BP and Electric Sparks

[Tinker]

The subject of static igniting black powder came up on a recent thread. Some of the discussion involved this link:

http://www.ctmuzzleloaders.com/mlexperiments/sparks/sparks.html

I decided to give it a go myself yesterday. I used about 15 grains of fffg Goex, an electric fence charger (puts out at least 5-7 kvolts). Leads were #12 solid copper wire. The black lead was against the work bench and the white lead was just above it about a 1/2". I smothered the end of the black lead with the BP so that it was totally covered then I energized the charger. Used an insulated screwdriver to force the white lead down to make contact. A 2 second arc and no ignition. Then I just let it arc for a solid minute. Nothing exept a teeny little vapor that was barely visible. Now bear in mind that my electrical source is a lot "hotter" than the one used in the link above. Judging by his photos and the arcs, his has got to be a lot higher voltage. He says his is 10kv. My fence charger puts out a lower voltage and higher current. It'c called a "weed burner" type charger and puts out a continuous charge. It's designed to provide enough current to kill weeds that grow up to the hot wire and to keep it clear.

My charger is AC. Static is DC. That might make some difference, but I personally doubt it. The only way to test DC would be with the use of a Vandegraf generator. I don't have one of those. I'm not saying to not take care while handling BP, but this quite interesting.

 

[mec]

Could be the static electricity thing was made up by a gunwriter and then repeated by other Gws for the next several generations. I remember we used to worry about driving under power lines with a knap sack full of electric blasting caps and C4. The worry probably would have been better invested in guessing what the police would think about all those explosives.

 

[Tinker]

mec.

I'd think blasting caps would be a whole other animal. From the little I know of them, they do indeed have a compound inside that will ignite with either a spark or heat from an electrical heat element, or maybe a fusible link? When I was a kid, my friend's father had some and he was popping them with some kind of handheld igniter deal one 4th of July. I'd think that the leads coming from them could act as antennas. Induced radio frequency currents can be surprizingly strong in a resonant antenna (cap leads). You twist the ends together and it makes a loop type antenna. You spread them apart and away from each other and you have a dipole type. I once hooked up a trucker type CB amplifier up in my truck to boost the signal of my standart CB radio. I could set it at just 100 watts and light up nearby flouresent tube when I keyed the mic. Some truckers run 5-10 times that much power out of thier rigs nowadays. That might be a problem, IMO.

 

[mec]

My analogy with the electric blasters was probably far off the mark but I couldn't resist mentioning how we used to play with explosives. These caps came with the wires sticking out but one of them was shunted in some manner to keep the static away.