Your potassium based black powder (77g:13g:10g) has a molar ratio of 0.762:1.082:0.312 of KNO3 to carbon and sulphur. When you changed to Na based black powder you didn't take into consideration that the molar mass of NaNO3 (85 g per mole) is lower than KNO3 (101.1 g mole). The result is your black powder has more oxidiser (nitrate ion) present. The new molar ratio of nitrate:carbon:sulphur is 0.906:1.082:0.312. If you want to keep the ratio of oxidiser to carbon and sulphur equivalent to that for KNO3 you need to reduce the NaNO3 to 64.8 g (0.762M x 85) while keeping carbon at 13g and sulphur at 10g. An additional consideration is that NaNO3 is hygroscopic which is why KNO3 is generally preferred to prepare black powder. NaNO3 might be inferior to KNO3 for a reason other than an excess of oxidiser or moisture content. Beavis the organic chemist.
@@Everythingblackpowder You mentioned that the CIA method allowed you to increase the density of your KNO3 powder, but it uses water. It is probably better to use a dry process (few drops of water) because you won't have to worry if the powder is dry. However, it might be difficult to reach the density of the CIA prepared KNO3 powder and you will need to add more NaNO3 black powder. I hope you get better results.
I have a composition here, but it might be for blasting powder: sodium nitrate 71%, charcoal 16.5%, sulfur 12.5%. But anyway, gun powder made of sodium nitrate is a bad idea, unless you can cover every grain with wax, as they used to do with NaNO3 based blasting powder. It's very hygroscopic, while KNO3 is almost non-hygroscopic.
Potassium Nitrate in KNO3. Sodium nitrate is NaNO3. K is potassium. Na is sodium. NO3 is nitrate. So, they are essentially the same thing, except one has sodium in the place of the other's potassium. The thing is, potassium weighs almost twice as much as sodium. So, the same weight of sodium nitrate will have a lot more nitrate in it than potassium nitrate will. So, if your black powder recipe goes by weight, your sodium nitrate powder will have a lot more nitrate in it. Too much to ignite effectively, in fact. @@Troy-nr7ku
If the cost is low enough on sodium nitrate, it is easy to turn it into potasium nitrate if you can find ice meld made of potasium cloride (think it's usually about $10 for 40 pound bag). Just add both of the about equel wt. of each in enough boiling water to let both desolve. Remove from heat and let cool. (Can filter out any dirt, etc, befor it starts to cool.) The sodium nitrate should now be sodium cloride (table salt) and remain desolved in the water and the potasium nitrate will start forming crystals and dropping to the bottom of the container. I think most should drop out at room temp, but would cool in the fridge to get a higher yeild. Now just filter the crystals out with coffee filter or fine cloth and a light rinse to get any salt water off. Dry. Sorry so long, didn't mean to write a book.
I'd be very sceptical of that. Sodium, potassium, chloride and nitrate ions are all extremely soluble in water, wouldn't be convinced that this method would reliably allow ion exchange to occur.
@@mrsmith9079Right after posting that, if I know how, I would have taken it down, as I think what I was thinking of was sodium perclorate to potassium perclorate.
Been making explosives since childhood and opened my own explosives company, gotta say I love your work and think you are doing a great job. Keep it up!
You're welcome. I moved on to other explosives for commerce but we still make some on occasion and it's so refreshing to watch someone who really knows the art. Watching your videos is a great way to blow out the cobwebs, it's clear you love this and are a wealth of knowledge. @@Everythingblackpowder
The slow flash in that long barrel is probably why it gave the better velocities, burning making gas the whole time the bullet is in the barrel instead of flashing off and bullet slowing down at the end of the barrel.
I believe smokeless powder burns slower than black powder for this reason. This is also the reason why you use smaller grain black powder in pistols than in rifles. Smaller grain burns faster which is beneficial for shorter barrels. Would be an interesting experiment to find the perfect burn rate for a given rifle. Also ideally you would use a small grain fast powder for the flash pan and slow burning larger grain for the barrel.
My retort is made from standard size propane tanks the burner is holey. A small wood rack and door cut and bolt, washer guides. I made a retort chamber above with a hole bottom center to help heat the burner. I cut a circular lid, cap, top hat. They are wrapped with tank sides bent to shape and spaced for a flame guide. It took 4 tanks for parts.I made a kiln brick covering to guide flame an inch or two around the retort, burner with air venting all round base. I heat with the bark sapwood scraps I cut at 10 inches x 1+ inches for retort wood. No bark or dirt for char wood. Stacked very tight in retort chamber it heats o2 free. When torching stops, I stop feeding the burner and let it cool of its own accord. The char is sparkly with only the very slightest hint of color. No wood left. I only have to keep the artists from taking the perfect charcoal.
As far as the charcoal issue, cooking it at a high temp, and for a long time, it will cook off all the volatile compounds out. When I have made my own charcoal for iron smelting, if I fully cooked it, it would be much less dense, than if I shut down early. The charcoal that I made that was shut down early was much better for making the proper atmosphere in the smelting furnace to reduce the ore properly, I could never get the fully cooked charcoal to work right. Charcoal making is whole subject in itself, and one rabbit hole that you can go down for a long time
Being called blasting powder might explain its intended use. Like in mining and such. It may burn slower in the open but works basically the same under compression and is cheaper to make, so a significant cost cut if you need a lot of it.
Thank you for this excellent research. I pick up a few good tips from you and the comments that result. have dabbled in the art for 60 some years........always learning........
I read an article about Swiss Powder which said that the charcoal was made from wood that had been weathered for two years in the forest where it was gathered before being processed into charcoal. If you think about it the purity of sulphur and saltpetre is pretty much constant, the greatest variable is the charcoal. Also the very high pressure that the mix is subjected to by the rollers before being granulated may make a difference. Weight for weight the Swiss powder seems to occupy a smaller volume so has a greater density.
6:30 When wood burns, it undergoes pyrolysis (also called destructive distillation). Basically, all of the lignin, cellulose, and other compounds in the wood break down into smaller molecules which are usually gases or liquids, such as tar, wood gas, and methanol. In a wood fire, this is what is actually burning until the pyrolysis is more or less complete, then oxygen can get to the charcoal that remains and react directly with it. When you pyrolyse the wood in your paint can, this is what is happening. The wood is breaking down and the volatile compounds are escaping through the vent hole (and the closed nature prevents oxygen from burning the charcoal away), but when this is done, a small amount of organic compounds like tar remains. The longer/hotter you pyrolyse your wood, the less tar that remains because it is always breaking down in the fire. The volatile compounds are pretty important, because they burn at a lower temperature, which increases reaction rate, efficiency, and decreases the overall ignition temp. Quoting link 1: "Charcoal made at 240 degrees centigrade will readily ignite at 330 degrees centigrade, whereas charcoal made at 950 degrees centigrade will take nearly 1900 degrees to ignite. Hence, the best charcoal for gunpowder is made at lower temperatures." Quoting link 2: "charcoal in black powder is a naturally derived substance which contains up to 35 percent tar-like constituents and varies from one source to another. Such variance has been found to have a great impact on the combustion properties of black powder" You might be able to add wax as a substitute for the tar, but you are probably best off pyrolysing for a shorter period of time. Cut your wood pieces smaller if you are worried about them not cooking all the way through. Some other documents are included that you might like. Link 1: firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/propellants-black-powder-i.html Link 2: archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA149312/page/n5/mode/1up archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA150455 archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA122264 archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0830265/page/n49/mode/1up archive.org/details/cu31924030697688/page/n5/mode/2up
This TOTALLY ROCKS my Theory while Also reinforcing it! THANK YOU! for your WORK! I was thinking on purity from these very things. I built a still just to have "fun" and charcoal the soured mash, was very SLOW. Now I am thinking more sugars and such with lower conversion temps! Like "maybe" the converted sugar mash before! fermentation or distillation? I believe the spirits industry and this art are closely knitted together through history. I'M ON IT! Thanks AGAIN!!
Another little tidbit of info that may help y'all with your BP.... cut your wood in the spring when the sap is flowing strong and leaves are starting to pop, then let it dry for 4 to 6 months before peeling the bark and charing. If it is cut in the fall and winter the salts are solidified in the wood and causes it to burn dirty. When cut in the spring as stated above those salts are flushed out and the dried sap has a much lower salt content along with the chard natural sugars add to the fuel. Hope this helps.
This is one of the most informative TH-cam comments I've ever come across. I shoot BP and, from time to time, enjoy making my own (just for the challenge and satisfaction of doing so, really). These links are excellent, with loads of useful information, and I've learned a great deal. For example, I would never have guessed that the time the wood is harvested could make such a difference. THANK YOU for taking the time and trouble to share!
You can get 1900 feet per second with black powder,- but that involves the old English Black powder express rifles. As a example: The energy requirement for big game in Norway is: 1) for bullets with a weight of 138.9 to 154 grains, the estimated energy is at least 2700 joules at 100 meters E100 2) for bullets with a weight with a minimum of 154 grains, the estimate energy is minimum, 2200 joules at 100 meters. E100 Conclusion: One must have a minimum speed of 400 m/sec (at 100meters ) and a ball weight of at least 450 grains to cope with the energy requirement on big game. (2233 Joule E100 for those wondering). That is possible with: .45-120 ( 500 grains bullet, 463 m/sek 1519 ft/sec) .50-140 Sharps English cartridges: .450 Black Powder Express .461 (.450) Gibbs .500 BPE ( 440 grains bullet ,580 m/s 1902 feet/sec) .577 BP Express .500 No. 2 Express (.577/.500) 340 grains bullet 130-160 gr Fg swiss ,587 m/s 3,800 J . Scottish bottleneck: 20/577 Alexander Henry, 570 grains bullet, 1,725 ft/s (526 m/s). Speeds above 600 m/sec is extremely hard to obtain with black powder.
The key word is hygroscopic. If one looks at potassium/sodium nitrate formulas it is obvious that at any given weight sodium nitrate is " richer" in nitrate anions than potassium nitrate ie it will have more oxygen to supply.This being said,sodium nitrate powder is good to use while shooting in Sahara desert,completely worthless in Florida.Long time ago ,in 19th century,right before the first world war, there were promising experiments with ammonium nitrate as an oxygen donor and charcoal only.the composition lost to smokeless powder, which turned out superior to any powders based on solid ingredients
What information do you have on ammonium nitrate and it’s use in firearms? Also did I read your comment right, ammonium nitrate and charcoal only? This would be huge if you could cut sulfur out of the mix as it’s the most difficult material to acquire in BP production.
I'm assuming because ammonium nitrate is extremely hygroscopic as well. It used to wind up as giant clumps in the sealed bag on our farm when I was a kid.
I’m liking the new intro. With regards to the charcoal issues you may want to consider harvesting the wood during spring as the sap from the trees holds less inorganic matter which could weaken the ignition. If you’re going the distance season the wood for 18 months, but no more than 3 years. Long term play, but it should pay off. Cook times for willow charcoal ought to be 3-1/2 hours at 280 degrees Celsius. This information is provided with greater detail with Explosives their manufacture, properties, and history by Arthur Marshall 1915. I look forward to seeing your developments.
Interesting test Jake! I'm really liking this stuff. Learning a little bit more all the time. Hope you have this video & data all backed up somewhere just in case. Thanks , Mike.
Sodium Nitrate is also called "Chilean Saltpeter"as it was found in Bat Caves in Chile and used for making Black Powder. It is more Hygroscopic than Potassium Nitrate,this means it absorbs moisture from the air more readily so it's harder to keep your powder dry .
The molecular mass of KNO3 is 101 g/mol and NaNO3 is 85 g/mol. The 75:15:10 ratio will need to be adjusted. For equal weights of KNO3 and NaNO3, the NaNO3 will contain more oxygen.
When i was an adolescent back in the 1950's we used to mix drug store purchased saltpeter and mixed it 50-50 with standard supermarket purchased white refined sugar, likely cane sugar. It picked up water from the atmosphere very quickly. I once did try it in an open pipe to fire a bolt. It did, but was so badly fouled that subsequence shots were not possible. I used a piece of jetex fuse for ignition.
@@Everythingblackpowder thats true and safe but as you mentioned you have issues with your performance (feets per second) in your rifle! One issue with lead ball media is that leaves traces of lead and contaminated the end product ! As for the charcoal process about cooking is: first you use paint can and paint can leave behind trace's of iron oxides in your charcoal ! Second: as i see you don't leave it until the fire completely disappeared which leaves behind uncarbonised wood and fuel properties in you wood! Third: of course the wood choice is the main and first factor BUT!! The correct time to harvest you tree is during the winter between mid January and beginnings of February because then the tree have take all the minerals and moisture down to the roots for protection from the winter ! Four: the cooking process needs to be at 550°F Fahrenheit or 285°c Celsius and completely cooking until the fire end's! I know a lot of process but swiss goex and other brands live with this job! Of course other factors effect the end result ( right corning( 1.7cc density or more) , correct ratio's , milling time, completely pure chemicals, etc) I hope i helped!
Try drying your sodium nitrate before making the powder, and dry the powder just before glazing. Otherwise you're going to get inaccurate measurements of the nitrate, and powder that's way more damp than you want. Both will really effect performance. It would be the same with ammonium nitrate because both are really hygroscopic.
One wonders how ammonium nitrate would work. Available as fertilizer. The folks in NE Thailand who make the giant PVC skyrockets (look up "rocket festival" on TH-cam) use, I believe, some sort of meal powder based on ammonium nitrate and charcoal, no sulfur - it burns really slowly from what I understand. I remember making some sodium nitrate based meal powder when I was in school, we packed it into a cardboard cylinder, thinking to make a rocket, but it just burned really slowly and produced a whole lot of molten slag dripping out the bottom. One wonders what makes up fouling - part of it is probably a salt or oxide of the metal used in the oxidizer, which makes me think ammonium nitrate would make less fouling.
I'm using sodium bp because i can't find easily potassium nitrate. If the ball isn't rammed super tight, with the low ignition speed, it sometimes puffs without actually detonating. But if you really ram the ball well, it will just pop like one hell of a baloon. With a percussion cap and a well pressed ball, you got no delay, not much smoke and quite nice power. And it's cheap and easy to find (stump removers manufacturers usually put sodium nitrate beacause it's cheaper)
@@donaldcadwell3911 most of the stump removers are made with sodium nitrate, beacause it's cheaper than potassium. And that's exactly where i got my ingredient
@@donaldcadwell3911 it doesn't exist in France sadly. But sodium nitrate work well, it was used before,but will behave like old gunpowders : you have to ram it tight for it to detonate
Try converting your charcoal into activated charcoal or not fully carbonizing the charcoal. I heard that in the Civil War and just before smokeless powder became common, that something called "Brown Powder gave superior performance in cannons
Good info .👍 Could Swiss be cleaning the residual oils out of the charcoal ,at some point in the process, then re drying? Maybe hitting it with a blast of steam? It’s obviously not just the species of wood chosen for the char. There’s a freakish absence of funk on those Swiss patches. Other than an additional oxidizer, it must be the cleanliness of the charcoal. I’m thinking residual oil in the charcoal, like creosote in a chimney, is what is making the funk.
I could be way off, but.... If I recall correctly, pushing super heated steam through the charcoal is how you make activated carbon. So.... activated carbon is gonna be pretty clean. Maybe that is the trick to clean burning charcoal....
Side note. Even though here in Ks we have gotten some rain, indoors it is bone dry. So, almost three weeks ago I took an H&R Topper 088 to a friends B-Day party. High school kids took some turns with it on clays. The load was Magtech brass, 3 1/8 dram Goex 2Fg, 1 1/8 #8. Big fun! About 30 shots. Anyway, this, that and the other I just cleaned it yesterday. No rust. It cleaned up spotless. Granted the fouling was extra hard. What I'm getting at, BP with KNO3 in dry conditions with non-corrosive priming isn't that big a deal ( it is, but it isn't....). It would be interesting to know if like amounts flashed on some steel plate of potassium nitrate vs sodium nitrate and left in the weather changed this dynamic.
I have personally noticed that Goex is a little smokier than pyrotechnics but a lot less corrosive. I know “it’s not corrosive it’s hygroscopic”. Fact is if I shoot 1 shot with pyrodex Ivette’s scrub the whole gun within hours. If I use BP I can go the whole weekend or week before it looos as bad as 1 day with pyrodex. That’s here in the south with high humidity. Both stink when burned so pyrodex only exists because the stores don’t need “explosives like licenses to have it.
NaNO3 has more oxygen by weight, so could burn the combustibles more completely. Possibly could get even higher muzzle velocity if the proportions of sulphur rand charcoal were increased slightly to take advantage of the higher oxygen provided. Union army used Chilean sourced Sodium Nitrate to make gunpowder since the KNO3 sources had previously been bat guano based from caves in the American South, and reported higher performance in cannon.
Seems like your rifle is fusing and that's adding to the slow ignition. Cut back on the priming charge, and tip the gun to the right just before shouldering to knock the prime away from the flash hole. It seems as though your flash hole may be a tad large as well. I shot competitively for 30 odd years, and these are a few things I picked up along the way. Apologies if you're familiar with these tricks. Swiss has been a tad more energetic and easier to ignite than Goex for many years, I've heard a lot of theories as to why, but none have been proven. Goex is more uniform, especially the 3F sporting. The best one for fouling control depends on conditions. With the high price and spotty availability of Swiss, I usually opt for the Goex. A lot of different oxidizers have been tried in black powder thru the years, but we always seem to come back to the old formula and methods. Excluding the newfangled nitro stuff, which I'm sure is just a passing fad... Interesting stuff!
