Making Fast, Shootable Black Powder, Part 3

Summary

In this video by Hoffman Reproductions, the host delves deeper into the nuances of creating quality homemade black powder. He discusses the equipment needed, such as ball mills and lead media, and emphasizes the importance of using the right charcoal, with silver maple being highlighted as a top choice. The video also covers practical tips like drying ingredients to improve powder quality and offers guidance on grain sizing. Additionally, the host announces upcoming kits for sale, targeting firearm enthusiasts who want to make their own black powder while emphasizing the importance of safety and legal compliance.

Highlights

• Black powder is hard to come by, prompting DIY techniques! 🔥
• A Harbor Freight ball mill works wonders for making homemade powder! 🛠️
• Silver maple proves to be the best wood for charcoal in black powder production! 🌲
• Drying charcoal and potassium nitrate enhances the milling process! 🌞
• Sizing and graining black powder are essential distinct steps! 📏
• Upcoming kits will provide all necessary materials for DIY black powder! 📦
• Safety gear is crucial: face shields, gloves, and aprons recommended! 🛡️
• Ensure legality by checking local laws before making black powder at home! ⚖️

Key Takeaways

• Discover how to create high-quality black powder at home with ease and efficiency! 🎯
• Silver maple charcoal is the secret ingredient for clean-burning powder! 🌳
• Drying your ingredients improves powder milling and prevents clumping! 🌬️
• Hoffman Reproductions will soon offer DIY black powder kits! 🧰
• Safety first! Always wear protective gear when making black powder. 🛡️

Overview

The video kicks off with a focus on the scarcity of black powder, encouraging viewers to learn to produce their own. A Harbor Freight ball mill is recommended, and the host shares insights on using lead media for optimal results. Drying ingredients such as charcoal and potassium nitrate dramatically improves powder quality, providing a clean burn and minimizing clumping issues.

In an exciting revelation, the host explains the use of silver maple charcoal, which outperforms traditional hardwoods, contributing to a fast and clean burn. The process of producing grains and sizing them using basic tools like porch screen highlights cost-effective and accessible methods for any DIY enthusiast.

Concluding the video, the focus shifts to safety and legal considerations, emphasizing protective gear while introducing upcoming black powder kits. These kits cater specifically to firearm aficionados, promising quality ingredients that ensure optimal performance when homemade powder is used in firearms.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction to Homemade Black Powder In this chapter titled 'Introduction to Homemade Black Powder', the host welcomes viewers back to their channel, Hoffman Reproductions. The episode promises to delve deeper into the topic of homemade black powder. The host mentions the difficulty in acquiring black powder, something they touched on in a previous video, and acknowledges the significant interest in this topic among viewers.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Ball Mill and Ingredients for Black Powder This chapter provides insights into producing homemade black powder, building on previous instructional videos. It introduces discoveries for improving powder quality and addresses frequently asked questions, focusing first on the ball mill. The presenter highlights a specific model available from Harbor Freight, noting the option between single and double chamber configurations.
• 01:30 - 03:00: Quebracho Bark and Charcoal The chapter titled 'Quebracho Bark and Charcoal' discusses using a machine for processing powders efficiently. The author explains that they've produced around 10 pounds of powder using this machine, which is durable and effective. For those involved in muzzleloading, the chapter recommends using round balls of varying calibers, from 75 to 36, for tumbling, achieving excellent results in the mixing process.
• 03:00 - 04:30: Improving Black Powder with Dry Ingredients This chapter discusses the process of improving black powder by using dry ingredients, specifically focusing on the milling time and the use of quebracho bark. The ideal milling time of 18 hours is highlighted as it produces high-quality powder. The chapter also addresses frequent queries about quebracho bark, explaining that it is the interior bark of a tree from South America. It is used as an emulsifier or thickening agent to produce more durable grains of black powder, making them comparable to commercial powder.
• 04:30 - 06:30: Graining and Sizing Black Powder The chapter discusses the importance of 'graining and sizing' in the production of black powder, stating it isn't always necessary, but can enhance the quality. It suggests that the best place to acquire the necessary materials for this process is Etsy, where various sellers provide items used in leather dyeing and cosmetics, which can also be effective thickening agents for homemade black powder.
• 06:30 - 09:30: Offering Kits for Homemade Black Powder The speaker discusses the types of charcoal used in producing homemade black powder. Initially, they used a blend of two softwood charcoals and were satisfied with the results. However, they learned that Goex, a company known for black powder, uses maple for its charcoal, specifically silver maple. Despite being a hardwood, which is typically considered inferior for this purpose, silver maple is highlighted as being suitable.
• 09:30 - 12:00: Safety Tips and Conclusion This chapter discusses a successful experiment with using silver maple as a material for making charcoal. The narrator explains that this hardwood provides a very fast and clean burning charcoal and expresses enthusiasm about this discovery. The chapter also mentions a related experiment with charcoal powder.

