I'm gonna try this: Nitrate from myself, sulfur from the coal seams around here - including pyrite, and charcoal from the willow down the road. Anyone who wants to give advice is more than welcome. Like, "Just buy it ya bonehead!" At least that's the advice my darling Wife just gave me when she heard of my plans.
Real home made BP
- Thread starter CANNONMAN
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A lot of how to videos on the 'net
Make Black Powder R1 - YouTube
HOW TO MAKE Black Powder ~EASY~ - YouTube
How to Make Black Powder - YouTube
Homemade Black Powder - YouTube
Making Black Powder - YouTube
How to make black powder, fast burning - YouTube
how to make black powder (without a ball mill) - YouTube
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Make Black Powder R1 - YouTube
HOW TO MAKE Black Powder ~EASY~ - YouTube
How to Make Black Powder - YouTube
Homemade Black Powder - YouTube
Making Black Powder - YouTube
How to make black powder, fast burning - YouTube
how to make black powder (without a ball mill) - YouTube
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Pete D.
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BP
Be choosey about which videos you take to heart.
Many of the "make BP" vids do not make black powder....they end up with "green powder" or polverone. It will burn but it doesn't go Bang.
You have two methods that will work; alcohol precipitation or a ball mill.
You can use electrolysis to separate nitrates from Urine.....but, given the amount that you need to make BP in any useful quantity......you will spend more $ on electricity than you would buying the stuff (and it won't be as pure).
Pete
Be choosey about which videos you take to heart.
Many of the "make BP" vids do not make black powder....they end up with "green powder" or polverone. It will burn but it doesn't go Bang.
You have two methods that will work; alcohol precipitation or a ball mill.
You can use electrolysis to separate nitrates from Urine.....but, given the amount that you need to make BP in any useful quantity......you will spend more $ on electricity than you would buying the stuff (and it won't be as pure).
Pete
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Isn't there saltpeter in that formula somewhere? I remember a friend of mine, 40+ years ago making homemade BP and thought that was on the menu. I do remember that it was pretty good stuff, though. Think we took out a few mail boxes and such...............Coogs.
Bigdog57
Member
Potassium Nitrate = Saltpeter. Plenty Youtube videos on making it too. Or can be bought.
Officers'Wife
Member
Nitrates from yourself??? *sigh* Cannonman, Cannonman, Cannonman. I buy you books, I send you to school... You eat the covers. 
Build a nice big box, fill it with dirt, yard clippings, leaves... just about anything organic. Then get some worms, night crawlers are best. Give them water and a little heat for two or three months then sell the little buggers. Put the dirt they lived in a barrel and run water through it collecting the water. When the water evaporates you will have crystals of niter. Use selective crystallization to purify the niter until it's concentrated enough to be used.
Or, my Uncle took an old diesel engine (off of something called a Volkswagon Rabbit) and made modifications so it would produce larger amounts of NOx pollutants. He then attached the crank to an undershot water wheel placed in a nearby drainage ditch and ran the "exhaust" of the fuel-less "cranking" trough a mix of dilute sulfuric and nitric acids. The acid mix oxidized the NOx into nitric acid that could be mixed with the lye from wood ashes.
If God in His infinite wisdom had intended us to obtain our niter from our organic by-products He wouldn't have inspired Haber to develop nitrogen fixation! Go ye and sin no more!
Build a nice big box, fill it with dirt, yard clippings, leaves... just about anything organic. Then get some worms, night crawlers are best. Give them water and a little heat for two or three months then sell the little buggers. Put the dirt they lived in a barrel and run water through it collecting the water. When the water evaporates you will have crystals of niter. Use selective crystallization to purify the niter until it's concentrated enough to be used.
