seems like quite a few of the people here have relatively advanced ballistics knowledge and resources. i'm just curious if any of you ever tried formulating your own powder. how difficult do you think it would be? any legal issues if you're only making it for personal use?

I cobbled together some black powder when I was a kid -- but it was less than useful as a propellent and, in retrospect, a foolish and dangerous undertaking (so what else is new for teenagers?).

You don't even start to have the facilities or knowledge to successfully make smokeless powder, so why would you try?

Oh, by the way, if you are a teenager (and thus immune from serious bodily injury or death), "guncotton", a rudimentary form of smokelesss powder, was made by soaking cotton balls in nitric acid. Don't tell your mother I told you this .

I'm sure that "ricciardelli" is bound to have loading data for guncotton in all of the popular calibers.

quote:

Originally posted by taliv:
seems like quite a few of the people here have relatively advanced ballistics knowledge and resources. i'm just curious if any of you ever tried formulating your own powder. how difficult do you think it would be? any legal issues if you're only making it for personal use?

Thanks friend.....you just reminded me as to how cheap gunpowder really is today.

To purchase the equipment the safely and consistantly produce a consistant and useful powder would litterally purchase a life time supply of powder, bullets and guns.

Some things you just buckle down and buy, and powder and primers definately fit the bill. Some of us cast our own bullets, some swage them, some are even turning them on CNC machines, a few folks are producing their own brass. I don't the powder issue has even crossed our minds.

i'm not interested from an economical point of view right now. i'm not trying to save a few bucks here.

i'm interested in the knowledge, and curious about the legality.

if nobody here has ever explored it, that's fine too. i won't say it would surprise me. I just thought it would be interesting to discuss. Seems like a lot of physicists around here; just wondering if we had any chemists.

i definitely understand that powder isn't the low-hanging fruit that bullets and brass are, but i don't buy that it's because of economics. I rather suspect it's just a lack of knowledge. (and possibly legality)


Do you guys know for a fact that the equipment required to make powder is prohibitively expensive? for instance, it can't be made with multipurpose equipment commonly found in college chemistry labs (and subsequently sold for pennies at auctions when newer models arrive)

Do you know for a fact that if I took the care and attention to detail that some people take when doing case prep, that I couldn't make small batches of powder that are far more consistent than the 200k lb lots from a big company?

i'm just asking. i don't know. maybe it is impossible. maybe big batches are more consistent. And i'm sure it wouldn't be cheap.

btw, I can make primers reliably. it's not expensive, but sure is time consuming.

btw, I can make primers reliably. it's not expensive, but sure is time consuming.[/QUOTE]

How do you "Make" Primers ??

glad you asked

actually, my grandfather taught me to do this. he said this is what he and his friends did when they were kids (depression era, I believe).

they would take a spent primer, remove the anvil, use a small punch to remove the firing pin dent, then scrape the white tip off a matchstick and put it in the cup and replace the anvil.

I discussed this on thehighroad.org some months ago and unfortunatley the thread has been deleted, but some of the guys there tried it and it worked fine for them, no failure to fires. but they scraped lots of the white stuff together and mixed it with water into a paste then used a brush to apply it to the inside of the cup, and let it dry.

i'm certainly not trying to imply this is better than even cheap commercial primers. just interesting, that's all.

Well, okay. I'm not a chemist, nor have I played one on TV. Haven't slept in a Holiday Inn Express recently either. But smokeless powder is primarily nitrocellulose (single base) or about 90% nitrocellulose mixed with 10% nitroglycerine (double base). These aren't terribly complicated compounds, and yes, you could rig up to make either of them without all that much trouble or investment.

Now, how do you control burning rate? Well, there are a number of ways, and these begin to be arcane. One is the size of the particals (granules, flakes, whatever) that the nitrocellulose (plus perhaps nitro-g) is cut, ground, or otherwise reduced to. Then there's the shape and the question as to whether to perforate the granules or leave them solid. And all of this has to be done under water.

Then there are chemicals that are added to further control burning rate, temperature, and even flash. A common one is methyl centralite. Then there's the graphite added to reduce static electricity problems and improve physical flow in powder handling equipment.

I can't even start to imagine how an individual would start to put this all together in order to come out with something useful for sporting arms.

Now, as to legality, smokeless powder rests in the nether-world between classifications, not quite benign fuel and not quite dangerous explosive. I'm sure that all powder manufacturers are duly registered with BATF and likely have some entailed bureaucratic procedure to meet in doing so.

Since smokeless powder can, if contained "just right", be used as an explosive, any individual attempting to produce it without appropriate notice to and blessing from BATF would undoubtedly be hauled off to Guantanamo Bay and would only be heard from again 25 years later as the protagonist in a network Movie of the Week, "Taliv, the true story of an American caught up in international intrigue during the Neo-Cons' War on Terrorism". Was he a terrorist, or just a misunderstood American patriot as his mother always maintained during in his 15 years as a goverment suspect held in secret overseas prisons?

You need concentrated nitric acid to make most any kind of explosive. You can, if a chemist, make concentrated nitric acid from regular nitric acid (not by boiling). You also need a functioning chemical hood because some of the fumes can kill you, and not in a good way.

It's neither here nor there, but the first thing that came to my mind when reading the post was: "and WE think we have lot-to-lot consistency problems!".

It would be curious, but lots of people have blown up labs (and themselves) in this field. Caution should probably get the better of us... FWIW, Dutch.