The lock on this rifle is timed very well and always goes off fast when using any potassium nitrate based powder. The sodium nitrate flashes extremely slow in open air. I couldn’t agree more, smokeless powder is over rated
Ok, second try. You asked about the charcoal. The details and science you're after are found in The Mad Monk Files. You'll need to search for The Mad Monk Files and find the Swiss Booklet. You'll want them all actually. The man, Bill Knight aka The Mad Monk, is a chemist who spent a long time in the study of BP, he has connections in the gunpowder industry others wish they had and if you're to rely on the work of anyone, this is the man and the work to carry on. You'll see. To cut to the science of what you're after with controlling char temperature, you are after wood creosote. Not the stuff railroad ties and parking lots are coated with, this isn't petroleum creosote. It isn't petroleum, it isn't petroleum or coal tar, it isn't tar like. It has absolutely nothing to do with tar as most people might perceive. The natural wood creosote is a hard and brittle crystalline material derived from the lignin in the wood, when wood is loaded with creosote, the wood has a black crystalline glitter to it. Little crystals can actually fall out of the crushed charcoal in cases where the char has a huge surplus of creosote which is a wonderful thing. The critical never exceed temperature is 610F. Do not exceed this temperature as this is the flash off temp of the creosote, wood that chars above that temp will have little or no creosote. I use a propane grill with a perforated steel baffle I drilled out and cut to fit. I use 1 gallon paint cans with 6" long 3/8" diameter copper tubes fitted to vent the gas out of the grill so as to avoid the gas igniting and causing a runaway temperature spike. I'm not doing this for efficiency, I'm doing it for precision. My grill has multiple grill thermometers and a long probe thermometer for internal temperatures so I can monitor the can internal temp. The important piece of data are the cans internal temps. Time doesn't matter, I make sure the internal temp of my retorts remain below 610F for as long as it takes to fully char. I do not want nor do I try for brown or red colored charcoal, it is my opinion that those have not had enough charring and thus lignin has not been converted into creosote. I understand if the wood you're using only fully chars at above 610F and thus in an effort to preserve the creosote one must thus under char, I use wood that is both exceedingly plentiful, has tons of lignin and fully chars at 550F. I cook at 590F to ensure as much conversion of lignin as possible into creosote. You could go through the trouble to assay the wood from dehydrated weight to as charred to ash to know your actual carbon and creosote content but really it isn't all that important, there are many other factors that come into play that are much more make or break. What you're looking for is a charcoal that is loaded with sparking black crystals, when you torch or burn a piece, you're looking for a faint trace of smoke and you're looking for a strong creosote smell. It should smell like a very very well used food smoker. If you have a dry scent, you over cooked it. Again please note that some wood types char at such a high temperature, riding the ragged edge of 610F or even exceeding that temp that little creosote will be preserved. So what happens when charcoal is loaded with creosote, made into powder and shot? It burns down into its constituent elements, that is hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. The desired element is hydrogen. When hydrogen and oxygen burn, they produce water vapor as a byproduct. This water vapor in turn permeates the fouling and keeps it soft, the more water vapor produced, the greater the effect. This will require special tuning to achieve the best possible results and failing to tune the powder can partially or completely negate the effect. There is no specific formula I can point you to, the tuning is a number of factors you'll have to figure out to best suit your needs. My powder burns so wet that the fouling is sopping wet with a greasy feel. About the same residual carbon fouling as Goex but unlike theirs, mine feels like melted face paint. Soft, goopy and easily wiped off the witness plate I test on. In the barrel it is easily wiped out with a single dry patch or blown out of the barrel by the next shot, grease isn't needed. That isn't to say I don't use grease. I certainly do. I need to point out that this wet burn feature can be negatively effected by heat and time. If your barrel is too hot to touch, so hot that a blow tube wouldn't work for example, the fouling will not retain moisture from the wet burning characteristics either. So it is usually very beneficial but in certain locations or atmospheric conditions it will fail. If you're shooting on a 100F day in direct sunlight, the barrel will get too hot in no time flat and the effect is lost. This is where a good grease comes into play. It will also naturally dry out over time as well, it can actually be far wetter than the naturally hygroscopic fouling wants to be and will eventually "dry out" to achieve equilibrium. Doesn't mean it is actually dry, it isn't. Just isn't sopping wet anymore and this naturally damp fouling isn't soft enough to make loading easy or be blown out the barrel with another shot. So a steady firing sequence must be maintained, not so slow as to dry out and not so fast as to over heat the barrel. American powders of the late 19th century were not wet burning. In fact the wet burning characteristic was well known to American powder makers and usually not a factor in production as American shooters preferred grease groove bullets or wiping between shots. It was Western Europe that liked wet burning powder. It was their thing and in the usually cool and comfortable weather they have it was a much sought after characteristic. You can imagine then that American powder was not popular over there. For me this BP making thing has been a massive 6 year long learning experience. I equate it to mining through a maintain range of obsolete, repetitive or incorrect info just to find a backpack worth of gold nuggets. This is a few of those nuggets. An observation I have made over the years is that not everyone understands the creosote thing, either lacking the understanding of the science behind it or lacking an understanding of the benefit of it. There are a number of people who do understand it and do not care. The American method of shoot and wipe is part of the allure and magic of the BP world and they intend to stick with it, after all, it was American powder, American arms and American methods that won the 1874 Creedmoor Cup. I cannot argue with them, who but a fool to argue with success? I don't know if what I've said will help or if this is a direction you want to take your testing but at the very least you have more options and now know things few others know. Absolutely find and download The Mad Monk Files. All sorts of useful info those files, a gold mine for info.
hygroscopic also means you can rinse it from soil easily, making it readily available. There is actually a military field guide on how to extract use it just as you are.
I was just starting to write the same thing good thing i went back and double checked. Someone wrote it a lot better than i started to. So I'll just do a condensed version so i can still get at ny point. I use nitrates for making nitric acid i use in precious metal refining. I prefer sodium nitrate to potassium nitrate as pound per pound you get a higher percentage of the weight made up by the nitrate anion on account of using the lighter weight sodium cation opposed to the heavier potassium cation. In this case the anion is the good stuff its use in black powder is no different. Now you also got to keep in mind that the sodium nitrate also has a bit of an affinity for water.s getting it completely dried out anhydrous is very difficult and then it will also literally suck water up out of the air the more water you got in your powder you do the math. I imagine using it for black powder it won't store very well, especially so in a more traditional type of container like a powder horn
It has more oxygen in it so you can use less of it to counterbalance its hygroscopic nature also you can coat it with dope the grains to make it less hygroscopic
propellant made with sodium nitrate will be very hydroscopic, eventually not fire due to moisture absorption. suggestion-get some potassium chloride water softener salt along with this NaNO3 and do a replacement reaction: NaNO3 + KCl ---NaCl + KNO3
@@SW-ii5gg no because sodium ion is more electronegative. sodium and chloride have a stronger affinity for each other-the reaction between KCL and sodium nittate is called a double replacement. KCL is cheap-snow melt and water softner. Cheers
If you wash the charcoal with rain water you can reduce the fowling doping is done with nitrocellulose to make it less hygroscopic and use about 10 %less sodium nitrate to have the same oxygen balance
If i may request to make it harder still: sulfurless 100% sodium powder.. can you make it work? In theory it should, in practice it probably takes serious powder making skill to make it work, making the video even more interesting. Given the higher energy per grain but the greater reluctance of it, it can give lower lows and set higher highs in terms of velocity.
As a teenager some of us to mix when 50-50 sodium saltpeter powder from the drug store with sugar and use a jetex fuse in piece of pinched off electrical conduit at both ends to make a bang. I tried it in a homemade cap lock and it was only effective for the first shot. After that there was too much fouling.
Sodium Nitrate is highly hygroscopic; you need to bake out the water and then make sure it isn't exposed to air to reabsorb water. That would be difficult, but unhydrated Sodium Nitrate is probably a better oxidizer than Potassium Nitrate.
Sodium nitrate absorbs water like crazy compared to potassium nitrate. It is likely that your NaNO3 black powder was slow because of water content - it needed dehydration.
It flashed slow. It didn’t make slow velocities. We stored the sodium made powder in a sealed container full of silica gel desiccant balls. We are doing an experiment now where we are placing are finished powder in a vacuum chamber with desiccant for a week to see if it has any effect on performance.
@@Everythingblackpowder NaNO3 neds to be dessicated before it is measured for powder - it holds so much water it can throw the proportions all off -eg if the NaNO3 is 10% water by weight then you end up making the powder with 10% too little nitrate. On top of that, the water in the powder can itself affect burn rate. Weigh the nitrate before and after dehydration (I use a food dehydrater for about 5 hrs at 150 degrees for the ingredients, not the mixed powder), you'll see how much of the nitrate was water, it can be surprising. The powder will also pick up moisture from the air unless it is sealed in storage.
Now THAT was very interesting Like you, I prefer flintlocks. Soo, saltpeter for my powder. But if the cleaning is better with a higher sodium/saltpeter ratio. It would still beat Pyrodex by a mile, and might even be ideal for cartridges.
You might have to change up your ratios to get the best results. Sodium Nitrate has more oxygen per part by weight than Potassium Nitrate. Sodium's Atomic Weight is 23 and Potassium's Atomic Weight is 39. The Atomic Weight of a Sodium Nitrate molecule is 85 while the Atomic Weight of a Potassium Nitrate molecule is 101. Thus using the Sodium salt you get almost 19% more oxygen for the same weight of Potassium Nitrate.
I "Wounder If" the speed may be In the Burn "type" with the longer barrel. could it be a better Push for a more complete burn rather than a bang? Did you notice a change in Sound? Sounded on the interweb more thump-ish? I did notice your flash looked and sounded FAST enough with a Nice Plume as should be. I noticed a change in sound with BP in some applications, rather than a crack more of a Boom! AND I noticed the CONSTANT speeds, so is fast better than consistent? I do KNOW in "reloading" the quest of the Holy Grail is "consistency" for ACCURICY. I'm On It too! Keep your smoke Pole SMOKING! Thanks!
I have used Sodium Nitrate in fireworks but not for a lift charge. Never heard about the theory of cooking your charcoal to hot but what if you get it over a certain temp you loose some volatile compounds that are present in the wood? Interesting!
