This is a project that really started a year and a half ago, just before I started Chemo. I had just purchased a Pedersoli Brown Bess musket and went looking for some black powder to feed it. None of my usual sources had any, and I the outlook was bleak. The Goex plant had closed and there was no longer any commercial powder production in the United States. The thought hit me that things were not going well. Given the unfriendly attitude the government was taking towards firearms and ammunition, it might come to pass that I could be out of luck in the long term.

The Brown Bess is a hungry beast, consuming 80 or more grains of 3F powder per shot. On the other hand, it is a smoothbore flintlock. Properly loaded, it can take anything from a squirrel to a deer. It is also a bit finicky. Flinters in general do not take well to modern BP replacements like Pyrodex. You can get them to work, but the results are sub-standard. BP has a superior burn rate and lock time. It is also the easiest firearm powder to produce at home. Before you ask, yes. It is legal to do it. Just don’t make it for sale or produce it in quantities that make it a potential danger. That just goes for the United States; in Canada and elsewhere the production is proscribed. I watched a bunch of Youtubes and asked a bunch of questions on forums. I found out that just discussing it in some corners of the Internet is a no-no. However, I found an excellent source of info on one of my old favorites, the CastBoolit Forum

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?103852-My-homemade-black-powder

At the time of this writing, it has 374 pages and has been active since 2011. It is quite something to wade through. However, I found it well worth the effort.

What I am going to do here is document my effort to make my first pound of black powder. Before you go any further, yes. The powder I produced was very energetic and well within spec for an 18th-century Brown Bess. Yes, I intend to do it again, but my main aim was to prove to myself that I could. It is not all that hard to do. It is relatively safe as these things go.

What you Need

To begin, I needed the three basic components: Potassium Nitrate (KN03), Sulphur, and Charcoal. The first two are available from Amazon and other sources on the Internet. The charcoal is the tough one. So much of the success of black powder is in the material used, and its processing. I will go into that in-depth later. I also ordered some Quebracho Yellow powder. This is used in place of Dextrin, and makes the powder easier to rice. Don’t worry, I will also discuss this later. The only other ingredient is some 91% Iso-Propyl alcohol for wetting the powder.

I got an unused 1-gallon paint can from the store and found a 5-gallon metal paint can down at the farm. These two components form the retort for making the charcoal..

To process the components, you will need some sort of ball mill, a meat grinder, a kitchen scale, a ricing box, a bunch of sifters, and a variety of pans. I used a plastic dishpan, and a supply of aluminum pie plates, plastic tubs and whatnot that are leftovers from carry-out food. I will explain all this as I go.

Making the Charcoal

The source of the charcoal is a key determinant in the quality of the black powder. What is needed is a tree that grows fast and has a very porous wood. If you dig around on that CastBoolits thread, you will find several charts. Black Willow is a favorite. Red Cedar is another. Grape vine is another. I found one in one of the charts that tickled my fancy. I have it growing wild at the house, and I have spent every year poisoning it with little to no effect: Ailanthus (Tree of Heaven). I was already down and out last year with the Chemo, and I knew that if I just had patience, the little knee-high shoots I was seeing would be 10-footers by the next summer. Indeed, they did not disappoint me. I cut down two 10-foot ailanthus trees starting in June, stripped the bark, and then let the stalks dry.

After a couple of weeks of drying, I cut the stalks down to 7-inch sections– just long enough to put end-on in the 1-gallon paint can. I packed the can this way with sticks between 1/2 inch an 1 1/2 inches, putting the thicker ones on the outside. I drilled a 1/4″ hole in the lid and then sealed it. I used a step-drill to put 3/4″ holes all the way around the bottom outside edge of the 5-gallon can

Do not attempt the next step in a little yard in the middle of town. The reduction of the wood to charcoal created a megaplume of steam and smoke for nearly an hour. I did this at the farm around sundown. I lined the bottom of the 5-gallon can with charcoal briquettes and small wood scraps. I then put the sealed 1-gallon can with the sticks pointing up. I then finished things off with briquettes and wood scraps all the way around, filling the can and leaving the top of the smaller can clear.

I used a little Kerosene to get the fire started, and then waited for steam to show out the hole of the 1-gallon can. The whole idea is to heat the sicks in the inner can without giving them access to oxygen. Smoke and steam fill the area between the sticks and drive out anything else. It took about 5 minutes before the hole in the inner can started to show steam. With that, I started the timer. At 55 minutes, I pulled the inner can out and put it aside to cool. The time in between saw a major outflux of steam and smoke. It eventually lit, and that produced a 5-foot tongue of flame. It is important not to let the charcoal over cook or it turns to ash rather quickly. Pull it out once the smoke/flame dies down from the center hole. I had a infrared meter on the whole thing. I wanted to keep the top of the gallon can right around 600F, but no excursions higher. At one point I took the lid of the BBQ and put it over the top for a minute to quiet things down.

It did not take long, about 20 minutes, for the can to cool down enough to open. Inside, the sticks had reduced in volume dramatically. They were crunchy enough to break easily. I filled a 1-gallon ziplock bag with the contents and took them home. At this point in the process you want to keep things as dry as possible.