Or, my Uncle took an old diesel engine (off of something called a Volkswagon Rabbit) and made modifications so it would produce larger amounts of NOx pollutants. He then attached the crank to an undershot water wheel placed in a nearby drainage ditch and ran the "exhaust" of the fuel-less "cranking" trough a mix of dilute sulfuric and nitric acids. The acid mix oxidized the NOx into nitric acid that could be mixed with the lye from wood ashes.
If God in His infinite wisdom had intended us to obtain our niter from our organic by-products He wouldn't have inspired Haber to develop nitrogen fixation! Go ye and sin no more!
Officers'Wife
Member
HellGate...
I don't think the goal is cost saving, it's the satisfaction of knowing should the need arise the raw materials can be obtained without the blessing of "big niter" companies. He has the right idea, just the wrong methodology. There are other ways to get a nitrate radical than urinating in a bottle, after all.
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brushhippie
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Be a neat project...I am in!
Yep, them thar covers with a bit 'o mustard iz good eat'n! 4shur! I thought about scrubbing exhaust either from an internal combustion something-er-other and thought, [no really I had a thought!] what if no gas in my future apocalypse to scrub? Then I thought about scrubbing coal emissions. This is a close second but! I may want to just be burning the coal to heat myself. I like the idea of separating out the yellow stuff from pyrite. I think this would make me feel "wizardly" and I could wear a pointed hat instead of my helmet. I would prefer the organic method of old in the creation of salt peter, but in my ADD world I just don't have that kind of time! And I don't need Officers'Wife accusing me of eating the worms! [Yummy, but could use some ketchup!]
Update: The nitrate collection system has begun. OMG! Good thing there is no smell-a-post here. I've cheated a bit by getting a bunch of iron pyrite left overs from a place that makes pretty little displays for gift shops. Stuff that normally gets thrown away. The charcoal will be made this weekend. I plan on a mortar and pestle as there may be a lack of electricity and Officers'Wife ain't coming any time soon to build me a windmill. TTTtthhhppppttt!
Update: The nitrate collection system has begun. OMG! Good thing there is no smell-a-post here. I've cheated a bit by getting a bunch of iron pyrite left overs from a place that makes pretty little displays for gift shops. Stuff that normally gets thrown away. The charcoal will be made this weekend. I plan on a mortar and pestle as there may be a lack of electricity and Officers'Wife ain't coming any time soon to build me a windmill. TTTtthhhppppttt!
Officers'Wife
Member
You will find that leaching the nitrate from soil gives you a much better yield. If I recall correctly the method you are using yields calcium nitrate not potassium nitrate so you will need to extract lye from wood ash for double replacement.
I may bring hubby to build you a wind turbine of your very own... If only to have a long conversation with your long suffering saint of a wife of the benefits of an 8 inch cast iron skillet in applied husband correction techniques.
HHmmm, I would except I am currently using it to melt lead in. Shucks! Darn the luck. Oh and for what the rest of you are thinking... Yeah she wasn't too keen on me using it for that either. "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!" World dominance will soon be mine! [stupid voices in my head...]
ofitg
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OW, this sounds like a project I might be interested in trying someday.... so the "niter" you leach out of the soil would be KNO3? Is there any way to predict the yield?
Cannonman, I have found that nicotine will make the voices stop, for an hour or so.....
Officers'Wife
Member
Far too many variables involved to predict yield. It would mostly depend on how much acidity your worms can tolerate and the protein content of your organic material. The leachate would still need to be purified as other soluble soil minerals are going to be present. Keep in mind you are basically composting with the aid of worms to help convert ammonia compounds to nitrates. Quite frankly when my uncle was committing these atrocities I was more interested in the electrical devices than the biochemical. I doubt the yield would be worth the effort if not for the sale of the earthworms for bait.
For a rundown on the various methods of pre-Haber nitrogen fixation see if your local engineering school library has a book titled "Creative Chemistry" by Edwin Slossen. It's one of the many "drool" books for nitrate hungry OMBs. Slossen
As for the voices in Cannonman's head... Sister Beatrice told me if I couldn't say anything nice to say nothing at all.
