I almost commented on an earlier video when you mentioned trying this that you shouldn't bother, but I was curious *how bad* it would be. What people forget about carbon is that diamonds are "pure" carbon, graphite is "pure" carbon, same with graphene, buckeyballs, carbon nanotubes, charcoal, soot... Being pure carbon doesn't tell you anything about its properties because carbon can form an infinite number of molecular configurations. A diamond is a single giant molecule of chained carbon atoms. A lump of charcoal can be made just as pure carbon as a diamond but that doesn't make them the same thing. Lampblack can be made on a spectrum of molecular configurations, but most of the commercial stuff is closer in properties to graphite than to charcoal. I'm certain most of it doesn't even burn in your powder and it would have hardly been flammable at all had it not been for the sulfur.

You may not be a chemist, but you certainly are a scientist. Your methodology for your search for the most powerful and most clean burning antique muzzleloader propellant shows this. Thank you for your diligence in your search. All good videos!

Carbon black was mixed with diesel then sprayed on frozen rivers from helicopters to hasten the spring break-up! This was done in the early fifties in British Columbia on the Kamano power project. Imagine doing that today!

So we finally figured out how they actually make Pyrodex lol

It had to be done. Thanks, Jake, for proving (or disproving) a concept. You satisfied *MY* curiosity!! Still wondering if brown, institutional grade paper towel will make a good charcoal. Best wishes!

I think the toilet paper powder needs to expanded on with a variety of different types. You obviously got lucky by trying the cottonelle first. We would definitely be curious to see a range of 5 or 6 common brands (in all your free time) that show super thick fluffy paper down to that nasty tissue paper single ply junk. There may be a gem hiding amongst the proverbial turds.

Suggestion for sulfurless black powder. Pure ascorbic acid (vitamin C) in place of sulfur. It has virtually the same fuel content as sulfur and has similar catalytic properties. It might be worth trying if you want to expand on the sulfurless BP experiment.

My family had an oil burning furnace when I was a boy and my dad cleaned it every spring. He'd save some of the soot for my baseball team to put under our eyes to reduce glare like the pros. Thanks for reminding me of that

Heard in chemistry, the best charcoal is made from coconut shells! Love your show Bro!!!

Oh Lord, the sheer rifle abuse, that must've hurt! All fireworks industry manuals recommend not using lamp black instead of charcoal in lift charges etc, and you see why. Its mostly used that i saw in primers and road flares. I saw a report formulation with it but it was heavily aluminized. Dont use powdered metals in antique.. because they burn so hot crystals of corundum (sandpaper grit) formed from the aluminium will "weld" to your barrel, and also mess with the rifling. Its great that you did this, and having big unexpected successes alternating with epic failures only increases the joy of watching your videos, because everything no matter how zany gets an objective test to make the most of it, and its standardizes so people can compare. Don't take the wile e coyote moments as personal failure, you run the best powder video series of the internet! 51 btw, not a pipsqueak yapping :)

Gonna dream about clean 1900 fps powder all night now...

This video didn't suck. It may not have turned out like everyone would hope but it did tell us what not to use. Thank you!

the answer to why it doesn't work well is because of the nano structure. the carbon from your charcoal had a porosity to it that when mixed with the other chemical holds on to the powders molecularly. the carbon black has a nano structure more like glass leading to less contact with the carbon. I hope that makes sense

Man, I have seen some fouling from shooting a weekend of 58 cal blanks, but that takes the prize. I think the Toilet Paper powder shows a lot of promise since it was no more dirty than some commercial powders. I enjoy your presentations.

You guys always have such a good time - always makes me smile. And informative too!

years ago experimenting with axle grease to cover the projectiles in a 58 rem copy ,,i quickly discovered the gun locked up after 2 cylinders , i guess petroleum products just dont work with black , another great presentation , cheers big ears from down under

Regardless of the cellulose source (like wood or toilet paper) which is heated to produce charcoal for black powder, it is important to carefully control the degree of heat applied during pyrolysis. The buckthorn alder Swiss uses for their superior product is carefully controlled to never exceed 600F during pyrolysis. That is because the result is a mixture of carbon complexed with a variety of hydrocarbon moieties bound to the carbon molecules. Though not scientifically proven as far as I know, these hydrocarbon remnants in charcoal are thought to be reactive catalysts during the burn enabling oxygen provided by the potassium nitrate to more efficiently and quickly react with the charcoal to produce heat. Additionally, since these are hydrocarbons, they burn as well adding to the overall heat generated during the burn. If the temperature during pyrolysis exceeds 600F, a large percentage of the hydrocarbon moieties are driven off reducing this effect and slowing down the burn.