Just a thought: Maybe the lead in the ball mill are to blame for the stronger fouling? Since lead is quite soft and the milling may wear away some of it. Perhaps trying an alloy of lead/tin (Pb40/Sn60; Pb30/Sn70), which is much harder than lead itself may solve the problem.
Brother, have you ever tried ammonium nitrate powder? I heard that the powder of ammonium nitrate and charcoal can reach the energy of double-base gunpowder?
Because of the IRA, publicly available nitrates are now treated with a fire retardant and a chemical signature so that unlicensed people cannot make explosives with them. Untreated prills should only be available to the quarrying and demolition professions. As for charcoal, there are two types: normal and activated. Activated charcoal is the type used in water and respirator filters and has nano tubes in the makeup to absorb moisture… check them out for more info.
You seem like the perfect person to ask this. I’m looking to have a sort of off grid formula for black powder. I’ve seen people posting about making BP without sulfur. Is that possible and would it be able to be used in a BP rifle or pistol? Any help with this would be appreciated. Keep up the cool content.
Sulfur decreases the ignition temperature and increases the burn rate [transfer across grain boundaries.] Don't bother making 0 sulfur BP if you're going to try to use it in a rock-lock; same reason none of the substitutes are suitable for priming the pan in a flinter. But you absolutely could use it for the main charge, it will just burn a bit slower [ie, use 3F where you'd use 2F of BP w/ sulfur, etc.]
Im my german papers about explosives they say the best charcoal is less black, is a kind brown ,which means less cooked than black one.They give lot of information about sodium Nitrat substitute ,other things and combinations.
Your 20% Sodium Nitrate powder might be closer to authentic antique black powder than the pure potassium nitrate stuff. They used to use natural saltpeter, which is not pure like modern KNO3 from a factory. Might be cool to try to get natural saltpeter.
Is Goex being produced again in May 2022 ? I assume that you were using Stock on Hand . I enjoyed your test and carefully showing the results . Thanx .
Would any of the perchlorates make good black powder? Nitronium Perchlorate in particular looks to be really damn powerful from what I've read, but I've also been told that perchlorates in general don't play well with Sulfur, as it makes them rather unstable.
When we were young as kids some of us would mix drug store purchased saltpeter with sugar 50-50 and it picked up water very quickly. I once tried make a homemade match lock and got off only one shot using conduit and a bolt for a projectile. It was too badly fouled to really fire efficiently again.
My tests with Sodium based oxygen were identical save that mine was trash garden stuff. Lots of junk in it, only like 95% and the rest just whatever. It left a lot of crap behind. The witness plate tests suggested a poor performer but the chronograph and my shoulder said otherwise. Dirty but stupid fast.
Damn, I didn't know you could achieve those velocities with black powder, especially round ball (though I assume it sheds velocity extremely fast?) One of my favorite "plinking" loads for my Marlin 1894 (.44mag not .44-40 so .429-.431in, not a true .440 of a .44) is a 248gr flat-nose over 21.5gr of 2400. I think the last run I made averaged 1689fps over 10 shots from a 20" barrel, so I'd say that's pretty analogous. At least that WAS one of my favorite loads, in the before times when I could still find smokeless powder and primers... Getting really low on both so I might have to pick up a muzzle loader in order to be able to take a deer in the next few years! I know the cost of big bore revolver/lever gun factory ammo has doubled since 2019, $70 for a box of Fiocchi .44mag 240gr JSP's when I was getting them for $33 not even three years ago, so if this bs continues I honestly might have no other choice than to move to muzzle loaders. Got plenty of M80 ball 7.62 NATO, but I doubt that's a very good deer round, lol
there’s a few reasons why I get good velocities. One is that the round ball is lighter, roughly 140gr. Also the barrel length is a big contributing factor being 44 inches to your 20 inch carbine. I typically only run the best black powder I can make/obtain in this rifle and can get a little over 2000fps with a 75-80gr charge but I usually only do that for long distance shooting (Over 200 yards) I was testing some 44mag handloads last weekend and I settled on 23.5gr H110 with a 240gr JHP. they averaged 1400fps out of my Ruger Blackhawk, 7.5 barrel.
You can get 1900 feet per second with black powder,- but that involves the old English Black powder express rifles. As a example: The energy requirement for big game in Norway is: 1) for bullets with a weight of 138.9 to 154 grains, the estimated energy is at least 2700 joules at 100 meters E100 2) for bullets with a weight with a minimum of 154 grains, the estimate energy is minimum, 2200 joules at 100 meters. E100 Conclusion: One must have a minimum speed of 400 m/sec (at 100meters ) and a ball weight of at least 450 grains to cope with the energy requirement on big game. (2233 Joule E100 for those wondering). That is possible with: .45-120 ( 500 grains bullet, 463 m/sek 1519 ft/sec) .50-140 Sharps English cartridges: .450 Black Powder Express .461 (.450) Gibbs .500 BPE ( 440 grains bullet ,580 m/s 1902 feet/sec) .577 BP Express .500 No. 2 Express (.577/.500) 340 grains bullet 130-160 gr Fg swiss ,587 m/s 3,800 J . Scottish bottleneck: 20/577 Alexander Henry, 570 grains bullet, 1,725 ft/s (526 m/s). Speeds above 600 m/sec is extremely hard to obtain with black powder.
You did realize that you must use less sodium nitrate than you use potassium nitrate, right. The molecular weIGHT is less, so the potassium proportions are no longer correct.
As far as your making charcoal my mind is contemplating the nutrient minerals within each plant based carbon that would give each charcoal a different effect. Why is willow dirty and balsa not as much? Based on your studies, do you have a chart made? Dirtiest - cleanest Weakest - most powerful Puting it on a graph with coefficients of mill time would be a very valuable chart.
Hello sir I make my black powder out of potasium nitrate that usually done . But the problem with this It catches moisture in gun s breech .so i decide to take about 70 grains of powder and put in a thin layer of plastic paper and roll it down to barrel s breech .it works pretty good and same without any moisture problem.but sir I have question for you this method is good for accuracy or ballastics ? Thanks sir
Hi, I made black powder following your advice on how to prepare it and the only thing I need to do is to compact it with a hydraulic press. The black powder I made burns at a similar rate to pyrodex. I made the granulation from 3f. Can it cause any damage to the rifle if I load it with this powder?
Your potassium based black powder (77g:13g:10g) has a molar ratio of 0.762:1.082:0.312 of KNO3 to carbon and sulphur. When you changed to Na based black powder you didn't take into consideration that the molar mass of NaNO3 (85 g per mole) is lower than KNO3 (101.1 g mole). The result is your black powder has more oxidiser (nitrate ion) present. The new molar ratio of nitrate:carbon:sulphur is 0.906:1.082:0.312. If you want to keep the ratio of oxidiser to carbon and sulphur equivalent to that for KNO3 you need to reduce the NaNO3 to 64.8 g (0.762M x 85) while keeping carbon at 13g and sulphur at 10g. An additional consideration is that NaNO3 is hygroscopic which is why KNO3 is generally preferred to prepare black powder. NaNO3 might be inferior to KNO3 for a reason other than an excess of oxidiser or moisture content. Beavis the organic chemist.
Thank you, I’ve had a few people mention this. I’ll have to give it a try.
@@Everythingblackpowder You mentioned that the CIA method allowed you to increase the density of your KNO3 powder, but it uses water. It is probably better to use a dry process (few drops of water) because you won't have to worry if the powder is dry. However, it might be difficult to reach the density of the CIA prepared KNO3 powder and you will need to add more NaNO3 black powder. I hope you get better results.
I have a composition here, but it might be for blasting powder: sodium nitrate 71%, charcoal 16.5%, sulfur 12.5%.
But anyway, gun powder made of sodium nitrate is a bad idea, unless you can cover every grain with wax, as they used to do with NaNO3 based blasting powder. It's very hygroscopic, while KNO3 is almost non-hygroscopic.
Can you translate that into English? Lol layman's terms?
Potassium Nitrate in KNO3. Sodium nitrate is NaNO3. K is potassium. Na is sodium. NO3 is nitrate. So, they are essentially the same thing, except one has sodium in the place of the other's potassium. The thing is, potassium weighs almost twice as much as sodium. So, the same weight of sodium nitrate will have a lot more nitrate in it than potassium nitrate will. So, if your black powder recipe goes by weight, your sodium nitrate powder will have a lot more nitrate in it. Too much to ignite effectively, in fact. @@Troy-nr7ku
If the cost is low enough on sodium nitrate, it is easy to turn it into potasium nitrate if you can find ice meld made of potasium cloride (think it's usually about $10 for 40 pound bag). Just add both of the about equel wt. of each in enough boiling water to let both desolve. Remove from heat and let cool. (Can filter out any dirt, etc, befor it starts to cool.) The sodium nitrate should now be sodium cloride (table salt) and remain desolved in the water and the potasium nitrate will start forming crystals and dropping to the bottom of the container. I think most should drop out at room temp, but would cool in the fridge to get a higher yeild. Now just filter the crystals out with coffee filter or fine cloth and a light rinse to get any salt water off. Dry. Sorry so long, didn't mean to write a book.
It was years ago and best to look this up befor doing it. I could be thinking of the wrong conversion!
Fair enough. Thank you
Salt substitute in grocery store has KCl
I'd be very sceptical of that. Sodium, potassium, chloride and nitrate ions are all extremely soluble in water, wouldn't be convinced that this method would reliably allow ion exchange to occur.
