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Hi all,

Does anyone reload with homemade powder?

I'm thinking along the lines of 7.62 and 38/357/44 calibres and that the material cost of homemade powder is very likely less than a fiver a kilo.

Mark

No certainly not because it would be totally illegal to manufacture explosive mixtures irrespective of any safety issues.

It's not illegal to manufacture black powder if you have a licence for it

bigfathairybiker wrote:Does anyone reload with homemade powder? I'm thinking along the lines of 7.62 and 38/357/44 calibres and that the material cost of homemade powder is very likely less than a fiver a kilo.

Are you thinking black powder or nitro-based powder?

Black powder is prerelatively straighforward to make in principle (there's an excellent chapter on this process in WWGreener's book The Gun and It's Development) but I'd imagine quite a bit of testing would be required before you could come up with a useful and repeatable recipe with the correct grain size and structure. Getting this wrong could be either dangerous, expensive in explosively-dismantled firearms and/or both.

Nitro powders are a completely different kettle of fish and probably totally impractical for anyone without detailed knowledge and experience. First, you'd have to make the nitrocellulose (fairly straighforward and reasonably safe if some elementary precuations are taken) and/or nitroglycerine (a bit more complicated but potentially hideously dangerous in any quantity. Then you'd need to dissolve it correctly in a mixture of alcohol, propanone and water to turn it into a colloid and then form this by extruding it through a die and chopping to length (quite tricky to say the least.) Then you'd need to correctly formulate a retardant coating which would give you just the right burn rate, which would again take a shedload of time, effort and a (bomproof) testing range.

All of the above discounts a) the significant investment in equipment to do this, and b) the legal issues, of which there are probably very many.

I'll stick to the TR140 thanks.

Gaz

PS - My knowledge of these things is theoretical, but partially based in practical experience of chemical processes as I have a master's in chemistry and spent a year doing a sandwich course at a chemical engineering school in France.
NNB - Please don't take any of this as encouragement, I think you'd have to be mad (or at least very brave) to try this.

dodgyrog wrote:It's not illegal to manufacture black powder if you have a licence for it

Licence to manufacture?

Chapuis wrote:

dodgyrog wrote:It's not illegal to manufacture black powder if you have a licence for it

Licence to manufacture?

Licence to own.

Don't know about elf and safety issues though!

I think actually Rog that it is illegal to manufacture Blackpowder without the necessary authority, a licence to acquire and possess would not be enough.
Though I will admit to hearing of someone trying to in the long and distant past. The results were not too impressive being very inconsistent. The actual chemistry for the manufacture of black is after all not very complicated.

Chapuis wrote:I think actually Rog that it is illegal to manufacture Blackpowder without the necessary authority, a licence to acquire and possess would not be enough.
Though I will admit to hearing of someone trying to in the long and distant past. The results were not too impressive being very inconsistent. The actual chemistry for the manufacture of black is after all not very complicated.

I stand corrected although I had been advised that the licence to acquire and possess was enough.
I wouldn't go to the trouble though, life's too short!

Hmm,

I'm going out to the shed love...

Boom!

I was definately thinking of black powder rather than nitro based as a stable nitro is a bit fiddly to make without an unstable phase. Where as the BP is very stable.

Not having done any reloading I probably need to get hold of Greeners book or simular and do a bit of reading. Things like granule size and burn rates are fairly new to me as I've only had to deal with straight fine powder and solid sticks for propellant, which doesnt always do quite what was expected!

Mark