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Static and blackpowder.

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Shocking...

If "static" can't set off black powder, then why do/did some powder companies safe guard against it???

They use non-sparking tools, wear felt soles on their wook boots, wooden hoppers to move powder about the plant...
 
Shocking...

If "static" can't set off black powder, then why do/did some powder companies safe guard against it???

They use non-sparking tools, wear felt soles on their wook boots, wooden hoppers to move powder about the plant...


In an attempt to avoid ANY form of "spark" from metal, such as the nails in the heel of yore shoe may create a spark on concrete, same goes for the wood hoppers and non-spark'n tools. Sparks from metal, are red-hot slivers of molten metal jest like the "sparks" from yore frizzen!!

YMHS
rollingb
 
The study mentions voltage but not current. He could have been shooting high voltage/low current sparks into the powder. I don't know how much current is present in a typical static discharge (like when you walk across carpet and then grab something and get a zap), but I do know that current is the real killer. For example, you can zap somebody with a 500,000 volt stun gun and not kill them because though the voltage is high the Amperes (current) are low. I'm not an electrician, but I fooled around with enough Radio Shack kits as a kid to tell you that not all sparks are created equal! :shocking: :thumbsup:

P.S. With all the folks on this forum, we're bound to have somebody who knows a bit more about electricity than the rest of us. Hopefully, they'll see this and help us out. :thumbsup:
 
I tried this experiment before using my Tesla Coil... (50'000+ volts)

It sent a 9 inch spark between the two electrobes, I had a line of FFFg between the two contacts, it did not ignite... :shake:

But it was fun trying... :winking:
 
musketeer

you are absolutely correct current(ampheres)=heat, voltage=pressure.
a high voltage /low current spark such as an ignition coil @60,000 volts and 4amps current can certainly stop your heart but not burn you,however ,if you short a wire accross a car battery @ 12 v and 360 a it can leave a real nasty burn ,not to mention blow up a battery. :nono: :nono: :shake: :cry:
 
This has been a long debated subject in BPCR. (Black Powder Cartridge Rifles)and LRBPCR.
Lyman and Hornady manufactures a Powder Measure "JUST FOR" black powder. Because of this, I think, there was suddenly a static electricity problem, if you wanted to use another type measurer.

I am certainly no expert in this matter, but I think the static electricity thingy has needlesly put the fear of God in many shooters, while promoting sales for a few companies.

Or...it could have been the legal "advisor", the same one who thinks the firearms company is responsible for the misuse of their product by the consumer.

Take your choice on the "why's" of static electricity, but don't bet no money on it's presence doing anything....other than scaring the daylights out of you when you see it.
Russ
 
Musketman,

In bp plants you have two possibilities.

The first is minute dust suspended in the air. As such it is prone to ignition with static discharges, same as in a grain elevator with cellulose dust from grain.

In powder plants you have very fine dust, down in the 20 to 50 micron size range coating machinery and portions of the structure.

Meditate on this one.
Now we all know that wool is prone to causing static sparks when you rub it.
The German Federal bp plant, in the 19th century, laid sheep skins on the floors of wheel mill buildings. Fleece side up. At the end of each shift these were removed and replaced with clean ones. The dirty ones being washed.
Wheel mill house floors were either brick or cement. Shoes with wooden pegs were used. Nails in shoe soles or heels could cause ignition of powder dust on the floors.

Corning mills blew up on startup or running because they created heat as they broke up the large pieces of bp.
Heat and ONLY heat will ignite bp. If the bp is as a very fine particle size dust it does not take much to reach the ignition temperature with a few particles trapped between pinch points or should a static spark happen.

The Germans investigated this in a detailed manner back in the early 20th century. The results having been reported in the 1914 Chemical Abstracts.
The U.S. Bureau Of Mines looked at this during WWII. In 2000 this was again looked at by one BP importer and one bp sub manufacturer.
They could not get bp to go off by frictional impact testing nore by static spark discharge testing.
They only proved what the Germans determined early in the 19th century.
 
Awe common MM. You're forgetting lots of science here.
Flash point being one of them.
Suspended dust another.
Explosions in flower and wood mills another.
Dust, don'cha'know. Flash points. Heat. Go figure please.
 
I worked for a photographic film and paper manufacturer. We used a product so explosive that it required special handing machinery and a $2M explosion proof building. It was called PMMA beads. Just microscopic glass spheres used to make the emulsion flow better. No active ingredients at all. If they ever were allowed to form a cloud of dust it was extremely explosive (and static was among the fears). Dust explosions are strange things indeed.
 