I think you are a very entertaining person to listen to. The way you tempo yourself and the more casual tone of your presentations make your materials easily digestible, though i have never owned a bp firearm myself.

It would be interesting to see how cheap stuff like dried leaves, dry hay, or sawdust would behave like

Well thanks for the video anyway Jake it wasn't a total complete waste of time because now we know we don't want to use that and thank you for finding that out for us appreciate you man

The problem is the charcoal has the benefit of having a lot of surface area. Light for volume. Carbon black is wanting it to be a dense additive, used as a pigment, you want it heavy for volume with very small particle size. This is the exact opposite of charcoal.

Failures can be as important as victories. Good job.

We dont have any commercial blackpowder available im my country, and this makes near to impossible for me to use my side-by-side shotgun with Damascus barrels, suitable only for blackpowder. So i decided to make my own. Instead of making traditional BP,i decided to make substitute, consisting of potassium nitrate, ascorbic acid and iron oxide as a catalyst. Ang literally couple of days ago after several weeks of experiments i made first batch of really fast burning meal. Next week im planning to corn it using dextrine and will try to shoot it during weekend, if weather will allow it. Ascorbic acid gunpowder has several advantages over traditional, like cleaner burning, more pleasant odor, higher energy. Although it also has some disadvantages, like higher hydroscopics. But it definitely works, works fine and worth a try.

Great job going through the various sources of carbon and confirming (or denying) their suitability for antique muzzleloader propellant. Has anyone suggested using mesquite for a carbon source? Your propellant series is especially interesting, as the firing of a muzzleloader has two primary components - performance and cleanliness. These components seem related - powerful propellant burns more fully, leaving less fouling and is therefore (possibly) easier to clean. It's a fascinating topic, both scientific and historic. Thank you for the effort you put into these videos.

The molecular structure of the final product is what matters, not that it is "pure carbon", it's what structure that carbon is in that matters as well as what contaminates it contains within that structure. That is why carbon from cellulose products e.g. wood etc. is used, it has been found to have the best resulting molecular structure for propellants once it has been turned to carbon. The purer you can make that structure the faster it will propel your projectiles and the cleaner it will burn. It isn't the carbon itself you want pure, because if that were the case crushed diamonds or coal would work amazing but they don't because they have the wrong molecular structure to do what you are trying to accomplish.

about 3:30 This is a GREAT example of choking up on the rod and "wanging" for new guys. You can very clearly see the rod come to a dead stop when the ball is not seated, and obviously bouncing when it is seated.

Many years ago when I live in England (1989) I use to make my own black powder (mostly for visual effects for American Civil War re-enactment) and I wish you would of done these videos then BECAUSE I and my friends use to go 20 miles to to buy willow wood as the main wood sellers near us didn't sell it and we thought we have to use willow 🙃

Lamp black is a soot accumulation as you surmise. I heard it sucks too and I think it's the 2@& 3 dimensional multiple forms of carbon that you are exploring. BTW, I just replicated your TP powder (Cottonelle) and it's awesome, it's also the fluffiest charcoal I've ever made, a quart only weighs 2.5g. I think that surface area contributes to a faster chemical conversion to gases and solid byproducts..that translates to increased velocity. Now...think about oxidizers like perchlorate, guanidine nitrate, burning rate catalysts, and consider your flintlock ignites more from deflagration more than a shock wave, 209 primer is awesome. Keep it up brother!

You should do a video where you list all the various black powders you have made, list the ingredients, and rate them on power speed and cleanliness.

Petcoke (petroleum coke) might be worth a try and of course standard printer/photocopier paper and paper towels.

