3/26/2019 Making Gunpowder

From The Foxfire Book, Volume 5 - © 1979 The Foxfire Fund;

"Black powder is and isn't hard to make depending on which end you look at it from. It is a long and tiresome
task if you make more than ten pounds at a time.

"Out on the West Coast, as in some southern states, the trend by the government is to prevent its sale with
mountains of red tape. Making your own black powder, however, is not unlawful as yet, as far as I know."

"By weight measure, black powder is made of seventy-five parts saltpeter finely ground, fifteen parts charcoal,
and ten parts sulfur. All ingredients must be fine ground separately. This can be accomplished with either a
mortar and pestle, or with a hand-cranked flour mill. Never mix all three ingredients before grinding unless you
want to turn your mill into a deadly grenade, or your mortar into a cannon that can blow off your fingers or even
your hand."

"Then the ingredients can be mixed with a small amount of water so the mixture comes out with biscuit-dough
consistency. Usually when I mix the ingredients, I add just enough stale urine to make the batch bunch about like
biscuit dough. The urine, substituted for water, gives the powder more oxygen and higher performance."

"Flowers of sulfur is ideal for gun powder, and it can be bought in most drug stores in four-ounce bottles or
pound cans."

"It can also be found in pure deposits around volcanoes, and in early times, because it was found where molten
lava issued from the earth, the sulfur condensed around the rims of the volcanoes was called brimstone."

"Today, in certain places around the world, sulfur is recovered from un- derground deposits by pumping live
steam underground through pipes. The sulfur melts and, being lighter than water, is easily pumped out at another
point close by. Then it is pumped into big ships that haul it to industries all over the world. That's why you can
buy a hundred-pound sack for about three dollars in most places.

"Saltpeter, the chemical that produces the oxygen for the other ingredients when lit off, can he made by putting
urine and manure of any kind in a big cement tank mixed with water until you have about three hundred gallons
mixed up. Then you put on a tight lid and let it sit for about ten months. You have to have a drain pipe and valve
at the bottom, and a stainless steel filter screen installed beforehand or you'll have one big mess on your hands.
At the end of that time, you run the liquid that drains off through ashes into shallow wooden trays lined with
plastic sheeting and let them stand for evaporation in the sun. When the water evaporates, potassium nitrate
crystals (saltpeter) will form in the bottom of the trays."

"In the old days in cities, most outhouses were fitted with trays or drawers under the seats that could be pulled
out from behind the building. They had night-soil collectors who were paid so much every month by the
outhouse owners to keep those drawers emptied, and they'd come around with a special wagon into which they
dumped the contents. When the wagon was full, it was hauled out to where another fellow bought the contents
and dumped it into concrete tanks where the bacteria works it just like yeast works wine or bread dough. Then
the liquid was run through ashes into shallow tiled or plain concrete evaporating trays or basins to recover the
saltpeter."

"Today, saltpeter can also he bought in most drug stores in bottles or cans."

"Charcoal provides the carbon needed when the powder is lit off. When burning, the carbon assists in making
potassium carbonates and carbon sulfates during the one one hundredth of a second that it is burning. Most of

https://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/foxfire5.html 1/4
3/26/2019 Making Gunpowder

this is released at the muzzle of a smoke pole in the form of powder smoke. Some remains in the barrel in the
form of fouling and should be swabbed out about every third shot if the shooter wants the round ball to continue
to shoot true."

"The charcoal should never be made from hardwood as hardwood has too much ash. Such woods as chinaberry,
willow, cottonwood, soft pine with no knots, or redwood and Western cedar make the best grade charcoal. A
fifty-five-gallon drum with a snap-on lid and a match-stem-sized hole in the lid set over a fire Pit is a good
charcoal maker. Take the wood and chip it or cut it into inch chunks and put a bucketful in the drum. Then build
a hardwood fire under the drum and when smoke begins to spurt from the vent, light the wood with a match.
When the flame goes out, your charcoal is made. Rake the fire out from under the drum, plug the vent with a bit
of asbestos fiber or a nail that fits in tight, and let the drum sit overnight to cook. You can then crush and powder
the charcoal with a mortar and pestle, or run it through a hand-cranked grain grinder to a flourlike fineness. "

"By the way, Just yesterday I took time out and made batch of powder, and this time, when I mixed the
ingredients, I added homemade alder charcoal instead of redwood and improved the powder's performance 100
per cent. I recently bought a tight little sheet-metal heater stove for camp cooking and by accident discovered
that getting a load of alder going good and then closing it UP tight and dampering it until it went out and turned
cold converted the alder into nice pure charcoal. "

"When making black powder, never add any other ingredients or explosive powders unless you wish to turn your
muzzle loader into a grenade that can kill you or cripple you for life. Keep your black powder stored in steel,
airtight cans in a cool, dry place, and out of the reach of children. My parents failed to do that, and I've carried
powder marks on my face for the last thirty years. A ten-year-old may think he knows what he's doing, but ten
years don't give him enough prudence to think many things out ahead of time before he lights that match."