@@mrsmith9079Right after posting that, if I know how, I would have taken it down, as I think what I was thinking of was sodium perclorate to potassium perclorate.
Been making explosives since childhood and opened my own explosives company, gotta say I love your work and think you are doing a great job. Keep it up!
Thank you
You're welcome. I moved on to other explosives for commerce but we still make some on occasion and it's so refreshing to watch someone who really knows the art. Watching your videos is a great way to blow out the cobwebs, it's clear you love this and are a wealth of knowledge. @@Everythingblackpowder
The slow flash in that long barrel is probably why it gave the better velocities, burning making gas the whole time the bullet is in the barrel instead of flashing off and bullet slowing down at the end of the barrel.
That’s an interesting theory
I believe smokeless powder burns slower than black powder for this reason. This is also the reason why you use smaller grain black powder in pistols than in rifles. Smaller grain burns faster which is beneficial for shorter barrels. Would be an interesting experiment to find the perfect burn rate for a given rifle.
Also ideally you would use a small grain fast powder for the flash pan and slow burning larger grain for the barrel.
"Antique muzzleloading propellant." Yep, that warrants a subscription lol
My retort is made from standard size propane tanks the burner is holey. A small wood rack and door cut and bolt, washer guides. I made a retort chamber above with a hole bottom center to help heat the burner. I cut a circular lid, cap, top hat. They are wrapped with tank sides bent to shape and spaced for a flame guide. It took 4 tanks for parts.I made a kiln brick covering to guide flame an inch or two around the retort, burner with air venting all round base. I heat with the bark sapwood scraps I cut at 10 inches x 1+ inches for retort wood. No bark or dirt for char wood. Stacked very tight in retort chamber it heats o2 free. When torching stops, I stop feeding the burner and let it cool of its own accord. The char is sparkly with only the very slightest hint of color. No wood left. I only have to keep the artists from taking the perfect charcoal.
As far as the charcoal issue, cooking it at a high temp, and for a long time, it will cook off all the volatile compounds out. When I have made my own charcoal for iron smelting, if I fully cooked it, it would be much less dense, than if I shut down early. The charcoal that I made that was shut down early was much better for making the proper atmosphere in the smelting furnace to reduce the ore properly, I could never get the fully cooked charcoal to work right. Charcoal making is whole subject in itself, and one rabbit hole that you can go down for a long time
Being called blasting powder might explain its intended use. Like in mining and such. It may burn slower in the open but works basically the same under compression and is cheaper to make, so a significant cost cut if you need a lot of it.
This stuff is awesome somewhere between experimental archeology and learning new stuff entirely. Thank you for the videos.
Happy to help.
Thank you for this excellent research. I pick up a few good tips from you and the comments that result. have dabbled in the art for 60 some years........always learning........
I read an article about Swiss Powder which said that the charcoal was made from wood that had been weathered for two years in the forest where it was gathered before being processed into charcoal. If you think about it the purity of sulphur and saltpetre is pretty much constant, the greatest variable is the charcoal. Also the very high pressure that the mix is subjected to by the rollers before being granulated may make a difference. Weight for weight the Swiss powder seems to occupy a smaller volume so has a greater density.
This guy is ahead of the curve.
6:30 When wood burns, it undergoes pyrolysis (also called destructive distillation). Basically, all of the lignin, cellulose, and other compounds in the wood break down into smaller molecules which are usually gases or liquids, such as tar, wood gas, and methanol. In a wood fire, this is what is actually burning until the pyrolysis is more or less complete, then oxygen can get to the charcoal that remains and react directly with it. When you pyrolyse the wood in your paint can, this is what is happening. The wood is breaking down and the volatile compounds are escaping through the vent hole (and the closed nature prevents oxygen from burning the charcoal away), but when this is done, a small amount of organic compounds like tar remains. The longer/hotter you pyrolyse your wood, the less tar that remains because it is always breaking down in the fire. The volatile compounds are pretty important, because they burn at a lower temperature, which increases reaction rate, efficiency, and decreases the overall ignition temp. Quoting link 1:
"Charcoal made at 240 degrees centigrade will readily ignite at 330 degrees centigrade, whereas charcoal made at 950 degrees centigrade will take nearly 1900 degrees to ignite. Hence, the best charcoal for gunpowder is made at lower temperatures."
Quoting link 2:
"charcoal in black powder is a naturally derived substance which contains up to 35 percent tar-like constituents and varies from one source to another. Such variance has been found to have a great impact on the combustion properties of black powder"
You might be able to add wax as a substitute for the tar, but you are probably best off pyrolysing for a shorter period of time. Cut your wood pieces smaller if you are worried about them not cooking all the way through. Some other documents are included that you might like.
Link 1: firearmshistory.blogspot.com/2010/06/propellants-black-powder-i.html
Link 2: archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA149312/page/n5/mode/1up
archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA150455
archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA122264
archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0830265/page/n49/mode/1up
archive.org/details/cu31924030697688/page/n5/mode/2up
Excellent! Thank you.
@@Everythingblackpowder No problem, keep up the good work.
This TOTALLY ROCKS my Theory while Also reinforcing it! THANK YOU! for your WORK!
I was thinking on purity from these very things. I built a still just to have "fun" and charcoal the soured mash, was very SLOW. Now I am thinking more sugars and such with lower conversion temps! Like "maybe" the converted sugar mash before! fermentation or distillation? I believe the spirits industry and this art are closely knitted together through history.
I'M ON IT!
Thanks AGAIN!!
Another little tidbit of info that may help y'all with your BP.... cut your wood in the spring when the sap is flowing strong and leaves are starting to pop, then let it dry for 4 to 6 months before peeling the bark and charing. If it is cut in the fall and winter the salts are solidified in the wood and causes it to burn dirty.
When cut in the spring as stated above those salts are flushed out and the dried sap has a much lower salt content along with the chard natural sugars add to the fuel.
Hope this helps.
This is one of the most informative TH-cam comments I've ever come across.
I shoot BP and, from time to time, enjoy making my own (just for the challenge and satisfaction of doing so, really). These links are excellent, with loads of useful information, and I've learned a great deal. For example, I would never have guessed that the time the wood is harvested could make such a difference.
THANK YOU for taking the time and trouble to share!
You can get 1900 feet per second with black powder,- but that involves the old English Black powder express rifles.
As a example:
The energy requirement for big game in Norway is:
1) for bullets with a weight of 138.9 to 154 grains, the estimated energy is at least 2700 joules at 100 meters E100
2) for bullets with a weight with a minimum of 154 grains, the estimate energy is minimum, 2200 joules at 100 meters. E100
Conclusion: One must have a minimum speed of 400 m/sec (at 100meters ) and a ball weight of at least 450 grains to cope with the energy requirement on big game. (2233 Joule E100 for those wondering).
That is possible with:
.45-120 ( 500 grains bullet, 463 m/sek 1519 ft/sec)
.50-140 Sharps
English cartridges:
.450 Black Powder Express
.461 (.450) Gibbs
.500 BPE ( 440 grains bullet ,580 m/s 1902 feet/sec)
.577 BP Express
.500 No. 2 Express (.577/.500) 340 grains bullet 130-160 gr Fg swiss ,587 m/s 3,800 J .
Scottish bottleneck:
20/577 Alexander Henry, 570 grains bullet, 1,725 ft/s (526 m/s).
Speeds above 600 m/sec is extremely hard to obtain with black powder.
The key word is hygroscopic. If one looks at potassium/sodium nitrate formulas it is obvious that at any given weight sodium nitrate is " richer" in nitrate anions than potassium nitrate ie it will have more oxygen to supply.This being said,sodium nitrate powder is good to use while shooting in Sahara desert,completely worthless in Florida.Long time ago ,in 19th century,right before the first world war, there were promising experiments with ammonium nitrate as an oxygen donor and charcoal only.the composition lost to smokeless powder, which turned out superior to any powders based on solid ingredients
What information do you have on ammonium nitrate and it’s use in firearms?
Also did I read your comment right, ammonium nitrate and charcoal only? This would be huge if you could cut sulfur out of the mix as it’s the most difficult material to acquire in BP production.
As I understand, potassium nitrate+charcoal gives good energy. Sulfur makes it easier to ignight.
I don't think you really understand what your talking about.
I'm assuming because ammonium nitrate is extremely hygroscopic as well. It used to wind up as giant clumps in the sealed bag on our farm when I was a kid.
@@dopeymark And the pressure gradient is different upon detonation. Be wary with firearms certified for BP use while using AN.
Very interesting findings! Thanks for sharing Jake!
I’m liking the new intro.
With regards to the charcoal issues you may want to consider harvesting the wood during spring as the sap from the trees holds less inorganic matter which could weaken the ignition. If you’re going the distance season the wood for 18 months, but no more than 3 years.
Long term play, but it should pay off.
Cook times for willow charcoal ought to be 3-1/2 hours at 280 degrees Celsius.
This information is provided with greater detail with Explosives their manufacture, properties, and history by Arthur Marshall 1915.
I look forward to seeing your developments.
Thank you!
Interesting test Jake! I'm really liking this stuff. Learning a little bit more all the time. Hope you have this video & data all backed up somewhere just in case. Thanks , Mike.
Thanks Mike!
Just discovered your channel. It was cool to see a vid on something I'd never heard of before.
