Homemade Blackpowder

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Too bad that the Tap-O-Cap still isn't being made.

You can cast balls from recovered lead. You can make your own powder. But those percussion caps are the fly in the ointment.
 
I took that rig apart many years ago. It was only intended to try out the techniques of drawing out the cups used to hold priming materials for percussion caps to be used on a slightly modified Lyle line-throwing gun. The result of my test looked like an oversized musket cap, usually with a brim. The rod was a very loose fit through the priming hole of a Lee shell holder on one end and dressed down on the other end to fit in a Lee decapping die's collet. It was only a few thousandth's difference. The underside of the shell holder has enough relief that the new capcomes out easily. Sometimes too easily, as it tends to jam the channel that the spent cap would fall through in the press if you try to use the right (too small) diameter disc of sheet stock. Most of the parts have been lost or used for something else. It's a pretty simple design, though.
If you wanted to make #10 or #11 caps you would need a much smaller die hole and block.
 
OW, please PM me if you get a prototype up & running. I might be your first customer.
 
AethelstanAegen said:
I was wondering, how many of you guys make your own blackpowder? It seems like you could certainly save some money over buying it premade or is that a misconception? I'm curious how one would go around sorting the powder into correct size, or do you just load it up with a mix? I'm mostly shooting blackpowder these days so it's tempting from a cost savings standpoint, but also makes me nervous as it seems like the kind of thing that could go really wrong if you make a mistake.
Click to expand...

According to all of my older brothers, I did once when I was about 5 years old. (Brothers would have been 13, 18, and 20 years old at the time.)

Also, according to my brothers, I blew up the trash barrel where we burned trash with a Coke can full of it. Split the barrel at the seam and blew ashes 50 feet into the air. Probably wouldn't be here today had I been standing next to the seam when it blew.

None of which I have any memory of, which also according to my brothers is understandable as they claim they wouldn't remember anything either had Dad beat them like he beat me for that...

:neener:


I imagine, having made various explody things over the years while growing up, that the issue with making gunpowder for rifle use would be a matter of consistency as well as safety and process. Making gunpowder isn't difficult...but there are a lot of factors to consider in making it consistently, safely, and of consistent "grainage". I wouldn't have any problem making it for general explody use, but for something that's supposed to give a consistent, reliable burn rate for use in a rifle? Nah, too much trouble for me when I could buy it much cheaper, comparatively.
 
s

Dang it...missed that tap o cap on eBay. I've been checking on gunbroker for awhile not on eBay. Oh well I've still got my used small pistol primer idea: load em up with a couple of roll caps or put a bit of diy Armstrong's mixture in 'em. Plus the pistol primers are sturdy enough to reload several times and no cap fragments like with new percussion caps.
 
elhombreconnonombre said:
Dang it...missed that tap o cap on eBay. I've been checking on gunbroker for awhile not on eBay. Oh well I've still got my used small pistol primer idea: load em up with a couple of roll caps or put a bit of diy Armstrong's mixture in 'em. Plus the pistol primers are sturdy enough to reload several times and no cap fragments like with new percussion caps.
Click to expand...

How's about this at MidwayUSA?

http://www.midwayusa.com/product/842064/forster-tap-o-cap-11-percusion-cap-maker

Only 29 clams and some aluminum cans ought to see you in business, according to this.

;)


EDIT:

After looking at the picture again and thinking about how that must work, it shouldn't be too difficult to make one if they were unavailable.

EDIT, PART 2:

Never mind...I missed the part on the site that said "discontinued". Sorry.
 
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Yeah midway really needs to cleanup their website of orphan products. Forrester stopped making those aways back. Just goes to show you: almost everything is collectable to someone...from $29 to $153. Go figure
Btw, I found some of those plastic cap gun caps that said on the label they had 20gr (yes 20 grains) of perchlorate and red phosphorous sand. It will throw a cast plastic .451 gluelitt out of Walker and punch a hole in a cardboard box on its own. That's pretty stout compared to the typical ring plastic caps of .04 gr and roll caps of .02 gr per cap, which don't do a thing without a bp charge in the cylinder.

Anybody know what the typical load is for a percussion cap and small pistol primer. The reloading guy at my local gun shop thinks its 1grain of lead styphanate.
 
I have a Tap-o-Cap tool that I bought some years ago....and a few thousand European roll caps - hotter than domestic caps......it works but I don't use it since I solved the percussion cap issue the old fashioned way.....I shoot flintlocks nowadays.
Pete
 
I'm late in the conversation but my homemade is faster than swiss. I got over a thousand feet per second with 15 grains from my 36 remmy...but you will have people cryin about how dangerous everything is....or they don't believe this or that...don't let people scare you I've been doing it for goin on two years without incident. Now the tap o cap friction type powder is waaaay most difficult and much more dangerous but still possible.
 