Fascinating series. I can't stop watching these and wanting to try my own experiments.

the Hydrogen in the charcoal gives the blackpowder the powder. They used the brown charcoal (rich on hydrogen compounds) for fast burning hunting powder. The first "modern" battleship gunpowder was the same they used straw and heated it with overheated steam around 170-200C with this methode you enrich the hydrogen it works with normal wood too. It was less abrassive than smokeless powder and it was compressed to an desteny of 2.0

Hemp Crete, Hemp Hurd, for making hempcrete blocks - is sold in 50lbs bags and can be found for $1-2/lb. Or try Hemp Hurd animal bedding for barns, $1/lb. The "hurd" is the dense center of the stalk after removing the fibers. Harvesting requires tungsten steel blades on farm equipment because it's 7x stronger than steel. Check out the old WWII movie, "Hemp for victory." Hempcrete Hurd without the lime binder, might give you more bang for your buck than toilet paper.

Good video. for wood sources I am still holding out for you to give poplar a try. but if you want weird stuff you could always try tree leaves, corncobs, and grass. I remember reading that the chemical equation for black powder burning is not the most precises because at the time there was no way to capture the byproducts of combustion when it was under pressure and not being able to identify positively impurities or trace molecules. black powder is more than nitrate, sulfur, and carbon.

Have you tried corn cobs? I'd kinda like to see that.

Well if your looking for a clean carbon.. I only know this from working at a carbon plant. But water filters use carbon made from coconut shells. It's a very dense very hard carbon. Could be worth a shot.

In science, a failed experiment is still a data point and you learn something. In this case what not to use. Love these videos, keep them coming. I wonder how baking flour would work?

Thank You Jake.

As always, great content.

I think "carbon black" or "lamp black" refer more to a process for making the material rather than its exact composition, which probably depends on the source material, just like "charcoal" is not all the same. Lamp black is just soot that is deposited by placing a cold surface in the reducing part of a flame. This is similar to exploiting the pyrolysis which happens in making charcoal. The key is to stop the combustion reaction by having a lack of oxygen (or in the lamp black case, to cool off the partially-combusted particulate matter so it cannot continue to burn).

Clean, consistent, and fast.

Thank you for your videos.

Thank you for your experiments and the time you spend doing/sharing all your knowledge and wisdom. Keep up the good work,

What makes soft wood charcoal and, in your case, toilet paper, a good carbon source for black powder, is how porous it is. The sulfur and the potassium nitrate crystals can lodge themselves inside the micro-pores of the grains of carbon, becoming thoroughly mixed. Hard woods and "pure" sources of carbon, such as graphite, do not have these pores, the sulfur and the crystals of potassium nitrate end up on the surface of the grains, so they don't mix as well.

Muchisimas gracias por compartir estas pruebas.

Thanks for your videos. I enjoy watching and you have saved me from making lots of bad batches while learning.

Try mimosa if you have not already. The primary use of carbon black is in the manufacture of rubber. Thanks for always sharing your work with us!

Such a tease

Lamp black was originally the soot scraped from a kerosene lamp chimney. No clue how it's made now, but you mentioned a smell and that it was oily. That would fit.

Great demonstration. I was afraid of that. Great show keep up the good work.

I've been thinking about getting into black powder and I ran across your channel and now you have a new subscriber❤❤

The literature is clear on this. For good B.P. it's not important to merely have the correct amount of carbon for a stoichiometric mix. Charcoal contains chemicals other than the element, carbon, that aid in combustion. Obviously, our forefathers tried lampblack, too. I'M HAPPY YOU TRIED IT. A large part of science is verifying others' results. Thank you.

Thanks for sharing. Tried Angle soft TP works ok.

I really like these videos. I am looking forward to see what the best carbon source will be.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. I've used lampblack in pyrotechnics, it's great for long-lasting sparks, but that's all.

Again, another very interesting video, these videos are without a doubt the best on the testing of material that could be used for Antique muzzleloading propellant that can be found anywhere around!! Jake I hope that some day you will make one on the Bamboo T.P. I would really be interested in seeing how that stuff works, thanks again for another entertaining and informative video, keep up the excellent work!!!!

Love these experiments. 👍. Until you mentioned that carbon black was sourced from petroleum-based products, I was thinking it would be very good. Once I heard "petroleum-based" I was visualizing trouble. In my experience petroleum-based bullet lubes yield a hard and difficult to clean fouling in BP firearms. Natural based lubes only need soap and warm water for cleanup. In my experience, petroleum-based products are "bad news" around BP. And yes, the source of the carbon is the single factor that most affects how good the powder is. Proven by the world's militaries in the early 1800's, and reproven by modern day makers.