Ppsshha! Yeah you can. It just like a crowd. The bigger the crowd [yield] the more people will show up [ingredients]. Oh wait that simile sucks. It's a matter of replicable duplicity. Or, the next time ya try it you have a gage. This also works with making BP and drinking Jack Daniels.
Yes but did Sister Beatrice have a 16" solid copper ruler to enforce those maxims
- as did Sister Blanche (the Principal of St Francis of Assisi School here in Yuma, nearly four decades ago)...EDIT:But it is an interesting topic, must do more research....
Good thing MY wife doesn't look at this page, else I would be hearing about it!
And CANNONMAN: most of >MY< cast iron cookware is from the very early 1940's. It cooks ONLY real food, and after cooking it is warmed back up sprayed down with some olive-oil "PAM" and wiped down with napkins, then put back in the lower cupboard. I figger my Mom spent too many years seasoning those babies, and I don't have THAT MUCH patience trying to start them all over!
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Realist
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Home made BP
Locate a copy of 'Foxfire #5' from online or library...
Amazon has it @ http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ch-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=foxfire+#5
Lots of discussion on BP making as well as building smokepoles.
Locate a copy of 'Foxfire #5' from online or library...
Amazon has it @ http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ch-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=foxfire+#5
Lots of discussion on BP making as well as building smokepoles.
Oh Lord...., I can just see the headlines now, "New Jersey bans collecting pee without a permit, urinals and toilets are exempt from the regulation" .
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Officers'Wife
Member
Oh sure, you complain that my similes are painful then inflict your own on the public at large.
Anytime you are working with organics you are going to have too many variables to predict more than a very general outcome. In your method, urine is going to vary in nitrogen content from day to day. Someone that drinks coffee is going to have far different composition simply from frequency. You might have skimped on the water one day so the urine is more concentrated.
In the composting method you are going to get a different yield by the "breed" of worms you use. Some just have a more effective gut for converting proteins to nitrates than others. We never mention it (of course) because we don't want to sound like wormy racists. The composition of the organic material would be a factor, high protein clover is going to produce more nitrogen compounds than common grass clipping that are mostly cellulose.
Even Uncle Lee's cranking the engine with the water wheel is going to vary production because of the variations in water flow changing the dynamics of the compression and heat signatures inside the cylinders. If memory serves he also anhydrous (liquid) ammonia through fuel injectors to increase his yields.
Item last: you are asking me to think like an OMB, I cannot, it's not in my mindset. The hallmark of an OMB is to try some the craziest techniques to an end under the theory if it's crazy and it works it's not crazy.
Yuma: Sister Beatrice has a carefully worked length of Indiana white oak, beautifully sanded and varnished with the words "Loving Christian correction" burned onto it. I'm told the last time it was used was in the mid 70's but not one student in my classes took the chance. She told me (much) later having the paddle wasn't the motivator it was making the "little heathens" believe she would actually use it. She was quite good at that.
ofitg
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Cannonman, with your medical background, I'm sure that your grasp of Chemistry is greater than mine. It sounds like you found a "rapid" means of creating KNO3 from urine.....?
I'm especially interested in hearing how your "sulfur from pyrite" extraction works out. I have read a little about the process used ~200 years ago, but it wasn't clear (to me) exactly how it worked. Can you provide details?
It's time for me to take another smoke break, so meanwhile, Buena Suerte with your new project!
Officers'Wife
Member
The fun way is to roast the pyrite in air then mix the resulting SO2 with chlorine gas in a glass vessel. You can trace the progress of the chlorine by the yellow participate. it works for the hydrogen sulfide in water from certain wells too but the effect isn't as dramatic.
I would skip the whole urine bit and make potassium Nitrate from Ammonium Nitrate ( cold pack ) . Simple chemical reaction using potassium chloride. You can feel like you did something and get a measurable quantity of potassium nitrate to work with.
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