i did earlier of the grapevine it's been all charred down real nice you'll know it's uh
• 12:30 - 13:00 good stuff when you can just break it right in half no trouble it's charred all the way through and i don't know if you can see on camera you probably can't but one reason that uh grapevine works so well is it's a very porous wood if you look very closely at the end it's full of little holes and that one theory is that why it works well is that enables all the ingredients to intermix because that's what you really are trying to do to get all the ingredients to intermix become one solid
• 13:00 - 13:30 molecular piece and then that will in turn make good quality and fast shooting gunpowder so now that we've got our charcoal we'll go ahead and measure out our ingredients and move on to the next step okay so we're going to go ahead and add our raw chemicals now for our black powder mix this particular mix is set up in ounces and this will make you eight ounces of black gun powder the recipe is six ounces of potassium
• 13:30 - 14:00 nitrate 1.2 ounces of charcoal and .80 ounces of sulfur you can bump the sulfur up a hair if you want as i said earlier it tends to make the gum pattern some cases just a hair faster so we'll go ahead and set up to get these mixed this is just a cheap kitchen scale digital a little mixing cup there zero it out
• 14:00 - 14:30 first thing we'll do is the potassium nitrate so we're going to do six ounces and these chemicals are not dangerous till this is milled and these are all blended together very very finely if you were to put all these together and try and ignite it and you're expecting a clamp or an explosion you'd be disappointed would not work so
• 14:30 - 15:00 there we go so six ounces of potassium nitrate we have our ball mill with our lead milling balls or media down in there so potassium nitrate in back on the scale zero it out and now we're going to do
• 15:00 - 15:30 1.2 ounces of charcoal it takes a fair amount of charcoal to do this because charcoal hardly weighs anything and i ground this up a little bit with the head of a large hammer just to help the ball mill a little bit as it's milling [Applause]
• 15:30 - 16:00 there it is 1.2 charcoal goes in back on the scale zero it out
• 16:00 - 16:30 and now we'll do our sulfur and we're looking for 0.8 ounces approximately just a little bit too much take some of that out and a little bit extra is not going to
• 16:30 - 17:00 hurt so our sulfur goes in and then i put a little shot of this quebracho bark again it's kind of a binder or an emulsifier you can also use red gum for this you don't have to do it by the way but i've been doing it as of late it seems to make the powder grain a little better so i'm not even
• 17:00 - 17:30 measuring that i'm just eyeballing it it's probably half a teaspoon maybe a little more we'll get our lid on our ball mill now canister
• 17:30 - 18:00 and we are ready to go mill our powder stay tuned okay so we are ready to mill this powder now and we are out here my little makeshift concrete bunker uh arguably this is the most dangerous part of the process but again it's i'm just saying that so you'll be cautious if the powder can't overheat or there's not a spark of some type generated uh chances of detonation or zilch to nuns so
• 18:00 - 18:30 but you do want to do this outside do not do it in your basement do not do it in your garage you know well away from buildings i've run an extension cord from my shop out here and it's uh behind a wood pile and then this little stack of concrete bricks with the front open just in case uh we are safe so this is going to get turned on i'll switch it on just so you can see it run you can see it just barely turns very
• 18:30 - 19:00 very slow and that's all you need uh it takes a while with these small slow tumblers to get good black powder this will have to tumble 24 perhaps even 48 hours we'll just see you know it's done when the powder is sitting down below and all the grinding balls are on top so other words if i stop this turn it upright open it up that powder is down below it
• 19:00 - 19:30 and the balls are sitting on top it's milled fine enough and it'll be milled just as fine as talcum powder if you stop prior to that the ingredients generally are not fine enough or well mixed and it will make poor functioning powder so at this point it's uh put it to bed i'll usually cover this with a tarp just in case it rains and just let it tumble and probably check it tomorrow and see what we got so we'll see you then