Once home, I placed the plastic bag in the pant leg of a pair of canvas work pants and beat the bag lightly with a mallet. The canvas protects the bag, so I ended up with a few holes. I then began running everything through my hand-crank meat grinder. Yeah, it is a dirty business, but it works a lot faster than other methods. The only thing that happens to the grinder is it gets polished up from the slightly abrasive carbon and it washes up in the dishwasher. Grinding produces a fine powder.

Now it is time for the ball mill. There is a double ball mill from Harbor Freight that is perfect. Harbor Freight was out of it when I looked, and I found a kids’ rock tumbler on Amazon for $45. It has a single container that rolls around. Into this, I placed a handful of lead balls. I just had .715″ balls for the Brown Bess, but it really does not make a difference. I put in about a half-a-cup of balls and half a cup of charcoal and set it for 2 days at speed 3. I checked on it after 6 hours and decided it was ground enough.

Once the charcoal was ground, it was time to mix up the ingredients. There are a bunch of ratios you can use. The CastBoolits thread goes into all the intracacies, but the classic ratio is 75% KNO3 15% Carbon and 10% Sulphur. This is by weight, not volume. Therefore, I weighed 7.5 OZ of KN03, 1.5 OZ of my charcoal and 1 OZ of Sulphur. I topped it off with a 1/4 teaspoon of Quebracho powder. A lot of guys add Dextrin to their powder to get it to clump better. I read somewhere that Quebracho does the same thing, but better. It worked. The 4 OZ I bought off Etsy is a lifetime supply.

That made just the right amount for filling the ball mill. Again, I put in the lead balls, sealed it, and turned on at speed 3 and 2 days worth. Again, I checked back in about 8 hours and had things plenty well mixed, and everything reduced to dust.

So far, everything I have told you is safe. It can be done indoors. Nothing bad is going to happen. However, once I opened the ball mill, I now had working black powder. It needs to be kept away from flame and static electricity. From this point on, I am working outdoors and using proper PPE. Having said that, the next step turns the powder back into a safe state.

Ricing the Powder

What I am going to describe to you is the Ricing Method of black powder production. It is the older of the two methods. It was the one extent at the time of the American Revolution. It produces a powder that is about 80% the strength of modern BP. The process was invented in the early 1800s and therefore the powder I am producing is probably not strong enough for Civil War-era firearms or later. For a Brown Bess, it is quite adequate. I just need to use a larger load to get the same velocity.

Before I go one, let me explain that modern BP goes through an additional step called Corning. Corning takes the riced powder and compresses it into a puck using a hydraulic press to about 3000 PSI. This causes the KN03 to partially liquify and drives it into the pores of the charcoal. For me, this was just going add additional complexity and I do not currently own a press.

On a sunny, humid day in September, I went out on the patio and began to rice my powder. For this, I used a plastic dishpan for mixing, I placed a handful of the powder into the dishpan and then wetted it with a 50-50 mix of water and 91% Iso-Propyl alcohol. The alcohol is not necessary, but it aids in drying. I did not need much liquid here. I wanted to turn the powder into a dough. The more I kneaded it, the better. The trick was not to get it so wet that I could squeeze out water.

Once I had the dough prepared, I ran it through my ricing box. All that consists of is a 1-foot square frame onto which I fixed a metal window screen. The idea is to force the dough through the holes of the screen and produce something that looks like burned Rice-A-Roni. The process is a bit like shredding cheese. I probably made too big clumps. The trick is to get it spread out so it dries quickly. That is the next step.

I gave my Mom a cereal crisper years ago. It is just a metal box that gets plugged into the wall and produces just enough heat to keep boxed cereal fresh. I found it stashed in her basement after she died. I put all my little plastic pans of riced powder in there and let them sit for a couple of weeks. What I ended up with were dried chunks. I took these outside and started to sift them.

I started with a piece of 1/4-inch mesh.

• Everything that got caught in #4 mesh got broken up by placing through two blocks of 2X4 and crushing lightly.
• I then ran everything through a #10 mesh sieve (Amazon) what got caught got put into a ceramic coffee grinder and ground course
• I then ran stuff through 16 mesh and what got caught was sent back through the grinder on a slightly finer grind
• All along, I kept running the resultant through 20 mesh and 40 mesh sieves so as not to keep grinding until I had nothing but powder.
• I ended up with about half that got caught by 40 mesh and half that went through.
• When fell through 40 mesh was my 2F (about 1/3). 1/3 was caught by the 50 mesh sieve. That is my 3F. What fell out of the 50 mesh is “fines”, and I will use that mixed into the next batch.

I stored my graded powder in 1lb smokeless powder canisters with proper labeling.

The next time I was out, I tested the 2F and 3F in ‘Bess. It is a highly energetic powder. I did not have time to really quantify how close it is to my store-bought stuff, but with the few shots I fired, I can tell it is in the ballpark. The stuff that fell through the 50 mesh sieve works very well as a primer.

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