I've Always Wondered

I have always wondered, In the mixture of the 3 ingredients that we all know that make up black powder, why did they choose to use charcoal?
Isn't there a better carbon source that would be easier to use and would be easier to have it be the same time every time. It seems that charcoal would be something that would be hard to get the same every time you make it. :idunno:
Hope I explained that ok.

AK Mike said:

I have always wondered, In the mixture of the 3 ingredients that we all know that make up black powder, why did they choose to use charcoal?
Isn't there a better carbon source that would be easier to use and would be easier to have it be the same time every time. It seems that charcoal would be something that would be hard to get the same every time you make it. :idunno:
Hope I explained that ok.

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Seems to me charcoal would be the easiest ingredient to get....and the most common, as well.
Every house had a fireplace......

Seems that every clump of charcoal would be different and the mix would work differently with each batch.
Maybe I'm just to used to modern standards for everything.

From what I've read and heard, each had his own type of wood to make charcoal from. Each had an opinion what was cleanest, worked best, etc.

They preferred willow, as I understand it.

What do you expect for people who thought disease was caused by swallowing gnomes and geese came from gooseneck barnicles? I'd say they did pretty good! The black powder formulation goes back to the 1200's.

Carbon is an element. Once you've reduced wood fiber to that it doesn't matter the source. Carbon is carbon.

From a elemental standpoint, yes, carbon is carbon but when making the charcoal for gunpowder there are differences in the final product.

Various woods have more in them than carbon so, after the wood is heated in a oxygen free chamber there are many different things that is left in the charcoal.

Take Elephant Brand for instance. As I recall from reading some of Bill Knights writings about its production they threw in the wood and the bark as well. The resulting charcoal had a lot of non-combustables in it.
This contributed to the fouling that Elephant was famous for.

Swiss powder on the other hand uses charcoal that was made without the bark on the wood and I believe they only use alder. This, some say, contributes to its clean burning.

It is still unknown who first made black powder or exactly where it was made.

One thing about it is pretty certain though.
The original batch sure would have gotten the makers attention when he tried to light it. :rotf:

Ok, I might be way out in left field here, but I don't think the carbon content has much to do with the combustibility of black powder. As I understand it, charcoal is a fuel, and the salt peter and sulpher are oxidizers. Could be it's the other way around, the point is, carbon by itself doesn't burn. If you've ever used a carbon gouger for cutting out old welds, the carbon rod is used specifically for its non-combustible properties.

I'm thinking charcoal just happens to be the best "fuel" for black powder, stumbled upon by pure accident, I'm sure. If you mixed pure carbon with the other ingredients to make black powder, in the manufacturers usual method, I'm guessing it would probably just fizzle, like on one of the Myth Busters episodes :grin: . Bill

Well I'm just guessing, but see'ins how the Chinese invented the stuff 3000yrs ago, that somewhere between then and now someone might have tried a different carbon source. And for some reason through all those years charcoal has just plain proven itself to be abundant and reliable,, :idunno:

necchi said:

Well I'm just guessing, but see'ins how the Chinese invented the stuff 3000yrs ago, that somewhere between then and now someone might have tried a different carbon source. And for some reason through all those years charcoal has just plain proven itself to be abundant and reliable,, :idunno:

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I was taught (Im a product of the public school system)that a Chinese monk invented "gun powder" by accident, it was assumed he wasnt using nitro or any aluminum firecracker stuff :haha: but I never read anywhere since the details of said monk's mix.

(this was in the 1970s before they taught the kids that the Texans defending the Alamo were the aggressors)

The invention of black powder begs the question of what was the potassium nitrate being being prepped for to start with. It's possible that the use in food preservation may have been discovered that far back...who knows.

I believe present day BP is replicating the original BP used in the guns we shoot. If you want to change the ingredients you don't have BP anymore.

You have a BP sub.

GoodCheer said:

begs the question of what was the potassium nitrate being being prepped for to start with.

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Interesting thought, Maybe it was found by the same guy that figgured out you can eat raw Oysters ! :haha:

Yea, I guess it would'nt be real black powder if you used a more modern pure ingredient in it's place.

Saltpeter is a completely natural material found in caves, dirt cellers, etc. It is formed by bacteria digesting ammonia type wastes that purculated down through the ground. It was something that could be found easily by early civilizations. It is an oxidizer in that when heated it readily gives off oxygen. I suspect that someone accidentally tossed a little pinch of it on a glowing wood coal ember and saw that it flared up, sparking their interest. Now volcanoes are a source of power and big fire and you can always find sulphur near their vents. People would have known that it burns well and sort of had magical properties, so its not too much of a stretch to see that they might have wanted to add this ingredient to their new discovery to see if it also has an interesting effect.

We use charcloth to catch a spark because it is very soft and easily starts glowing from a spark. Softwood charcoal is similarly soft and easy to get ignited. On the other hand, just try catching a spark on hard coal from a coal mine, which is mostly carbon. So they probably tried many things over the years but kept coming back to charcoal because of easier ignition. When you think about it, BP is truly amazing in that not only does just a tiny spark get it started, but that the entire combustion process goes off in one quick flash.

Coal dust will fire up though. Many mine fires will verify that. Poor guys.

ANY fine, airborne dust will expode. We used to have to store microscopic glass beads (PMMA beads) used in an emulsion process in a mega-costly-to-construct explosion proof building. Grain elevators occasionally blow-up from dust explosions.