Sodium Nitrate is also called "Chilean Saltpeter"as it was found in Bat Caves in Chile and used for making Black Powder. It is more Hygroscopic than Potassium Nitrate,this means it absorbs moisture from the air more readily so it's harder to keep your powder dry .
The molecular mass of KNO3 is 101 g/mol and NaNO3 is 85 g/mol. The 75:15:10 ratio will need to be adjusted. For equal weights of KNO3 and NaNO3, the NaNO3 will contain more oxygen.
Yeah but it’s hard to argue with results
Theoretically 😉
When i was an adolescent back in the 1950's we used to mix drug store purchased saltpeter and mixed it 50-50 with standard supermarket purchased white refined sugar, likely cane sugar. It picked up water from the atmosphere very quickly. I once did try it in an open pipe to fire a bolt. It did, but was so badly fouled that subsequence shots were not possible. I used a piece of jetex fuse for ignition.
Excellent! Thanks for testing all that for a certainly appreciate it I do anyway. Have a great day and stay safe and keep your powder dry!
Thank you
I switched from lead to 316 stainless steel in my mill many years ago. Much cleaner and so far no unwanted ignition
Lead works fine for me.
@@Everythingblackpowder thats true and safe but as you mentioned you have issues with your performance (feets per second) in your rifle! One issue with lead ball media is that leaves traces of lead and contaminated the end product ! As for the charcoal process about cooking is: first you use paint can and paint can leave behind trace's of iron oxides in your charcoal ! Second: as i see you don't leave it until the fire completely disappeared which leaves behind uncarbonised wood and fuel properties in you wood! Third: of course the wood choice is the main and first factor BUT!! The correct time to harvest you tree is during the winter between mid January and beginnings of February because then the tree have take all the minerals and moisture down to the roots for protection from the winter ! Four: the cooking process needs to be at 550°F Fahrenheit or 285°c Celsius and completely cooking until the fire end's! I know a lot of process but swiss goex and other brands live with this job! Of course other factors effect the end result ( right corning( 1.7cc density or more) , correct ratio's , milling time, completely pure chemicals, etc) I hope i helped!
Try drying your sodium nitrate before making the powder, and dry the powder just before glazing. Otherwise you're going to get inaccurate measurements of the nitrate, and powder that's way more damp than you want. Both will really effect performance. It would be the same with ammonium nitrate because both are really hygroscopic.
One wonders how ammonium nitrate would work. Available as fertilizer. The folks in NE Thailand who make the giant PVC skyrockets (look up "rocket festival" on TH-cam) use, I believe, some sort of meal powder based on ammonium nitrate and charcoal, no sulfur - it burns really slowly from what I understand. I remember making some sodium nitrate based meal powder when I was in school, we packed it into a cardboard cylinder, thinking to make a rocket, but it just burned really slowly and produced a whole lot of molten slag dripping out the bottom. One wonders what makes up fouling - part of it is probably a salt or oxide of the metal used in the oxidizer, which makes me think ammonium nitrate would make less fouling.
I'm using sodium bp because i can't find easily potassium nitrate. If the ball isn't rammed super tight, with the low ignition speed, it sometimes puffs without actually detonating. But if you really ram the ball well, it will just pop like one hell of a baloon. With a percussion cap and a well pressed ball, you got no delay, not much smoke and quite nice power. And it's cheap and easy to find (stump removers manufacturers usually put sodium nitrate beacause it's cheaper)
Look for stump remover powder in garden section of many stores.
@@donaldcadwell3911 most of the stump removers are made with sodium nitrate, beacause it's cheaper than potassium. And that's exactly where i got my ingredient
@@jeanladoire4141
Spectracide is brand we have that is Potassium nitrite.
@@donaldcadwell3911 it doesn't exist in France sadly. But sodium nitrate work well, it was used before,but will behave like old gunpowders : you have to ram it tight for it to detonate
@@jeanladoire4141
👍
Not bad at all. That first load sure had terrible lock time!
Imagine finding you here. 😉
If you want a super clean burning black powder use lampblack instead of charcoal.
Try converting your charcoal into activated charcoal or not fully carbonizing the charcoal. I heard that in the Civil War and just before smokeless powder became common, that something called "Brown Powder gave superior performance in cannons
Good info .👍
Could Swiss be cleaning the residual oils out of the charcoal ,at some point in the process, then re drying? Maybe hitting it with a blast of steam?
It’s obviously not just the species of wood chosen for the char. There’s a freakish absence of funk on those Swiss patches. Other than an additional oxidizer, it must be the cleanliness of the charcoal. I’m thinking residual oil in the charcoal, like creosote in a chimney, is what is making the funk.
Activated Charcoal ?????????
@@juriehuman7127 Activated charcoal makes for shitty powder, so that's not it.
I could be way off, but.... If I recall correctly, pushing super heated steam through the charcoal is how you make activated carbon. So.... activated carbon is gonna be pretty clean. Maybe that is the trick to clean burning charcoal....
Interesting test, it seems like it performed more like a slow burning smokeless rifle powder would to obtain the higher velocity, enjoyed the video.
It's nice in a few glitter star formula for fireworks
Smokeless Gun Powder burns really slow, but under pressure, it burns much faster.
This slow burning black powder might also burn well under pressure.
Another great video! I bet you get a little tired of hearing so many expert opinions in the comments.😃
it’s all part of the show
One things certain; he never tires of shameless sycophants nuzzling his butthole.
I still dont have a use (yet) for _"Antique muzzle loading propellant"_ but I really enjoy the detail and the quality of your videos
I wonder since the sodium nitrate burned slower it continued burning further down the barrel giving it some extra velocity at the end.
You make black powder look fun I've been thinking about trying it out
Side note. Even though here in Ks we have gotten some rain, indoors it is bone dry. So, almost three weeks ago I took an H&R Topper 088 to a friends B-Day party. High school kids took some turns with it on clays. The load was Magtech brass, 3 1/8 dram Goex 2Fg, 1 1/8 #8. Big fun! About 30 shots. Anyway, this, that and the other I just cleaned it yesterday. No rust. It cleaned up spotless. Granted the fouling was extra hard. What I'm getting at, BP with KNO3 in dry conditions with non-corrosive priming isn't that big a deal ( it is, but it isn't....). It would be interesting to know if like amounts flashed on some steel plate of potassium nitrate vs sodium nitrate and left in the weather changed this dynamic.
I have personally noticed that Goex is a little smokier than pyrotechnics but a lot less corrosive. I know “it’s not corrosive it’s hygroscopic”. Fact is if I shoot 1 shot with pyrodex Ivette’s scrub the whole gun within hours. If I use BP I can go the whole weekend or week before it looos as bad as 1 day with pyrodex. That’s here in the south with high humidity. Both stink when burned so pyrodex only exists because the stores don’t need “explosives like licenses to have it.
NaNO3 has more oxygen by weight, so could burn the combustibles more completely. Possibly could get even higher muzzle velocity if the proportions of sulphur rand charcoal were increased slightly to take advantage of the higher oxygen provided. Union army used Chilean sourced Sodium Nitrate to make gunpowder since the KNO3 sources had previously been bat guano based from caves in the American South, and reported higher performance in cannon.
Use stoichiometry if you want it to burn clean. Slow burn, longer push.
Seems like your rifle is fusing and that's adding to the slow ignition. Cut back on the priming charge, and tip the gun to the right just before shouldering to knock the prime away from the flash hole. It seems as though your flash hole may be a tad large as well. I shot competitively for 30 odd years, and these are a few things I picked up along the way. Apologies if you're familiar with these tricks. Swiss has been a tad more energetic and easier to ignite than Goex for many years, I've heard a lot of theories as to why, but none have been proven. Goex is more uniform, especially the 3F sporting. The best one for fouling control depends on conditions. With the high price and spotty availability of Swiss, I usually opt for the Goex. A lot of different oxidizers have been tried in black powder thru the years, but we always seem to come back to the old formula and methods. Excluding the newfangled nitro stuff, which I'm sure is just a passing fad...
Interesting stuff!
The lock on this rifle is timed very well and always goes off fast when using any potassium nitrate based powder. The sodium nitrate flashes extremely slow in open air. I couldn’t agree more, smokeless powder is over rated
Ok, second try. You asked about the charcoal.
The details and science you're after are found in The Mad Monk Files. You'll need to search for The Mad Monk Files and find the Swiss Booklet. You'll want them all actually. The man, Bill Knight aka The Mad Monk, is a chemist who spent a long time in the study of BP, he has connections in the gunpowder industry others wish they had and if you're to rely on the work of anyone, this is the man and the work to carry on. You'll see.
To cut to the science of what you're after with controlling char temperature, you are after wood creosote. Not the stuff railroad ties and parking lots are coated with, this isn't petroleum creosote.
It isn't petroleum, it isn't petroleum or coal tar, it isn't tar like. It has absolutely nothing to do with tar as most people might perceive. The natural wood creosote is a hard and brittle crystalline material derived from the lignin in the wood, when wood is loaded with creosote, the wood has a black crystalline glitter to it. Little crystals can actually fall out of the crushed charcoal in cases where the char has a huge surplus of creosote which is a wonderful thing.
The critical never exceed temperature is 610F. Do not exceed this temperature as this is the flash off temp of the creosote, wood that chars above that temp will have little or no creosote.
