Black Powder

Black powder substitute - Wikipedia

Low explosives deflagrate i. Ignition of gunpowder packed behind a projectile generates enough pressure to force the shot from the muzzle at high speed, but usually not enough force to rupture the gun barrel. Gunpowder thus makes a good propellant, but is less suitable for shattering rock or fortifications with its low-yield explosive power. However, by transferring enough energy from the burning gunpowder to the mass of the cannonball, and then from the cannonball to the opposing fortifications by way of the impacting ammunition eventually a bombardier may wear down an opponent's fortified defenses.

Gunpowder was widely used to fill fused artillery shells and used in mining and civil engineering projects until the second half of the 19th century, when the first high explosives were put into use. Based on a 9th-century Taoist text, the invention of gunpowder by Chinese alchemists was likely an accidental byproduct from experiments seeking to create elixir of life.

In the following centuries various gunpowder weapons such as bombs , fire lances , and the gun appeared in China. Saltpeter was known to the Chinese by the mid-1st century AD and was primarily produced in the provinces of Sichuan , Shanxi , and Shandong. The Chinese Wujing Zongyao Complete Essentials from the Military Classics , written by Zeng Gongliang between and , provides encyclopedia references to a variety of mixtures that included petrochemicals—as well as garlic and honey.

A slow match for flame throwing mechanisms using the siphon principle and for fireworks and rockets is mentioned. However, by the Song court was producing hundreds of thousands of fire arrows for their garrisons. Fire lances were first recorded to have been used at the Siege of De'an in by Song forces against the Jin. By some fire lances were firing wads of bullets. An arrow strapped with gunpowder ready to be shot from a bow. From the Huolongjing c. The oldest known depiction of rocket arrows, from the Huolongjing.

The right arrow reads "fire arrow", the middle is an "arrow frame in the shape of a dragon", and the left is a "complete fire arrow". An illustration of a thunderclap bomb as depicted in the text Wujing Zongyao. Considered to be a pseudo-explosive. The top item is a through awl and the bottom one is a hook awl. A fire lance as depicted in the Huolongjing c. The "flying-cloud thunderclap-eruptor" cannon from the Huolongjing c.

An organ gun known as the "mother of a hundred bullets gun" from the Huolongjing c. An illustration of a bronze "thousand ball thunder cannon" from the Huolongjing c. The "self-tripped trespass land mine" from the Huolongjing ca. The earliest Western accounts of gunpowder appear in texts written by English philosopher Roger Bacon in the 13th century. In Europe, one of the first mentions of gunpowder use appears in a passage found in Roger Bacon 's Opus Maius of and Opus Tertium in what has been interpreted as being firecrackers.

The most telling passage reads: From the violence of that salt called saltpeter [together with sulfur and willow charcoal, combined into a powder] so horrible a sound is made by the bursting of a thing so small, no more than a bit of parchment [containing it], that we find [the ear assaulted by a noise] exceeding the roar of strong thunder, and a flash brighter than the most brilliant lightning. This claim has been disputed by historians of science including Lynn Thorndike , John Maxson Stillman and George Sarton and by Bacon's editor Robert Steele , both in terms of authenticity of the work, and with respect to the decryption method.

One example of this composition resulted in parts saltpeter, 27 parts charcoal, and 45 parts sulfur, by weight. The Liber Ignium , or Book of Fires , attributed to Marcus Graecus, is a collection of incendiary recipes, including some gunpowder recipes. Partington dates the gunpowder recipes to approximately Another specifies a 1: Some of the gunpowder recipes of De Mirabilibus Mundi of Albertus Magnus are identical to the recipes of the Liber Ignium , and according to Partington, "may have been taken from that work, rather than conversely.

Black powder substitute

A major advance in manufacturing began in Europe in the late 14th century when the safety and thoroughness of incorporation was improved by wet grinding; liquid, such as distilled spirits [36] was added during the grinding-together of the ingredients and the moist paste dried afterwards. The principle of wet mixing to prevent the separation of dry ingredients, invented for gunpowder, is used today in the pharmaceutical industry. It was also discovered that if the paste was rolled into balls before drying the resulting gunpowder absorbed less water from the air during storage and traveled better.

The balls were then crushed in a mortar by the gunner immediately before use, with the old problem of uneven particle size and packing causing unpredictable results.

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If the right size particles were chosen, however, the result was a great improvement in power. Forming the damp paste into corn -sized clumps by hand or with the use of a sieve instead of larger balls produced a product after drying that loaded much better, as each tiny piece provided its own surrounding air space that allowed much more rapid combustion than a fine powder. An example is cited where 34 pounds of serpentine was needed to shoot a pound ball, but only 18 pounds of corned powder. Larger cast cannons were easily muzzle-loaded with corned powder using a long-handled ladle.