I am glad you made this video... but I had my doubts when you mentioned it in your last video... and why I keep watching your experiments... saves me from making the same mistakes... love your content...

I noticed you go by the bounce of your ramrod more than a specific mark or depth for a seating indicator. I learn something every time I watch your videos. Keep them coming.

Thank-you for this, it's told me everything I need to know. I have some carbon black I wasn't certain what to do with it as I didn't know how good/bad it was. I'm now off to make the first stage of BP, which is fiery propellant. It's BP mix not wetted or screened & it's great for pyrotechnics. I'll use the CB I have, thanks again, I'd have hated to waste it.

Thanks for your entertaining videos. I was wondering how Corn Starch may work.

Thanks!

Lamp black is used in fireworks for smoke and slow burning effects or firework punks. So I figured the carbon black would turn out similar. Well we know for sure now.

Hey Jake, Thank You for your sacrifice and the loooong hours cleaning all that ca ca yucky stuff! But how else would you have known? Many Blessings and keep your powder muzzled! DaveyJO in Pennsylvania

I will reiterate, yes, it was a bad one, but I think you were due a bad one, as the other recent trials were (serendipitous) and pretty impressive. (You like my new word?) Any-who, these trials are really beneficial for those wanting to make the best antique muzzle loading propellant. And you doing the work cuts out the headaches for the rest of us. Thank you.

What I'm getting from this is that you want a relatively dense form of cellulose with as little lignin as possible. Perhaps a good test would be a roll of plain brown packing paper versus an identical roll of printer-grade paper? Alternatively, you could try bleaching strips of, say, pine by boiling in a sodium hydroxide solution to remove the lignin. Different boil times, washing steps etc can adjust the lignin level and wood pH as needed.

You know what it might be. Lamp black being soot that came off of fire. Might mean that it's the most stable of the carbon being burned. Think about it it's already managed to go through temperatures hot enough to ignite in the flame but didn't. Also think about all the extra baffles and things we put in wood stoves to get the temperatures in their hot enough to burn that stuff.

I worked in the wine industry almost 50 years and we used activated charcoal (carbon) to decolor and absorb off odors. It was food grade and pure. It made awful BP. My assessment: the impurities in other carbon sources actually benefit the reaction. I also tried using dusting sulfur (used in the vineyard to control pests and disease) and it performed poorly, too. It has an anti-caking additive. My assessment: the impurities inhibit the reaction. My final conclusion: Trail and error trumps science. I enjoy your videos. Thanks.

Activated charcoal would be interesting. Ammonium nitrate would be interesting to see if you can use the stuff

I admire your courage

These are really fun and interesting experiments. I wonder how Anthracite or Coke would work? Thank for taking the time to film your adventures.

Well, thats better than i expected. I kind of figured it might just become like the old Snakes we used to light off on the fourth of July.

Have noticed that velocity is inversely proportional to the number of times you miss your pocket with the power flask.😅😅 Also, obviously, carbon black is made from extracting the fowling from previously used patches.

Thanks for the experiment. Damn that was a black patch! I hope you got a stump needs blasting.

Thank you!

I'm glad you tried.

I am learning a lot! Thanks for the fun videos as well! I was somewhat deceived by the name of what was used, “lamp black”. In contrast with the toity paper, it seems its a “toss up and give it a shot”, “hit or miss” process with the type of char used. It does make for great videos!! Thanks again!

Oh buddy I surely enjoyed the this demonstration! Thanks Jake The good the bad the ugly. All of these examples are great, even the fails. Touché

Thank goodness the Kibler barrels are made so well, along with the rest of the rifle.

Jake, If I am just getting started what size screens should I purchase and which ones do you recommend? Thanks for what you do. Great Material !!!! And I love your attitude about everything!!!!

In my opinion your a Mad Scientist who's going to blow us all to kingdom come. Thank you doctor

I thought you tube pulled you channel ! I tried to watch your channel last week and both times I got a white screen that said no longer available. Glad I was wrong.

I spoke to my brother who is a chemist about this. His take is that because pure carbon has a stable crystal structure it won't react as much during the explosion - causing the poor performance and the amount of carbon residue left behind. He says graphite would produce a worse result. We talked about the toilet paper charcoal and he said because the paper is almost pure cellulose the process probably results in a form of gun cotton where the structure is more open allowing the nitrate to better react with carbon.

