If your ball mill is producing hard golf balls of powder it means that your saltpeter has absorbed too much water from the atmosphere and the ball mill can't do its job. Saltpeter is hygroscopic stuff - it can be dried by spreading it on a pan and putting it into a dehydrator or oven preheated to 155'F for 45 minutes or so, if you measure the weight of the saltpeter before and after there will be a big difference in water weight. My saltpeter, freshly purchased, after dehydration has lost 20% of its weight (24 grams saltpeter has actually turned out to be 16 grams saltpeter and 8 grams water). This throws the proportions in your powder way off, there will be too little saltpeter in your black powder if you do not use dry saltpeter, also, water in your saltpeter causes the saltpeter to clump into hard balls inside your ball mill, preventing the ball mill from doing its job finely incorporating the ingredients. This ends up creating poor, slow burning, inefficient powder. A lot of people in humid climates (or with saltpeter suppliers from humid climates) never understand what is going wrong with the performance of their powder. Ball milled powder with softwood charcoal should be excellent - the equivalent of Swiss. Better than Goex (which is made with maple charcoal). I have found that a lot of hobbyists are not aware of this serious issue. Good luck and have fun!

OK, when I started building BP I only had the basic recipe, so that is what I used, that was 10 years ago, I now have a 20 ton press and a puking die, 2.5" and use a 77-13-10 mixture. Enough of that. I make 200 grams minimum, I want to know what it does over a long run, (most goes into a 45-70 cartridge). I only used Acetone one time, then I went to distilled alcohol, much cleaner, not quite as fast in the atmosphere, but 200 fps to be precise out the 45-70 bore with the same charge. Then I tried the water, big difference, I have tried water from a waste way and in a well +, store bought distilled. The water from the waste way was awful, tough cleanup in the bore. Well water was OK, but still tough from the bore. Distilled was the best, but it also matters whose water you use. Anyway, the alcohol was way better in my cartridge rifle compared to Acetone. Honestly, I hate the use of water, use Alcohol, put it in the sun or any low heat for a while then puck it up, little or no loss of KNO3 or other elements and it works pretty good. I did try a half pond with the CIA and alcohol and let it dry in the sun, really worked well, give it a try.

Very interesting!

Another powder testing great video by Michael The Powder Testing Wizard of New Mexico! Love it! You sure are making powder making easier for we less experienced Michael and much appreciated as well! Very interesting results and that quick burn surprised me as well! Holy Moly! SWISH!!! Thank You Kindly and Many Blessings! I’m looking forward to the ultimate test at the range? DaveyJO in Pennsylvania

Extremely well done, and the burn test was in a category all of its own. I have not yet tried acetone, but you just convinced me I should make a batch for myself.. THANKS.. That burn 🔥 in my mind was stunning WOW!!! CONGRATULATIONS...

Cool, I have been tossing around. Should I make my powder

The same thing actually occured to me too. I have never seen the combination of the CIA method and pucking; but why not? The CIA method is interesting, because when adding acetone or ethanol, you are creating a liquid in which the potassium nitrate cannot stay in solution; hence it will seek other company, being the charcoal/sulphur.

very interesting, I will also try using distilled water to make my pressed powder. who knows if we will ever be able to make a sort of perfect black powder

I thank you for the testing. Your results are very interesting. Have you tried amonium nitrate? That is a little faster than potassiom nitrate. You be doing a great job.

Great tests Mike. Very interesting results. Have you had a chance to test on the range? Thanks for the time you obviously put into all this, I do appreciate it.

Great tests, that would be interesting test your own destilled water with acetone but at 75-25% ratio, i mentioned in last video using acetone for faster drying in not so dry weather condition, maybe this ratio will have the best of both worlds, the clean burn of pure destilled water, and the fast burn of 50/50 water/ acetone mix. Just my hypothesis

Nie ma sprawy. Pewnie nie wiesz ale trafiłeś nawet do Polski. U nas bardzo popularne są czarno prochowe rewolwery colt oraz remington. Jedną z ciekawostek jest to że w Polsce w 1863 roku wybuchło anty rosyjskie powstanie narodowe w którym to nieliczni powstańcy używali rewolweru colt navy 1851. To taka mała ciekawostka historyczna z przeszłości. Serdecznie pozdrawiam i dziękuję za świetne filmy 👍. W języku angielskim rozumiem prawie wszystko ale pisać niestety nie potrafię dlatego przepraszam że piszę w swoim języku.

Looks pretty fast! Been making my iwn BP now for a few years, some things ive adopted to make powder as good as Goex or Swiss: use toilet paper for your charcoal- high surface area makes it a very clean burning fuel. I go with 52 potassium nitrate, 25 potassium perchlorate, 9 sulfur, 14 TP charcoal. When i puck i add 10-12% by weight of puck binder to the powder before compressing, the binder is made by dissolving 10-15 grams of dextrin into 200mls of hot water, then blending this with an equal volume of stale urine. Dextrin can be obtained from the biodegradable packaging 'cheetos'. When i corn my pucks i prefer to cut them down to size using a salad chopper or cooking knife, crushing them too much creates super fine powder that has to be recycled, cutting creates less wastage. When ive corned and screened my powder, last thing i do is tumble coat the grains with a small amount of graphite (0.5g per 100g of powder) to glaze and coat the grains. Im loading this powder currently into 7.62x 54mm, 50 grains compressed with a 200gr cast lead .312 w/ gas check, 1650 fps. 90 grains in my Savage ML-10 with a 240g .44 with sabot- 2100 fps. Cheers

Hi Mike, good video. Do you happen to know what CIA stands for?

Why would the powder stick to bottom? Is the tumbler not level?

What is the purpose/benefit of pucking the black powder? I've usually just screened the damp powder and let it dry. Does pucking make for a better burn? Thanks.

If acetone is evaporated is there still acetone left? Have you tried burning dried acetone or is your powder still damp with acetone?

CIA Method😂😂😂 I actually had to look into this, 😂😂 what is now CIA I have known for 20 some odd years as ARMY MANUAL way, which is basically boiling air drying and screening.

Whoa, whoa, whoa! You cannot make acetone by dissolving egg shells in vinegar. You get calcium acetate.

Ok, do you know the difference between hard and soft water? Hard water is your well water. Soft water is the city water that is filtered and treated. The acetone evaporates and does not stay in the powder. The idea is that acetone mixes the ingredients better. I don't believe acetone is that great. Any kno3, sulfur or charcoal screened out of your slurry is not in your powder and effects the burn rate. What I would try is hot distilled water to mix and add to mill. Check mill in two hours, stir up add water to keep it damp. Mill for another 2 hours. Then make damp again and puck it. Do some also without pucking too.

Hmmm hammering pucks of gun powder in a metal tray …. 🤔