Article Three How To Make Black Powder That Really Works I know you've probably seen the recipe for black powder in other pyrotechnic articles. The problem with most of that is the procedure, or the amount of chemicals to put into the mixture. Here's an example from the file SHURMAN.TXT: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Black Powder -In any powerful explosive, there is required the explosive itself such as nitroglycerine, TNT, and even Black Powder. In military explosives, they tend to use more powerful explosives such as TNT or dynamite but many urban terrorists would use the cheapest and the most available such as black powder. -Black powder is bought in most U.S. states but not in Canada, the closest to getting it in Canada would be probably privately made. However making it would be quite easy and also quite cheap. Supplies Required Potassium nitrate Sulfur barquiette Charcoal 1. Take each item individual and grind them up into the finest powders as possible. Use a blend and grind each down until it is so fine. 2. Once you have blended them into a fine powder, mix them into a bowl with this ratio: 6 parts potassium 2 parts Charcoal 1 part Sulfur 3. Once the three are mixed together in that ratio, mix it up as much as possible until it is a fine gray powder. DO NOT! I repeat DON'T use the blender once these have been all combined. This new formed powder is shock and friction sensitive and could explode instantly if put in a blender. 4. Once completed, store the powder in a plastic margarine container, This will prevent it from getting water, and keep in a cool place. -There are other ways to making black powder but this is the best of them all. There are many other fast burning agents around that could be used for building explosive devices. Especially the Gun Powder used in shotgun shells. -Gun powder can be bought by the pound in Windsor for under $20s and its even better then this home made black powder. If you can get ahold of gun powder, this would be the substitute that can be used to replace Black Powder in any device. -There are many other fast burning agents that are in the form of flash powder, but the problem with flash powder is that making it is extremely expensive or hard to obtain many of those supplies. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Let's get one thing straight first, Black Powder IS NOT Gun Powder! Black Powder used to be used as gun powder way back a long time ago in muskets and cannons. Now, however, we use a different form of it in which Potassium Chlorate is used instead of Potassium Nitrate because there is less smoke given off when it burns, it burns faster and it's more easy to light. Ok, now let's go through this step by step: 1. It is important to grind the Potassium Nitrate, the Sulfur and the charcoal into fine powders. Do each one separately. I have yet to see the Potassium Nitrate ignite when ground in a plastic or metal bowl, so use whatever you got. Electric shock won't set the drug store variety of Saltpeter off very easily. Make sure each is a fine powder before continuing. 2. Use the following ratio when mixing: 5 parts Potassium Nitrate 2 parts Charcoal 1 part Sulfur 3. Once the ingredients are added, mix them up thoroughly. Some people say to mix them dry, but I found that best results occur when you add a little water, just enough to make it a fairly dry paste. Mix it up good! You will then want to heat this paste somehow. Use your mom's pot, or do it in a big metal can or something and put it on the stove. Heat it while stirring it CONSTANTLY! You don't want any dry particles cooking:) When there is just a little moisture left, take it off the stove. 4. When it is cooled off a little so that you can touch it, get some wire mesh (window screen mesh is fine) and grade the powder through it with a piece of paper below to catch the droppings. The droppings that fall onto the paper below should look like small lumps of black/grey stuff. 5. That's it! Let the grey stuff on the paper dry thoroughly. When it feels dry to the touch then it's ready to light! Take a small amount and put it in a pile on a metal plate or something that won't burn and put a match to it. It may take a while to get it going, since drug store Potassium Nitrate isn't the most purest of substances :) But when it does light, take your hand away so it doesn't get burnt and watch it flare up! That's about all there is to it. You may want to fool around with the amount of ingredients you put in though. Just remember two things: 1) The Potassium Nitrate is the Oxidizer 2) The Charcoal and the Sulfur are the feuls 3) The Oxidizer "oxidizes" the feul (it reacts with the feul) This means that if there is too much Potassium Nitrate, there won't be enough feul to sustain the reaction. Also, if there is too much Charcoal, Sulfur, or both, there won't be enough Potassium nitrate to react with it all. So, if there is too much of any one of the chemicals, you will waste the excess chemical, or you may even decrease the effifiency of the reaction meaning it won't work as well as it could! The most efficient ratio of ingredients can be calculated using Stoichiometry! In other words, by using the chemical equation of the burning of black powder, you can find out the exact percentage of each chemical to add. I used to know the formula, but I lost it. I'll try to get over to the Windsor Public Library and get it again. Once I have it, I'll release an update to this file that will tell you what the formula is aswell as all the calculations involved in finding the best percentages. Oh, and of course I'll tell you what those percentages are :) Until then, have fun with the instructions I have given. Just don't do anything stupid like make a pipe bomb or something like that! Black Powder is great for making mini-road flares, or those Fountain 'o' Fire type of fireworks (the ones that spray sparks) or whatever. Just be careful! Don't burn yourself, or others, and don't set anything on fire :)