Soot has a very small amount of surface area topologically compared to charcoal. So there is less surface area for the other reagents to interact. Likely the Toilet paper, being mostly aerated carbon, provides a far larger surface area for reagent interaction per volume than the soot. To test that hypothesis, you could use and compare fractal carbon sources, like coconut husk, cork, or even balsa charcoal and see if they approach the TP test.

Thanks for another interesting video. I'm surprised at the amount of fowling this stuff leaves behind.

Hello & Thank you for everything you do! I'm a long time collector but just not getting into muzzleloaders and am somewhat obsessive with my hobbies. Have or can you try Birch wood to make the charcoal ? My understanding is that the speed the wood burns at is a huge factor so it might be perfect!

Great video

Have you tried plain old activated charcoal? From the aquarium store. As I understand it there is an extra step of injecting steam into the tort to drive off more VOCs, in theory, it should be more reactive. it would be interesting to go full chemistry geek on a batch, there is lots of crud in household chemicals. The stump remover is easy to clean, dissolve the stump remover in water, then evaporate the water. The sulfur on the other hand is basically the same but you have to dissolve it in nearly boiling xylene (basically gas) so not trivial from a safety perspective.

One thing many people misunderstand about charcoal is that it's not pure carbon. There are impurities in charcoal, mainly hydrogen and oxygen, that change the properties.

The Japanese use soot for some pyrotechnic compositions, which is formed when burning coniferous trees with a high rosin content. This soot differs significantly in its pyrotechnic properties from technical gas soot. Pure carbon (lamp black) is not suitable for pyrotechnics - it is written in all pyrotechnic manuals. It forms at too high a temperature and is therefore partially graphitized. It has reduced flammability and gorenje rate.

I once made BP using darco filter powder. Darco is a very fine super activated charcoal for industrial filter purpose. I used it to filter impurities from petroleum solvents. It did not make good BP, the burn rate was slower than BP I made from hardwoods.

The carbon black has lots of oil, and I could see how that would not combust completely, and could varnish the barrel. I wanted to test this but I'm glad you took the time to disprove this. I might consider a toilet paper with the least amount of additives. Maybe camping or composting toilet paper.

It would be curious to see how your process affects the final outcome. You should try taking Swiss or Goex and run it through your process (wetting, pressing, pucking, and grinding it) and then testing it against itself as it come out of the bottle. You’d know your process is good if it averages the same chronograph results before and after.

I like all your videos. Keep up the great work. There's no shame in swabbing the bore after every shot.

Carbon Black is drrived from hydrocarbons, and its primary use is in making tires, but it has many other uses as well.

I've been in the oil and gas business (control design for over 1/2 of it) for about 46 years. When I was a kid we lived in Borger, TX and my dad was a construction superintendent in the Carbon Black plant west of town. As I remember it hey were increasing the size of the bag filters, which increased the recovery of carbon black. "Black" is made by burning gas, oil, or both extra rich. If you've ever lit a cutting torch or rosebud you've seen the soot that is formed if a hydrocarbon is burning rich. The soot is trapped in the bag filters. Once a bank of filters is "full" they switch to a new set, "puff" the set that are dirty (not sure how that was done, I was a teenager and that's how he explained it) to recover the carbon black. FYI- "petroleum product" = hydrocarbon = a molecule of hydrogen and carbon with a ratio of CnH2n+2. For instance, propane = C3H8. That's all it is. It's about as green an energy source as it gets. I think properly combusted wood is likely to have more "things" in it that would make it a better source of carbon than carbon black. Black is too pure. It's literally just carbon. Now back to see what the video results are (bet I can guess).

This is a great series! The sky is the limit (almost) with what you can turn into carbon as I hear it's pretty abundant 😉. Maybe try foods? Cured meats come to mind for some reason. Exotic woods like ebony if that hasn't been done yet. Thanks for your work you've already done. I'm definitely subbing

Well I know not to waste time with that stuff..loved the video Big J

I love this channel! Have you ever tried blackhorn 209 in your bp cartridges?

Graphite similarly will not preform well. Once again it’s because of the surface area of the carbon source not being large enough to burn efficiently.