It was called PMMA beads. Just microscopic glass spheres used to make the emulsion flow better.
We use that in the rubber industry, there's at least a 1000 pounds of it at my work place...

coolpic3513b.jpg


OSHA make us use respirators with it, glass beads in the lungs is a nasty thing...
 
Has anyone ever read a documented case of static electricity setting off powder? I looked and actually could NOT find anything definitive. A couple instances where "static" was mentioned as a possible cause in an unexplained explosion where most if not all of the evidence was destroyed. I do practice safe handling of BP even down to buying genuine brass hinges and hardware for my range box and not brass plated. I did find multiple documented cases of a single spark or open flame igniting black powder. I also found a YouTube video of a guy firing a musket in close proximity of bulk 1 lb powder container and it ignited. That was pretty scary to watch. I never bring bulk black powder to the range. I have sealed individual powder chargers (one for each ball I bring. I do have a pan primer but I never load fast enough for that to be an issue. I also swab between shots. That's just for consistency but the side effect is it extinguishes any residual embers in the barrel.
 

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I was at the Swiss Distributor and the static electricity discussion came up.

They poured out a line of Swiss BP and tried get it to light with a stun gun and they could not get it to light.

Static electricity is not going to set off BP.
 
Powder plants have blown up over the years it may have been from static electricity in a few cases, but I think for those of us just shooting it is a non issue. I've too have not heard of someone having an explosion from static electricity.
 
I've never heard of a documented case of static electricity causing black powder to ignite.

Electricity's power is measured by two things which work hand in hand with each other.
The first is "voltage", which can be thought of as the power that causes the electricity to move thru something. The second is "amperage" which can be thought of as the real power or the thing that actually does the work. To find out how much work a charge of electricity will do we multiply the voltage times the amperage and come up with something called a Watt. Yes, it is the same "watt" that is shown on a light bulb or a microwave ovens tag.

Electricity also has another strange feature. It comes in positive (+) and negative (-) forms and if it is in the positive form, it doesn't like the other positive electricity around it. Likewise, if it is in its negative form, it doesn't like any other negative electricity.

Static electricity has a huge amount of voltage. That's why it can jump thru air creating a spark. It also has very little amperage so even if the spark hits something it doesn't create a lot of heat. (Yes, I know that lightning is static electricity and lightning can cause fires but the reason for this is, a lightning bolt has so much power like in the millions or billions of volts, that there is also enough amperage to cause enough heat to light something like a tree or your house on fire.)
Static electricity is also different from the spark in a spark plug in your car. The spark in your car has a lot of amperage in it so the spark from a ignition system does create a lot of heat as it travels from one spark plug electrode to the other one. The air and gasoline vapor between the electrodes creates the resistance needed to bring out the heat from a ignition systems spark.

In order for electricity to make heat, which is needed to cause black powder to light, we must have something that resists the flow of electricity thru it. If the electricity can pass thru something easily little or no heat will be made. (Think of a copper electric wire). If something does have a lot of resistance, if there is enough voltage to allow the electricity to pass thru it a lot of heat will be made, like the filament in a incandescent light bulb.

Black powder has a lot of carbon in it and carbon is a fairly good conductor of electricity so when the static charge hits some black powder it just travels around the outside of it (remember, it doesn't like itself so the charge on one side of a grain of powder pushes the charge on the other side away from it), and because of the low resistance, it doesn't create enough heat to light the powder.

No heat? No boom.
 
Static electricity will most certainly ignite gunpowder.. I have watched demonstrations of this on several occasions at the UK Military College of Science.

I grant you that igniting glazed, corned GP is probably the hardest thing to do, but igniting GP dust is much easier. As has been pointed out, it is the overall energy in the spark that is the main indicator of its ignition potential, but be in no doubt, the temperature created when air ionises (..which is what a spark is!) is well above the ignition point of GP. When you have a low energy spark, the point temperature is usually quickly dispersed, and the ignition potential is low, but this is never a precise indicator of non ignition.

Achieving high levels of static electrical charge is actually quite difficult as in most cases the environment is usually conductive enough to drain it away. Be careful however of extremes of temperature, both high and low when the moisture level is low as this is when static can build up.
 
Where did you get your plastic tubes and carrier. Looks like a great way to carry for hunting. Sorry guys i like old guns , carrying the horn not so much
 
Here we go again. With a 16 year old thread no less.

When someone ignites some powder, or blows up a horn or something, with static electricity, and there can be no debate that it was the static that did it, then, then,,,,,, bring it up again. Until then, a rent we just rehashing the same thing? Don't we do enough of that already o subjects that we don't, and can't have a scientifically based answer/conclusion to?
 

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