I use a propane grill with a perforated steel baffle I drilled out and cut to fit. I use 1 gallon paint cans with 6" long 3/8" diameter copper tubes fitted to vent the gas out of the grill so as to avoid the gas igniting and causing a runaway temperature spike. I'm not doing this for efficiency, I'm doing it for precision.
My grill has multiple grill thermometers and a long probe thermometer for internal temperatures so I can monitor the can internal temp. The important piece of data are the cans internal temps. Time doesn't matter, I make sure the internal temp of my retorts remain below 610F for as long as it takes to fully char.
I do not want nor do I try for brown or red colored charcoal, it is my opinion that those have not had enough charring and thus lignin has not been converted into creosote. I understand if the wood you're using only fully chars at above 610F and thus in an effort to preserve the creosote one must thus under char, I use wood that is both exceedingly plentiful, has tons of lignin and fully chars at 550F. I cook at 590F to ensure as much conversion of lignin as possible into creosote.
You could go through the trouble to assay the wood from dehydrated weight to as charred to ash to know your actual carbon and creosote content but really it isn't all that important, there are many other factors that come into play that are much more make or break.
What you're looking for is a charcoal that is loaded with sparking black crystals, when you torch or burn a piece, you're looking for a faint trace of smoke and you're looking for a strong creosote smell. It should smell like a very very well used food smoker.
If you have a dry scent, you over cooked it.
Again please note that some wood types char at such a high temperature, riding the ragged edge of 610F or even exceeding that temp that little creosote will be preserved.
So what happens when charcoal is loaded with creosote, made into powder and shot?
It burns down into its constituent elements, that is hydrogen, oxygen and carbon. The desired element is hydrogen. When hydrogen and oxygen burn, they produce water vapor as a byproduct. This water vapor in turn permeates the fouling and keeps it soft, the more water vapor produced, the greater the effect.
This will require special tuning to achieve the best possible results and failing to tune the powder can partially or completely negate the effect. There is no specific formula I can point you to, the tuning is a number of factors you'll have to figure out to best suit your needs.
My powder burns so wet that the fouling is sopping wet with a greasy feel. About the same residual carbon fouling as Goex but unlike theirs, mine feels like melted face paint. Soft, goopy and easily wiped off the witness plate I test on. In the barrel it is easily wiped out with a single dry patch or blown out of the barrel by the next shot, grease isn't needed. That isn't to say I don't use grease. I certainly do.
I need to point out that this wet burn feature can be negatively effected by heat and time. If your barrel is too hot to touch, so hot that a blow tube wouldn't work for example, the fouling will not retain moisture from the wet burning characteristics either. So it is usually very beneficial but in certain locations or atmospheric conditions it will fail.
If you're shooting on a 100F day in direct sunlight, the barrel will get too hot in no time flat and the effect is lost. This is where a good grease comes into play.
It will also naturally dry out over time as well, it can actually be far wetter than the naturally hygroscopic fouling wants to be and will eventually "dry out" to achieve equilibrium.
Doesn't mean it is actually dry, it isn't. Just isn't sopping wet anymore and this naturally damp fouling isn't soft enough to make loading easy or be blown out the barrel with another shot. So a steady firing sequence must be maintained, not so slow as to dry out and not so fast as to over heat the barrel.
American powders of the late 19th century were not wet burning. In fact the wet burning characteristic was well known to American powder makers and usually not a factor in production as American shooters preferred grease groove bullets or wiping between shots. It was Western Europe that liked wet burning powder. It was their thing and in the usually cool and comfortable weather they have it was a much sought after characteristic. You can imagine then that American powder was not popular over there.
For me this BP making thing has been a massive 6 year long learning experience. I equate it to mining through a maintain range of obsolete, repetitive or incorrect info just to find a backpack worth of gold nuggets. This is a few of those nuggets. An observation I have made over the years is that not everyone understands the creosote thing, either lacking the understanding of the science behind it or lacking an understanding of the benefit of it. There are a number of people who do understand it and do not care.
The American method of shoot and wipe is part of the allure and magic of the BP world and they intend to stick with it, after all, it was American powder, American arms and American methods that won the 1874 Creedmoor Cup. I cannot argue with them, who but a fool to argue with success?
I don't know if what I've said will help or if this is a direction you want to take your testing but at the very least you have more options and now know things few others know. Absolutely find and download The Mad Monk Files. All sorts of useful info those files, a gold mine for info.
Thank you! I took screenshots of all of that in case it gets deleted again
@@Everythingblackpowder I made a lot of edits and additions.
hygroscopic also means you can rinse it from soil easily, making it readily available. There is actually a military field guide on how to extract use it just as you are.
Most "blasting powders" seems to burn just as slow.
Its good for stuffing into a drill hole in rocks to blast them apart while chasing a quartz vein
I was just starting to write the same thing good thing i went back and double checked. Someone wrote it a lot better than i started to. So I'll just do a condensed version so i can still get at ny point. I use nitrates for making nitric acid i use in precious metal refining. I prefer sodium nitrate to potassium nitrate as pound per pound you get a higher percentage of the weight made up by the nitrate anion on account of using the lighter weight sodium cation opposed to the heavier potassium cation. In this case the anion is the good stuff its use in black powder is no different. Now you also got to keep in mind that the sodium nitrate also has a bit of an affinity for water.s getting it completely dried out anhydrous is very difficult and then it will also literally suck water up out of the air the more water you got in your powder you do the math. I imagine using it for black powder it won't store very well, especially so in a more traditional type of container like a powder horn
It has more oxygen in it so you can use less of it to counterbalance its hygroscopic nature also you can coat it with dope the grains to make it less hygroscopic
propellant made with sodium nitrate will be very hydroscopic, eventually not fire due to moisture absorption. suggestion-get some potassium chloride water softener salt along with this NaNO3 and do a replacement reaction: NaNO3 + KCl ---NaCl + KNO3
I read potassium hydroxide for making your own from compost, will that also do the exchange?
@@SW-ii5gg no because sodium ion is more electronegative. sodium and chloride have a stronger affinity for each other-the reaction between KCL and sodium nittate is called a double replacement. KCL is cheap-snow melt and water softner. Cheers
@@schinderiapraemeturus6239 thanks for the explanation, cheers.
Great info like always 👍
Thank you
Sulphur , salt petter and charcoal makes black powder witch burns nasty and messy but can be refined
Love how he constantly says "antique muzzleloading propellant", because saying some things out loud is very UNWISE.
If you wash the charcoal with rain water you can reduce the fowling doping is done with nitrocellulose to make it less hygroscopic and use about 10 %less sodium nitrate to have the same oxygen balance
If i may request to make it harder still: sulfurless 100% sodium powder.. can you make it work?
In theory it should, in practice it probably takes serious powder making skill to make it work, making the video even more interesting.
Given the higher energy per grain but the greater reluctance of it, it can give lower lows and set higher highs in terms of velocity.
As a teenager some of us to mix when 50-50 sodium saltpeter powder from the drug store with sugar and use a jetex fuse in piece of pinched off electrical conduit at both ends to make a bang. I tried it in a homemade cap lock and it was only effective for the first shot. After that there was too much fouling.
Sodium Nitrate is highly hygroscopic; you need to bake out the water and then make sure it isn't exposed to air to reabsorb water. That would be difficult, but unhydrated Sodium Nitrate is probably a better oxidizer than Potassium Nitrate.
Sodium nitrate absorbs water like crazy compared to potassium nitrate. It is likely that your NaNO3 black powder was slow because of water content - it needed dehydration.
It flashed slow. It didn’t make slow velocities. We stored the sodium made powder in a sealed container full of silica gel desiccant balls. We are doing an experiment now where we are placing are finished powder in a vacuum chamber with desiccant for a week to see if it has any effect on performance.
@@Everythingblackpowder NaNO3 neds to be dessicated before it is measured for powder - it holds so much water it can throw the proportions all off -eg if the NaNO3 is 10% water by weight then you end up making the powder with 10% too little nitrate. On top of that, the water in the powder can itself affect burn rate. Weigh the nitrate before and after dehydration (I use a food dehydrater for about 5 hrs at 150 degrees for the ingredients, not the mixed powder), you'll see how much of the nitrate was water, it can be surprising. The powder will also pick up moisture from the air unless it is sealed in storage.
Very interesting. I hadn’t thought of dehydrating the sodium before hand. Thank you!
Now THAT was very interesting
Like you, I prefer flintlocks. Soo, saltpeter for my powder. But if the cleaning is better with a higher sodium/saltpeter ratio. It would still beat Pyrodex by a mile, and might even be ideal for cartridges.
Perfect!
You might have to change up your ratios to get the best results. Sodium Nitrate has more oxygen per part by weight than Potassium Nitrate. Sodium's Atomic Weight is 23 and Potassium's Atomic Weight is 39. The Atomic Weight of a Sodium Nitrate molecule is 85 while the Atomic Weight of a Potassium Nitrate molecule is 101. Thus using the Sodium salt you get almost 19% more oxygen for the same weight of Potassium Nitrate.
I "Wounder If" the speed may be In the Burn "type" with the longer barrel. could it be a better Push for a more complete burn rather than a bang?
Did you notice a change in Sound? Sounded on the interweb more thump-ish? I did notice your flash looked and sounded FAST enough with a Nice Plume as should be.
I noticed a change in sound with BP in some applications, rather than a crack more of a Boom!
AND I noticed the CONSTANT speeds, so is fast better than consistent? I do KNOW in "reloading" the quest of the Holy Grail is "consistency" for ACCURICY.
