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- Jul 31, 2006
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I just got a new (to me) book - "The Big Bang - a History of Explosives" by G. I. Brown 1998. The first 80 or so pages (about 1/3 of the book) are devoted to black powder. Talk of lead (how soft, where to find it, etc) in other posts made me take special notice of a use for lead that I had never heard of - the TRAUZL test. Invented by Isidor Trazul (a manager of Nobel's Austrian factory), the test consists of putting 10 grams of black (or smokeless) powder in a 25mm hole in a 200mm dia lead block & setting the charge off. The power of the powder being tested is measured by the amount of deformity in the lead block. Supposedly the Trauzl test is still used in some countries in lieu of a ballistic pendulum. Who would have thought?