Homemade Black Powder

[qazwsx]

I recently decided to attempt and make my own bp. I am making sulfurless bp, mostly for fuse. I just made a quick batch with a motor and pestel for about 2 minutes. This made terrible bp as expected, but this was just to make sure the stuff would burn. I have some questions. My bp leaves a white powders residue after it burns. What could cause this? Leftover KNO3? Also after a bonfire there are black logs left over. I have been using this as my charcoal. We don't let our fires totally burn out, so could this actually be charcoal. What does charcoal feel like? And how can i identify it from the regular ash? Thanks for your help.

[pyrobass]

A lot of answers on your questions you can find on the internet. I don't read every topic at the englisch section but I supose there is at least one topic about blackpowder in this section.

The white residu is proberbly potassium nitrate, if all the ingredients are carefuly mixed in the correct proportions, and grinded and mixed verry wel, then the mixture will burn nicely without leaving any solid residu. It isn't posible to make good BP in such short time, so verry intence mixing and grinding is necesery. Secondly, wood ashes aren't the same as charcoal, charcoal is mostly carbon witch some other compounds like potassium carbonate, there is a lot of information on th internet about making your own charcoal.

Edited May 2, 2008 by pyrobass

[Leander]

If you can see whitle 'bubbles' melting while the composition burns, en those bubbles remain as whitle redisu droplets, then your using to much KNO3. If the white residu is just a fine evenly thin layer, then it's just K2O, with is a perfectly normal residu for any KNO3 based mixture. Try a 7/3 ratio KNO3/C, you cant be wrong with that one. :)

Edited May 2, 2008 by Leander