Brushhippie, welcome to the thread!

Anybody know what the typical load is for a percussion cap and small pistol primer. The reloading guy at my local gun shop thinks its 1grain of lead styphanate
Click to expand...

ElHombre, I'm fairly certain that lead styphnate is the standard ingredient nowadays, but 1 grain sounds pretty stout.... maybe that's the charge for a rifle primer?

As best as I can measure it, I load 0.5 grains of the KCLO3-based mix into each cap..... incidentally, I've been informed that the recipe from Davis's book is the same compound that the U.S. Army used for priming .30-40 Krag cartridges.
 
I'm late in the conversation but my homemade is faster than swiss. I got over a thousand feet per second with 15 grains from my 36 remmy...but you will have people cryin about how dangerous everything is....or they don't believe this or that...don't let people scare you I've been doing it for goin on two years without incident. Now the tap o cap friction type powder is waaaay most difficult and much more dangerous but still possible.
Click to expand...

After someone recommended your youtube video, I checked out your channel and I'm now a subscriber. Fun stuff you have on there! I may just end up giving this homemade BP a try at some point, until then I think I'm going to have to start buying BP by the barrel.
 
I just ran across something neat...a guy who uses an old timey Mattel Vac-U-Form toy and a homemade mould to make plastic percussion caps using milk cartons. Here's the link:

http://gunslingersgulch.com/index.php?topic=118.0

I did a little googling on this and you can find the Vac-U-Form toy online, like ebay and whatnot. Pricy, but hey...maybe a little searching will pay off.

Also, this sparked the creative streak in me and it seems that you should be able to make your own vacuum moulding setup from scratch pretty easily, using some simple materials and skills.

Make a vaccum box of convenient size out of scrap wood and install a vaccum hose attachment to it which can be connected to any convenient vacuum cleaner...preferably a shopvac, because those buggers can really suck. And Mamma would probably object to using her vaccum anyway.

Then make a heated hood to go over the top of the vaccum box to uniformly heat the plastic that you lay across the vacuum mould you made for your caps. I figure a really easy way of doing this on a small scale would be to use an electric skillet, positioned upside down over the vacuum box with a small gap to allow air to be drawn through while the vacuum is running.

Just make your vacuum table sized to fit the skillet heater hood.

Then either don't tell Mamma what you're doing with her electric skillet, or buy one of your own just for this project.

:)
 
I used to have a Lindsey book about vacuum forming plastic. Give me a couple days to see if I can find it.

Added thought... Since the idea is to simply heat the plastic to semi-fluid, the "burner" from an old electric stove should work. If the plastic is on a hinged frame and once fluid simply flipped over to the other side... a piece of broomstick with a rubber washer attached inserted into a length of PVC pipe and a simple valve system should produce more than enough vacuum. Especially if the PVC pipe were mounted to a frame and the broomstick attached to a foot operated level system with a 2 or 3 to one length of travel.

The trick would be in regulating the burner so it heated the plastic to just fluid and not to the melting point. But then you can get computer "thermostats" for a just a few dollars and connect them to a high amperage relay. Or just watch for the "droop" of the plastic....

Hmm, I wonder if copper azide would be a "hot" enough spark for BP?
Oh no! I've inherited my uncle's OMB gene!
 
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Oh well I've still got my used small pistol primer idea: load em up with a couple of roll caps or put a bit of diy Armstrong's mixture in 'em. Plus the pistol primers are sturdy enough to reload several times and no cap fragments like with new percussion caps
Click to expand...

ElHombre, if you're hammering out the firing pin indentation in a spent primer and brewing your own primer compound, you're only one step away from reloading that primer to use in a metallic cartridge - just reinstall the anvil.
If you've got good eyesight and steady hands (better than mine, at least), it might be worth a try.

There's an informative thread on this topic over at the Castboolits forum, including a variety of different chemical recipes from an old wizard named Perotter -

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?182089-can-you-make-priming-compound
 
I went down to the Austin history center today to track down some info on who made percussion caps, powder, and cartridges locally during the ACW. I learned that there was a percussion cap and cartridge factory located in the old supreme court building that was located behind the old state capital at that time.The mechanical cap making machine could produce 250 caps per hour. The paper cartridge machine produced 5000 rounds per day in which the charge was loaded manually. NW of Austin on Cypress Creek, a gentleman named Anderson built a water-powered gunpowder mill, making powder by extracting saltpeter from bat guno deposits from the numerous caves in the area, sulfur, and from charcoal from the cedars common to the hillcountry. A replica of the mill later converted to a grain mill exists, but not on the same site.
Next week I will head down to the state archives to see if those old percussion cap and cartridge making machines are stashed somewhere in a museum so I can grab some pics.
 
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