635 replies to this topic

[Yugen-biki]

broadsword

What sort of time should i be looking at to make a good allround BP suitable for many things, or is this not possible?

It is quite possible to make very good BP yourself at home. How many hours the BP needs in the mill is not easy to say. But I would say at least 5-10h.

If i was to make lift powder out of it would i need to make it in to pulverone?

Pulverone/granulated BP is a must to get a good lift powder. How large granules? Depends but something between 1-5mm is OK.

[broadsword]

I will be using 10 mesh to granulate it, It will look something like this hope



That is a pic of some i made out of some pants BP!

Edited by broadsword, 13 December 2004 - 10:15 AM.

[paul]

BBQ Charcoal works great for BP. It makes not the best beut for lift very very usable bp.

The last shell i shot was a 3" dayshel. The lift was 15g of CIA bp with BBQ charcoal. The charcoal was milled together with the sulfur 5hours
Then I followed the CIA method. Quite a big bang. (It was taped with one layer tape direct under the shell)

bbq charcoal for ball milled blackpowder is not the best choice as you will see when your first batch of charcoal with pine/poplar/willow comes out the mill :)

So mi tip if you only have BBQ charcoal: Use the CIA method and make about 500g blackpowder at once. About 700-800ml methylated spirits work well for that. But this is a ball mill thread, so.....

Cherry tree is a hardwood too. I would say the blackpowder from it gives results equal to BBQ charcoal bp.

Edited by paul, 13 December 2004 - 12:28 PM.

[broadsword]

So would I be waisting my time making charcoal out of cherry tree?

[paul]

At leass cherry tree is classified as hardwood. I had great, really grat success with spruce/pine and poplar. All these woods are used extensively and are cheap or for free. Cherry tree could be good, too. But instead of cherry I would use the woods mentioned before. I think you won?t have trouble finding them :)

[boris_73]

can you use lead pellets those used in air rifels as a ball media also how much lead in grams should be used

[broadsword]

surely lead pellets i.e .22 calibre will be WAY to small to have any real effect in a ball mill?
I am using solid lead castings from a 1/2 inch copper tube!

[Yugen-biki]

The CIA method works very good for me too. I have tested wet miling and dry milling but CIA (combined with milling the C and S very fine) works very good.

[adamw]

hahah .22 or .177 are WAY too small. All the skirt would collect the chemical you are grinding too!! You want some muzzleloader ammo!

[Jerronimo]

Or some nice linotype printerslead.

[boris_73]

also how much lead should be used for 100g of black powder

[adamw]

It depends... on what your mill can handle and how long you want to wait!!!

Is there a rule somewhere that says use 2x as much media as what your are milling?

[Phoenix]

It doesn't matter how much you're milling, you need enough media to half fill your milling jar. For the size of jar you're likely to use (about 4"), you'll need 1/2" (or something close) diameter balls or cylinders.

I don't recall the price of lead balls, but it's probably not that much less than brass rod. I got 6m of 1/2" diameter rod (just over enough for two 4" mill jars) for ?24.00 + ?10.00 p&p. IMHO, it's actually less trouble to saw up the rod than cast your own lead media, and the resulting media is tougher and non toxic (to you and the environment), so unless you have a cheap source of premade lead media, or particularly want to make your own, I'd go with brass.

[boris_73]

i was thinking of using fishing sinkers as a lead media but it depends on the price and how many i need if it ends up costing as much as a brass rod i will buy a brass rod

[Pretty green flames]

Fishing sinkers are cheap.....most of them here in Slovenia cost 10p's and they are 1/2 inch which are perfect
so you can get 100 of them from 10 to max 15 pounds there in england.
I don't think the prices are that much different.