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Corned powder also retained the advantage of low moisture absorption, as even tiny grains still had much less surface area to attract water than a floury powder. During this time, European manufacturers also began regularly purifying saltpeter, using wood ashes containing potassium carbonate to precipitate calcium from their dung liquor, and using ox blood, alum , and slices of turnip to clarify the solution.

During the Renaissance, two European schools of pyrotechnic thought emerged, one in Italy and the other at Nuremberg, Germany. Now extremely rare, the book discusses the manufacturing of gunpowder, the operation of artillery and the rules of conduct for the gunsmith.

In Italy, Vannoccio Biringuccio , born in , was a member of the guild Fraternita di Santa Barbara but broke with the tradition of secrecy by setting down everything he knew in a book titled De la pirotechnia , written in vernacular. It was published posthumously in , with 9 editions over years, and also reprinted by MIT Press in By the midth century fireworks were used for entertainment on an unprecedented scale in Europe, being popular even at resorts and public gardens.

After he discovered that France was not self-sufficient in gunpowder, a Gunpowder Administration was established; to head it, the lawyer Antoine Lavoisier was appointed. Although from a bourgeois family, after his degree in law Lavoisier became wealthy from a company set up to collect taxes for the Crown; this allowed him to pursue experimental natural science as a hobby. Without access to cheap saltpeter controlled by the British , for hundreds of years France had relied on saltpetermen with royal warrants, the droit de fouille or "right to dig", to seize nitrous-containing soil and demolish walls of barnyards, without compensation to the owners.

Lavoisier instituted a crash program to increase saltpeter production, revised and later eliminated the droit de fouille , researched best refining and powder manufacturing methods, instituted management and record-keeping, and established pricing that encouraged private investment in works. Although saltpeter from new Prussian-style putrefaction works had not been produced yet the process taking about 18 months , in only a year France had gunpowder to export. A chief beneficiary of this surplus was the American Revolution.

By careful testing and adjusting the proportions and grinding time, powder from mills such as at Essonne outside Paris became the best in the world by , and inexpensive.

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Gunpowder production in Britain appears to have started in the mid 14th century with the aim of supplying the English Crown. By the early 14th century, according to N. Pounds's study The Medieval Castle in England and Wales, many English castles had been deserted and others were crumbling. Their military significance faded except on the borders. Gunpowder had made smaller castles useless. The English Civil War — led to an expansion of the gunpowder industry, with the repeal of the Royal Patent in August One of the most notable uses of gunpowder in Great Britain was the Gunpowder Plot of The plot was foiled when Guy Fawkes was found under the House of Lords with hidden barrels of gunpowder.

All assailants who had a role in the plot escaped but were eventually caught. King James later decreed that November 5th become a day of celebration, which is a tradition that carries on today known as Bonfire Night. Two British physicists, Andrew Noble and Frederick Abel , worked to improve the properties of black powder during the late 19th century. This formed the basis for the Noble-Abel gas equation for internal ballistics. The introduction of smokeless powder in the late 19th century led to a contraction of the gunpowder industry. After the end of World War I , the majority of the United Kingdom gunpowder manufacturers merged into a single company, "Explosives Trades limited"; and a number of sites were closed down, including those in Ireland.

The last remaining gunpowder mill at the Royal Gunpowder Factory, Waltham Abbey was damaged by a German parachute mine in and it never reopened. The Muslims acquired knowledge of gunpowder some time between and , by which point the Syrian Hasan al-Rammah had written, in Arabic, recipes for gunpowder, instructions for the purification of saltpeter, and descriptions of gunpowder incendiaries.

It is implied by al-Rammah's usage of "terms that suggested he derived his knowledge from Chinese sources" and his references to saltpeter as "Chinese snow" Arabic: Al-Hassan claims that in the Battle of Ain Jalut of , the Mamluks used against the Mongols in "the first cannon in history" gunpowder formula with near-identical ideal composition ratios for explosive gunpowder.

Khan claims that it was invading Mongols who introduced gunpowder to the Islamic world [57] and cites Mamluk antagonism towards early musketeers in their infantry as an example of how gunpowder weapons were not always met with open acceptance in the Middle East. The state-controlled manufacture of gunpowder by the Ottoman Empire through early supply chains to obtain nitre, sulfur and high-quality charcoal from oaks in Anatolia contributed significantly to its expansion between the 15th and 18th century.