Making Fast, Shootable Black Powder, Part 3 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 [Music] hey everybody thanks for tuning in again and welcome back to hoffman reproductions on today's episode we're going to dive into a little more detail on homemade black powder now the black powder is very hard to come by as we discussed in our previous video we have seen a huge interest in
• 00:30 - 01:00 how to go about producing your own homemade black powder now we've gone into detail about that on other videos i'm just going to share with you guys some of the discoveries i've made to make better quality powder and answer a few questions that i've been getting repeatedly so first one is on the ball mill which i have right here this is the model that harbor freight sells it's a single chamber you can also get a double they offer and you can pick
• 01:00 - 01:30 this up for about fifty three dollars works great i've made probably 10 pounds of powder out of this machine and it's still going strong as far as the lead media or mixing balls on the inside if you were involved in muzzleloading muzzle loading round balls work great i've got about 50 of different calibers in there all the way from 75 down to 36 and that gets the job done on the tumbling and as far as how long usually
• 01:30 - 02:00 about 18 hours works for me and that produces good quality powder 18 hour mill time another question we get a lot of is quebracho bark what is it uh why are we using it where do you get it well what it is it's the interior bark of a tree that grows in south america and we use it as an emulsifier or thickening agent it produces grains of black powder that are more durable and akin to commercial powder
• 02:00 - 02:30 no it's not a hundred percent necessary but in my opinion it makes a better quality powder where you can get it probably the best place to get it would be on etsy there's various individuals that sell it there it's used in the leather industry dying it's used in cosmetics and lo and behold it makes a great thickening agent for homemade black powder so etsy is probably your best bet on where to procure that
• 02:30 - 03:00 uh charcoal okay so i was using a blend of two soft wood charcoals to produce my powder and i was very happy with that but through the grapevine i've come to discover that it's rumored that goex uses maple for their charcoal now i was a little bit perplexed about this because maple is a hardwood and hardwood is generally thought to not produce as good a quality powder however uh silver maple is what we are dealing with here and silver mapers maple is
• 03:00 - 03:30 sort of a semi-hardwood so i went ahead and experimented made a batch and it's the best stuff that i've made yet very very fast clean burning and i'm really excited about that discovery so silver maple is what i am currently using for charcoal now one quick thing that i learned on the subject of charcoal i made some powder here a few months ago and i had a batch of charcoal and i just set it
• 03:30 - 04:00 aside in the basement in a bucket just left it sit there and went about making another batch here last month and when it was done it wasn't quite burning the way it should it was a little sluggish it was a little dirty it was leaving some sulfur fouling behind and i couldn't figure it out because i've done absolutely everything the same well here uh an individual who watches the channel that's more knowledgeable than i am and forgive me i can't remember the individual's name he suggested uh drying
• 04:00 - 04:30 out my raw ingredients the charcoal and the potassium nitrate before milling because they will absorb moisture so i went ahead and did that i just threw all my charcoal back in my charcoal tin put it on the fire for about 10 minutes and the potassium nitrate just put it in a little uh sort of a frying pan and gently tossed it you want to be careful because you can scorch your potassium nitrate and ruin it so make sure you're moving it around but about 10 minutes to each
• 04:30 - 05:00 evaporated all the moisture and then went about the regular process of my milling and yeah i made a night and day difference in the way the powder milled it doesn't clump up as much on the interior of the ball mill as i stated previously after that 18 hour mill time it is clumping some but not nearly as much because there's not as much moisture in there so i would recommend on the potassium nitrate the charcoal go ahead and evaporate the moisture right before you're going to use it do not do that with the quebracho bark
• 05:00 - 05:30 or the sulfur they will melt and you'll end up with a nasty mess but on the two ingredients mentioned absolutely recommend it make the night and day difference another question we're getting a lot on is uh the sizing of the grains how am i going about producing you know my 1 f my 2f the screen that i use shown here it's just porch screen bought from lowe's or home depot stretched over a wooden frame
• 05:30 - 06:00 and after we've wet our powder and mixed it into that like lump of clay you're going to take and of course grate it like cheese and your grains are going to come down through now that's not the final sizing that's just the graining the graining and the sizing are two different steps after it dries a little while on the cookie trays and i prefer to put it directly in the sun i have a large knife but i'll just gently chop those grains up work them back and forth and thin them out and i'll do that probably a dozen times till it's dry which is usually two or three