I'm On It too!
Keep your smoke Pole SMOKING!
Thanks!
I have used Sodium Nitrate in fireworks but not for a lift charge. Never heard about the theory of cooking your charcoal to hot but what if you get it over a certain temp you loose some volatile compounds that are present in the wood? Interesting!
Just a thought:
Maybe the lead in the ball mill are to blame for the stronger fouling? Since lead is quite soft and the milling may wear away some of it. Perhaps trying an alloy of lead/tin (Pb40/Sn60; Pb30/Sn70), which is much harder than lead itself may solve the problem.
cook your charcoal at a lower temp. Should have a brownish color to it.
it ignites slower but expands more.
Good reason to use different priming powder than main charge powder.
Brother, have you ever tried ammonium nitrate powder? I heard that the powder of ammonium nitrate and charcoal can reach the energy of double-base gunpowder?
I haven’t tried it
Ammonium nitrate runs into same problem as NaNO3, it's much more hydroscopic
Because of the IRA, publicly available nitrates are now treated with a fire retardant and a chemical signature so that unlicensed people cannot make explosives with them. Untreated prills should only be available to the quarrying and demolition professions.
As for charcoal, there are two types: normal and activated. Activated charcoal is the type used in water and respirator filters and has nano tubes in the makeup to absorb moisture… check them out for more info.
I don’t know what country you live in, but we don’t have that trouble around here.
Really looks like the Texas Hill Country there!
You seem like the perfect person to ask this. I’m looking to have a sort of off grid formula for black powder. I’ve seen people posting about making BP without sulfur. Is that possible and would it be able to be used in a BP rifle or pistol? Any help with this would be appreciated. Keep up the cool content.
Yes, I know it’s possible but I’ve never tried it myself.
recipe for Blue MZ- 50% KNO3, 25% KCLO4, 20% sodium benzoate (food preservative, find on Ebay), 5% dextrin
Sulfur decreases the ignition temperature and increases the burn rate [transfer across grain boundaries.] Don't bother making 0 sulfur BP if you're going to try to use it in a rock-lock; same reason none of the substitutes are suitable for priming the pan in a flinter. But you absolutely could use it for the main charge, it will just burn a bit slower [ie, use 3F where you'd use 2F of BP w/ sulfur, etc.]
I’ve got some powder made up without sulfur and hope to try it this weekend. Stay tuned!
it's my understanding that Sodium Nitrate is hygroscopic and is difficult to keep dry.
Correct
Im my german papers about explosives they say the best charcoal is less black, is a kind brown ,which means less cooked than black one.They give lot of information about sodium Nitrat substitute ,other things and combinations.
Are those German recipes available online?
The sodium nitrate powder should work fine in cartridge guns. Centerfire primers should set it off really well.
Your 20% Sodium Nitrate powder might be closer to authentic antique black powder than the pure potassium nitrate stuff. They used to use natural saltpeter, which is not pure like modern KNO3 from a factory. Might be cool to try to get natural saltpeter.
Is Goex being produced again in May 2022 ? I assume that you were using Stock on Hand . I enjoyed your test and carefully showing the results . Thanx .
Thank you! Check out Ethan’s channel @ilovemuzzleloading he’s been keeping up to date on all the news going on with Goex.
@@Everythingblackpowder Great , I took a peek at the May 6th Video . Thank you for the Reply .
Why do i produce much residue when i make mine? i followed the exact same steps as you and same ingredients but still has a lot of residue
What do you mean by residue? Do you mean fouling?
Would any of the perchlorates make good black powder? Nitronium Perchlorate in particular looks to be really damn powerful from what I've read, but I've also been told that perchlorates in general don't play well with Sulfur, as it makes them rather unstable.
Mixed with sulfur it would be percussive and potentially unstable but It could be used with sulfur free black powder
When we were young as kids some of us would mix drug store purchased saltpeter with sugar 50-50 and it picked up water very quickly. I once tried make a homemade match lock and got off only one shot using conduit and a bolt for a projectile. It was too badly fouled to really fire efficiently again.
Were antioxidizers used back then: as in cooking the charcoal in Nitrogen? But then, on what scale? God Bless and stay safe.
Makes me want to try the sodium powder in my cva wolf with 209 primers.
K is more reactive than Na. At least, that’s what the periodic table of elements say?
It’s hard to argue with results
"Mom! TH-cam is trying to train me as a domestic terrorist again!"
My tests with Sodium based oxygen were identical save that mine was trash garden stuff. Lots of junk in it, only like 95% and the rest just whatever.
It left a lot of crap behind. The witness plate tests suggested a poor performer but the chronograph and my shoulder said otherwise. Dirty but stupid fast.
It’s not worth a damn in a flintlock, it flashes to slow. I don’t care how fast the ball is moving.
@@Everythingblackpowder Agreed. Caplock only.
Damn, I didn't know you could achieve those velocities with black powder, especially round ball (though I assume it sheds velocity extremely fast?)
One of my favorite "plinking" loads for my Marlin 1894 (.44mag not .44-40 so .429-.431in, not a true .440 of a .44) is a 248gr flat-nose over 21.5gr of 2400. I think the last run I made averaged 1689fps over 10 shots from a 20" barrel, so I'd say that's pretty analogous. At least that WAS one of my favorite loads, in the before times when I could still find smokeless powder and primers... Getting really low on both so I might have to pick up a muzzle loader in order to be able to take a deer in the next few years!
I know the cost of big bore revolver/lever gun factory ammo has doubled since 2019, $70 for a box of Fiocchi .44mag 240gr JSP's when I was getting them for $33 not even three years ago, so if this bs continues I honestly might have no other choice than to move to muzzle loaders. Got plenty of M80 ball 7.62 NATO, but I doubt that's a very good deer round, lol
there’s a few reasons why I get good velocities. One is that the round ball is lighter, roughly 140gr. Also the barrel length is a big contributing factor being 44 inches to your 20 inch carbine. I typically only run the best black powder I can make/obtain in this rifle and can get a little over 2000fps with a 75-80gr charge but I usually only do that for long distance shooting
(Over 200 yards)
I was testing some 44mag handloads last weekend and I settled on 23.5gr H110 with a 240gr JHP. they averaged 1400fps out of my Ruger Blackhawk, 7.5 barrel.
You can get 1900 feet per second with black powder,- but that involves the old English Black powder express rifles.
As a example:
The energy requirement for big game in Norway is:
1) for bullets with a weight of 138.9 to 154 grains, the estimated energy is at least 2700 joules at 100 meters E100
2) for bullets with a weight with a minimum of 154 grains, the estimate energy is minimum, 2200 joules at 100 meters. E100
Conclusion: One must have a minimum speed of 400 m/sec (at 100meters ) and a ball weight of at least 450 grains to cope with the energy requirement on big game. (2233 Joule E100 for those wondering).
That is possible with:
.45-120 ( 500 grains bullet, 463 m/sek 1519 ft/sec)
.50-140 Sharps
English cartridges:
.450 Black Powder Express
.461 (.450) Gibbs
.500 BPE ( 440 grains bullet ,580 m/s 1902 feet/sec)
.577 BP Express
.500 No. 2 Express (.577/.500) 340 grains bullet 130-160 gr Fg swiss ,587 m/s 3,800 J .
Scottish bottleneck:
20/577 Alexander Henry, 570 grains bullet, 1,725 ft/s (526 m/s).
Speeds above 600 m/sec is extremely hard to obtain with black powder.
Hygroscopic calcium and sodium tend to cake up and burn time lags behind something fierce
Love your research. Can't wait to find primers so I can try a recipe.
Thank you
Thanks very interesting
I saw someone once use scraps of leather to make the carbon. Wonder how that would work in black powder?
Thanck you sodium nitrate powrful in potassium nitrate
You did realize that you must use less sodium nitrate than you use potassium nitrate, right. The molecular weIGHT is less, so the potassium proportions are no longer correct.
Yes but it’s tough to argue with results.
Very Good!... #240 ✝ {11-14-2023}
As far as your making charcoal my mind is contemplating the nutrient minerals within each plant based carbon that would give each charcoal a different effect.
Why is willow dirty and balsa not as much?
Based on your studies, do you have a chart made?
Dirtiest - cleanest
Weakest - most powerful
Puting it on a graph with coefficients of mill time would be a very valuable chart.
How does it work if you leave it in a fine state instead of kernelling it?
It works alright but it’s not as powerful
Sodium Nitrate is hygroscopic. It absorb moisture from the air. Potassium Nitrate doesn´t.
Yes, I mention that in the video
Curious if magnesium nitrate would work
I don’t know
Good video
Sodium is more hygroscopic than potassium, and is the main reason why traditional black gunpowder was not generally used.
3:40 Throw a can on there and a red dot and you got yourself a nice PDW 🤣
Hello sir
I make my black powder out of potasium nitrate that usually done .
But the problem with this
It catches moisture in gun s breech
.so i decide to take about 70 grains of powder and put in a thin layer of plastic paper and roll it down to barrel s breech .it works pretty good and same without any moisture problem.but sir I have question for you this method is good for accuracy or ballastics ?
Thanks sir
Hi, I made black powder following your advice on how to prepare it and the only thing I need to do is to compact it with a hydraulic press. The black powder I made burns at a similar rate to pyrodex.
I made the granulation from 3f.
Can it cause any damage to the rifle if I load it with this powder?