It was not until later in the 19th century when the syndicalist production of Turkish gunpowder was greatly reduced, which coincided with the decline of its military might. Gunpowder and gunpowder weapons were transmitted to India through the Mongol invasions of India. Nasir ud din Mahmud tried to express his strength as a ruler and tried to ward off any Mongol attempt similar to the Siege of Baghdad The shipwrecked Ottoman Admiral Seydi Ali Reis is known to have introduced the earliest type of matchlock weapons, which the Ottomans used against the Portuguese during the Siege of Diu After that, a diverse variety of firearms, large guns in particular, became visible in Tanjore , Dacca , Bijapur , and Murshidabad.

The Mughal emperor Akbar mass-produced matchlocks for the Mughal Army. Akbar is personally known to have shot a leading Rajput commander during the Siege of Chittorgarh.

The Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan is known to have introduced much more advanced matchlocks, their designs were a combination of Ottoman and Mughal designs. Hyder Ali and his son Tipu Sultan were the first to introduce modern cannons and muskets , their army was also the first in India to have official uniforms. The Mysorean rockets inspired the development of the Congreve rocket , which the British widely utilized during the Napoleonic Wars and the War of The Javanese Majapahit Empire was arguably able to encompass much of modern-day Indonesia due to its unique mastery of bronze-smithing and use of a central arsenal fed by a large number of cottage industries within the immediate region.

Documentary and archeological evidence indicate that Arab traders introduced gunpowder, gonnes, muskets , blunderbusses , and cannons to the Javanese, Acehnese , and Batak via long established commercial trade routes around the early to mid 14th century. Javanese bronze breech-loaded swivel-guns, known as meriam , or erroneously as lantaka , was used widely by the Majapahit navy as well as by pirates and rival lords.

The demise of the Majapahit empire and the dispersal of disaffected skilled bronze cannon-smiths to Brunei , modern Sumatra , Malaysia and the Philippines lead to widespread use, especially in the Makassar Strait. Saltpeter harvesting was recorded by Dutch and German travelers as being common in even the smallest villages and was collected from the decomposition process of large dung hills specifically piled for the purpose.

Western Powders Company introduced Blackhorn in Like many other black powder substitutes, it is made to be a volumetric substitute of black powder. It is dispensed in "black powder powder measures" for muzzleloading applications. Blackhorn is essentially non-corrosive, low-fouling, very consistent in gas generation, but non-hygroscopic. The grain is the traditional measurement of the weight of bullets , black powder , and smokeless powder in English-speaking countries.

It is the unit measured by the scales used in handloading ; commonly, bullets are measured in increments of one grain, gunpowder in increments of 0.

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Pyrodex, and most other black powder substitutes, are formulated to be a volume-for-volume equivalent of black powder, not an equivalent mass-for-mass weight-for-weight. Pyrodex is measured by volumetric measurement techniques, not in grains on a scale, due to the difference in density of Pyrodex versus black powder. For example, to measure a "60 grain equivalent" of Hodgdon's Pyrodex suitable for use in a muzzleloader rifle, one uses a volumetric measure that produces a volume of Pyrodex equal to the volume of a mass of 60 grains of black powder.

Due to Pyrodex being less dense than black powder, a measurement by weight on a scale of 60 grains of mass of Pyrodex would be near a 30 percent overload. Volume equivalence is a benefit in loading muzzleloading firearms , traditionally loaded using volumetric measures. This becomes an issue when fabricating black-powder cartridges through handloading using a black-powder substitute in place of black powder, since it is common practice to measure by weight when loading cartridges there are published conversion tables.

Triple Seven is, volume for volume, more powerful and users should follow load recommendations from the manufacturer. Gunpowder , any of several low-explosive mixtures used as propelling charges in guns and as blasting agents in mining. The first such explosive was black powder, which consists of a mixture of saltpetre potassium nitrate , sulfur, and charcoal. When prepared in roughly the correct proportions 75 percent saltpetre, 14 percent charcoal,…. The resultant powder behaved differently from anything previously known.

It burned rapidly on contact with open…. This was replaced as an explosive in the midth century with dynamite, and since both ammonium nitrate fuel-blasting agents and slurries mixtures of water, fuels, and oxidizers have come into extensive…. All early breechloaders used black powder as their source of propellant energy, but in the early s more powerful and cleaner-burning nitrocellulose-based propellants were perfected. Whereas black powder produced a large quantity of solid material upon combustion, quickly fouling barrels and pouring out huge clouds of smoke, nitrocellulose produced….

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