"The nice thing about shooting black powder is that commercial black costs about two cents a round, and
homemade about a half-cent a round. "

As the demand for powder grew in the Southern Appalachians, fairly large operations came into being for its
manufacture. As Jim Moran told us, "Powder was made in this area. The big powder mill that was around here is
gone now--the place burned up and all. But it was on Boozy Creek, and it was operated back in the early 1800s
and possibly before by the Hughes family. They were also gunsmiths. They were somehow connected with the
blockhouse which was on the Wilderness Road. That was where Boone wintered after his son was bushwhacked
on the Wilderness Road. Now that was quite a settlement around there. One winter I went up on Timbertree
Branch near the blockhouse site and there were about ten or fifteen cabins around there made out of poplar logs.
They were only about twelve feet square--didn't have any windows or anything in them. I think they were the
residue of that holdup of immigration when those people got that far and they were afraid to go on. I went back
over there about five years ago, but there's none of that left there now."

"But these Hughes, they ground that powder on millstones. I found that out. I know one man who found the old
order book for the powder mill. He had it photostated. That mill blew up twice. One time they found shoe tacks
in the charcoal. The story was that it was sabotaged. One time it blew a fellow's hand off."

"Willow charcoal is what they used for the powder. And then saltpeter- you know you hear about saltpeter caves.
Over around Saltville they've found a lot of the vats and stuff where they leached that out from bat guano. That
was done during the Civil War. In fact, they've uncovered one of those caves in the last ten years or so and found
the vats still intact in the cave. That's Saltville, which is about thirty-five or forty miles north of here. And the
same thing in Big Stone Gap. Powder for the Battle of King's Mountain was made on Powder Branch near
Erwin, Tennessee."

Another of these operations was located in Mammoth Cave. Recently, in a remarkable experiment there,
potassium nitrate crystals from saltpeter were produced again in the traditional method. Carol A. Hill, one of the
coordinators for the Saltpeter Research Group, describes the procedure that was used that day:

https://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/foxfire5.html 2/4
3/26/2019 Making Gunpowder

"Before the 187Os, caves were the primary source of nitrate used in the manufacture of gunpowder. Saltpeter
mining was one of the first major industries of the new frontier, and one of the principle objectives of exploring
new territory was to find saltpeter caves. Caves were mined by individuals and also commercially for national
defense purposes during the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. Many homesteaders in the
Virginias, Kentucky, and Tennessee had their own individual saltpeter caves and from them would make their
own gunpowder in home-constructed V-vats or 'hoppers.'

"Making a V-vat entailed using a peg-and-hole construction. The holes were made with
a hand auger; the pegs by whittling down the end of a log with a hatchet and then by
trimming with a knife . The frame was then pounded together with a wooden mallet . A
froe was used to make the side boards. Bolts of wood that were straight-grained and well
seasoned were the best for this purpose. The glut was used as a wedge to split the log
base of the collecting trough. The trough was then hewn out with a foot adze and
hatchet. After the hopper was constructed, twigs were laid in the bottom of the vat, and
then wheat straw was laid on top of the twigs and along the side boards to help keep the
vat from leaking.

"Cave dirt was tested for its nitrate potential by the following procedure: A footprint or mark was made in the
dirt and left for twenty-four hours. If the print was scarcely visible by the next day, then the dirt was deemed
high in niter. A mattock was used to break up the cave dirt, and a
wooden saltpeter paddle was used for digging and scraping The dirt
was removed from the cave in gunny sacks and poured on top of
the twig and straw in the V-vat. Buckets of water were then poured
over the saltpeter dirt to leach it of its nitrate or 'Mother liquor'. The
mother liquor (also sometimes called 'beer' would run down the
sides of the V-vat and into the split-log base and out into the
collecting trough. A dipper gourd was often used to transfer the
mother liquor into a container. This same liquor was poured again
and again over the saltpeter dirt because releaching caused more
nitrates to be dissolved. According to the old reports, releaching
went on until the solution was of sufficient density to float an egg.

"The next step was to combine the mother liquor rich in calcium nitrate with wood ashes that contain high
amounts of potassium hydroxide. The best woodashes for this purpose were made by burning hardwoods such as
oak and hickory. The mother liquor was either poured directly over the woodashes or the woodashes were
leached in barrels and the leachate directly combined with the mother liquor. Upon combination, a white haze
could be seen , and this white precipitate (calcium hydroxide or 'curds' as it was called) would slowly sink to the
bottom of the barrel. If the solution contained an excess of calcium nitrate, the product was termed 'in the
grease.' An excess of woodashes produced a condition called 'in the ley.'

The wood ash leachate was poured into the mother liquor until the white curds could no longer be seen
precipitating out of solution. The remaining solution thus contained the still soluble potassium nitrate. This
solution was dipped out into an apple-butter kettle (or"evaporator'), and a fire started under the kettle. Turnip
halves were then thrown into the boiling solution to help keep it from foaming and to take up the dirty brown
color. Oxblood (or alum) was also added to the boiling liquid and caused the organic matter to rise to the top of
the liquid and form a scum which, with continued boiling, was constantly ladled off. After a few hours of
boiling, the hot liquor was poured through cheesecloth in order to filter out the remaining scum and organic
material. Upon cooling, fine, bitter, needle-shaped crystals of niter (potassium nitrate) formed in the liquor.
These crystals were then collected and dried. Potassium nitrate crystals were far superior to calcium or sodium-
https://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/foxfire5.html 3/4
3/26/2019 Making Gunpowder

nitrate crystals because they are non-deliquescent (do not take up moisture from the air) and, hence, would not
make the gunpowder wet and unusable. The nitrate crystals thus obtained had to be further refined and purified.
This purification procedure was done either by the individual and homemade into gunpowder, or it was done
after the saltpeter crystals were sent to a refinery where the final gunpowder was made."

Return to Main

https://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/foxfire5.html 4/4