• 06:00 - 06:30 hours if we've got good sunlight when that's done i'll go ahead and put this over a container and slowly dump my powder over it scoot it around everything that falls through is your priming size powder your two and your three up what's on top of this your one i then run it through another screen that catches all my two and three f and what falls out i save that as priming because excellent priming it's
• 06:30 - 07:00 like akin to 5f lightning fast so i save that and then what's on top of that is my two and three now you can buy dedicated screen sets you can get them on ebay you can get them on amazon and you can sift and size your powder out to whatever you want but the graining which is taking that wet black powder and lump form and the sizing or sifting are two different steps so i just wanted to clear that up uh so some news for those of you that are interested in making your own black
• 07:00 - 07:30 powder i am sort of outfitting myself to start offering the raw chemicals in a little kit in order to make black powder now you want to check your state and local laws to ensure that this is legal for my area it is it falls under the same banner as you know doing your own reloading at home but we're going to start offering in kit form pre-measured potassium nitrate pre-measured charcoal silver maple the
• 07:30 - 08:00 good stuff pre-measured sulfur and pre-measured clay broncho bark and we're going to offer this in a half pound and a one pound kit it's limit one per customer because i don't want to get wiped out but we're gonna start offering this for sale probably next week on our website it's gonna be 12 for a half pound kit and six to ship and we'll just see how it goes from there i put this question up on a
• 08:00 - 08:30 facebook page of mine if individuals would be interested that and there were a few questions that were asked one individual asked that seems kind of expensive to buy a gunpowder that way and end up with an inferior product my response is it's not an inferior product if you go about it right it's nearly as good as commercial and i only say nearly because this type of powder as we've stated before it produces a powder that is just a little
• 08:30 - 09:00 bit weaker which if you just up your powder charge five or ten grains it makes up for in all other aspects it is as good or better than commercial lightning fast good accuracy clean burning and you can make all you want because you're just using the raw ingredients and those are easy to obtain another individual asked well you're not the only one selling these kits pyrotechnic supply houses or fireworks supply houses sell these kits for less
• 09:00 - 09:30 than what you're offering that is true i don't deny that the only thing i would say about our kit is our ingredients have been specifically chosen and are used for firearms so everything you want firearm grade black powder to do this stuff is going to do accurate clean burning quick igniting not that you can't make decent quality powder out of kits that you buy at fireworks supply houses but they're designed for
• 09:30 - 10:00 fireworks they don't necessarily care about it being clean burning their charcoal is hardwood charcoal as the mix so that could affect the speed of it oftentimes they incorporate dextrin as a hardening or thickening agent now that's fine for fireworks but if you try and shoot powder in a firearm that has that after about a dozen shots you're not even gonna be able to ram a bullet down the barrel it creates a very very nasty fouling so not to uh
• 10:00 - 10:30 say you absolutely couldn't use one of their kits but ours again is specifically designed our chemicals for use in firearms so again hopefully next week we're going to have those available on the website you can buy them again half pound or one pound batches and we combine the shipping if you buy a one pound batch that way it saves you a little bit of money so if you actually factor out the pricing uh this is a cheaper way to buy powder you do have to make it but because it's
• 10:30 - 11:00 just chemicals you don't have to pay for a hazardous sticker on your package so you save money there and it's actually not that bad if you factor in all the various things that make powder expensive it's a fairly reasonable way to buy it and you can get rigged up to uh make your own black powder if the measuring or the obtaining of the chemicals is a little daunting to you this would be a wonderful option for you anybody can do it if you can bake a cake or you can change your oil then you can make black powder it's really not that
• 11:00 - 11:30 hard be careful make small batches i only recommend making them in half pound runs be sure to wear a full face shield when you're measuring your chemicals and especially when the milling is done and you're sifting and graining your powder light leather gloves and a shop apron also a very good idea and just exercise common sense and you'll be fine that's going to wrap it up for today's video thank you all so much for tuning in and we'll see you all again real soon
• 11:30 - 12:00 [Music]