Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Muzzleloaders gunpowder

I have a hand-me-down blackpowder pistol. I recently came across a vague recipe to make your own gunpowder and gave it a shot. Unfortionatly it will burn, but there is no explosion. Has anyone else tried to make their own, and if so and you don't mind, how did you go about it?

Making your own black powder is dangerous. I am not sure it is even legal. Just go buy some and leaving the making of it to those that have the setup. tom

A mechanical mixture of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal will burn as you found out.

To make useable black powder takes much more besides mixing. Slurrying, pressing, cakeing, shaving, milling, drying, glazing. All these steps save slurry are more or less dangerous. Milling and shaving being especially so.

Do yourself and your posterity a favor and go buy a can.


BCR

I had a friend that decided to mix his own .on his left hand he now has part of his thumb and the knuckle where his index finger was, the rest of his hand is gone. DON'T MESS WITH IT....

Thanks guys, I will definately take you word on it!

sorry, the store makes mine, and all I gotta do is pay for it, but not with my arms or legs...

Gicts, 34 or 35 years ago an old lady gave me a recipe for gunpowder. The recipe was from a journal written by a settler that came to Texas. The recipe sounds like something you might be able, maybe even be best, to cook up over a campfire. It calls for coffee, sugar, some sulfer, a chemical other than potassium nitrate, and alum. After it's cooked up, to a ball that is somewhat like fudge, the stuff is granulated by pushing it through a screen stretched over a box.

I gotta tell ya, that ol' boy knew what he was talking about. I cooked up a batch. Pushed it through a screen just like the recipe called for. Stuffed some in a 7.7MM Jap catridge. Tied the rifle to a tire. Attached a string to the trigger (I wasn't entirely stupid). Got behind some crossties and pulled the string. There was a boom. Lots of smoke and the smell of burnt sugar! That was the only time I fired the stuff. I stored the gun powder in a one pound coffee can. Didn't take the powder long to collect enough moisture to almost eat through the can. I poured it out in a long thin line. Called the wife and kids. Let them watch, from a safe distance, as it went up in flames and a very large column of white smoke. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Sounds like "white powder." Something you can make with powdered sugar and Sodium or potassium clorate. The stuff is extremely hygroscopic- not just the burned residue, but the mixture itself. Sodium clorate is sold for killing weeds and other vegetation.

Mec, Actually the recipe I have doesn't call for any kind of sodium. It calls for just regular sugar also, not the powdered type. It will attract moisture very well! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />