Adventures In Wet Milling. Part 1
Vložit
- čas přidán 12. 09. 2024
- All of the shots are taken using my 45 caliber Kibler southern mountain rifle using 50gr of 3F, a .020 pillow ticking patch, a .440 diameter seated round ball and each shot is primed with the same powder it is charged with
Brother, you have GOT to write a "how-to" book with everything you've learned. I'd pay $50 for that! I'm sure others would too!
And if someone doesn't like it, tell them to go write their own damn book!
Headstamp Publishing. I'll buy 2 copies. One for immediate use. The other squirrel away for hard times.
Well dammit. Great video buddy. And thank YOU for the Garmin.
Man I've been thinking the same thing, just waiting for the day CZcams nukes all this knowledge from the platform. I'll pay for preorder
Best source on the subject. Right here. Most understandable to the shooter.
I would buy that book.
The title would have to be School of Blackpowder, Witchcraft, and Wizardry.
I come here for the knowledge about antique muzzleloading propellent, but I stay for the blazing saddles quotes! Lol
😂
SERIOUSLY, WRITE A BOOK! Would LOVE to buy one. You could include your original method (the 20% weaker by volume) the improved method, etc etc.
I've recommended your videos to dozens and dozens of others.
The juxtaposition of a flintlock and the most modern compact doppler radar is pretty amazing when you think about it.
I am hoping there will be one episode where Jake uses a ballistic pendulum or spinning wheel as they had in the 1700's.
I'd always thought that "wet-milling" was really more of a "damp-milling" process, like add just enough acetone or 91% isopropyl to keep the dust down, but not enough to have flowing liquid in the mill. Remember all the old photos of DuPont with the big roller mills and workers standing next to them that would be exposed to the dust if it wasn't dampened.
Glad you are enjoying the Garmin. It made life on the range so much easier for me.
I look forward to the next videos as you further explore this topic.
Thank you
Interesting video! For decades I thought black powder was this primitive thing and all you had to do was mix ingredients and shoot it. Now after watching you for a while, I have learned my assumption was not just wrong it was totally wrong. I'm not sure whether to thank you for enlightening me or curse you for exposing my ignorance. lol I find myself looking forward to finding new things I didn't know about making your own powder. Phil
denatured alcohol is "denatured" with random stuff like methanol, benzene, pyridine, castor oil, gasoline, isopropyl alcohol, and acetone. At my work when I am using solvents on sensitive finishes I have a quick test that helps me determine if the solvent is reacting. I place it on a clean mirror and let it gas off, then look at whats left stuck to the mirror. The little carbon sponges (charcoal) that you are rolling around in the slurry might be picking up PVC or the pvc glue.
Why not get Ever Clear or Graves Grain 100% Ethanol from the liquor store?
@robertwalsh5793 he said in the video (if I remember correctly) that the nitrates are water soluble and they crystallize independently . The purest alcohol available outside a lab has a % of water. So much so 200proof booze is a unicorn.
I can’t help but laugh at the CZcams plaque in the background 😂👍🏽
I think the issue is wet milling absorbs a percentage of the energy of the media, thus the wet mill time will only ever reach a certain level of incorporation of the ingredients. Imagine dropping a bowling ball in a pool vs dropping the same bowling ball the same distance in air. It still falls fast, but in the pool full of water, the liquid medium is more resistant and slows the ball. While milling wet, the liquid cushions or muffles the power of the bronze media. When milled an additional 24 hours dry, the media was able to hit the ingrediants harder and incorporate them better, thus gaining the ~80-ish fps.
100% agree. I seriously think the milling operation is the heart of b.p. performance. In mining and other industrial applications, they are sometimes using dry milling and sometimes wet. I think the boys need to go visit an industrial ball mill and see if they can uncover some secrets
So, a cushioning effect. As neither solvents nor water are going to do anything to carbon except to fill in the holes, might it not also slow the absorption of the other components by replacing their volume within the charcoal's 'pores' with it's own volume, at least for some period of time? When dried, that intervening volume would disappear and the standards of dry milling would proceed uninterrupted, giving better response after 48 hours than at 12 or 24. It's possible that you may have nailed the issue down flat.
@@russbilzing5348 if that's the case, my own powder wouldn't burn at all. I can confirm that my powder causes the ball from my 1858 Remington Single Action Army Big Texan to break the sound barrier... so, no. I don't think that's it.
@@guardsmanom134 What is your method and I cannot find any reference to a "Big Texan", anywhere. Is it a variant of the "Bison" or "Buffalo" model?
@russbilzing5348 one and the same. DGW "Buffalo Bore aka Big Texan" in .44-40 cap and ball with the 12in barrel.
My method is one that, minus pucking and using balsa, would have likely been used by frontiersmen and poppers who couldn't afford a ball mill or didn't have access to a waterwheel powder mill(yet, because they most certainly would have made one.)
I call it the "Archimedes Method", because it's likely that Archimedes or someone contemporary would have been able to accomplish it.
So. You've exposed an even *greater* mystery, Jake!! I still feel that wet milling is still something worth exploring!
Backpackers often use alcohol stoves for food prep. The best fuel for that is the automotive fuel additive yellow bottle "Heat". It burns hotter and cleaner. Try using that for wet milling.
Hey Jake. Great video. Wet milling at commercial manufacturers of BP is normally started at 10% moisture. The act of the wheels produce friction heat which dries the mixture over time and depending on humidity and air temp, more liquid would have to be added. I think the ideal overall moisture content at the end of the milling process is somewhere around 3%. Dunno what they use today, but the manufacturers that used to refine their nitrates would use the "liquor" (as they called it), from the refining process to re-hydrate the mix in the milling bowl. This is the liquid which still contains some % of nitrate that wouldn't come out of solution from refining.
The milling wheels weighing several tons weren't necessarily for compressing the powder, but they would act as grinders. Rotating in such a small space, the inner edge of the mill would rotate at a different speed than that of the outer edge of the wheel. This differential in speeds of the wheel, in contact with the powder mixture would cause a twisting effect, doing both the work of incorporation and grinding at the same time. There's a lot more to it, and I'm sure you have read about it in the Waltham Abbey book. (Thanks for that recommendation btw - great book!)
The thing about the ball mill in comparison is that the process of incorporation and grinding is done in a very different way. Mechanically on the powder, the mixing and grinding is done by the action of the mill barrel tossing the powder and media around, along with the brass media bouncing off of each other and the barrel. The thing I can't get out of my mind is that in wet milling with a ball mill, is that there is nowhere for the wet vapors to escape, and there isn't a mechanical device to scrape the powder off of the walls of the mill container. Eventually with a low % moisture mixture, you'll just get a clumped layer of powder along the inner walls of the mill container. With a high % moisture (as shown in this video), a large portion of the liquid has to be later evaporated before going to the press. This is a very unique problem in the difference in process of mills - roller mill vs ball mill. I'd be interesting to different processes to wet milling.
Something I've experimented a *little* with, but not with a lot of success. Glad you're covering this method!! 💥
Another thing, Jake... I do the wet method with a bowl and spoon, "spoonmilling" or "the Archimedes Method". Stirring for several hours rather than in a ball mill. The only way to get the ingredients to mix without tons of dust, is to wet it down with alcohol until it's about the consistency of wet sand.
Since you're the first wet milling guy I saw scrolling down, I have a question for you to consider, if you will. I agree with your suggestion to use less solvent, but considering the 12hr and 24hr batches were identical, could it be that he'd get similar results only milling for 6hrs, then remilling for 12, as in the followup?
If that's the case, perhaps running it the second time could improve by a longer run on the second pass. Or if not, perhaps a second run for 6 might also produce similar results. If I'm not just being ignorant (I don't do BP) that could mean that wet/dry milling might cost some velocity, but save on processing time. But the next run should be to try a batch where he's wetting it a lot less, as you suggested, so he can get a new baseline, should he try idea.
Hope that interested you, at least.
@bookman7409 well, I "spoonmill" for at least 3 hours and my best ever batch was made with brown charcoal and mixed in a (outside-to-inside, flip, inside-to-outside, flip, repeat) pattern for consistency.
@@guardsmanom134 Thank you for your time. This suggests that a shorter wet milling time will produce a similar outcome as previously.
If a 3hr run is just as good as a 12 or 24 for them, using a wetting level similar to yours, then we have an obvious advantage for wet milling. From there they can vary performance vs time for the second milling.
If there's no data on such a wet-dry milling process, that's reason enough to try it, isn't it? Especially if 3hrs and 24 hours produce results similar to their 48hr dry milling results.
As before, this might be just us two, so I hope what I've put here is at least interesting to you. If not, drop the rope, it's ok.
@@guardsmanom134 I just thought of this, but have you considered finding a used stand mixer with a paddle attachment, and maybe a balloon whisk, too? Just hearing about three hours of stirring makes my shoulders ache, lol.
@@bookman7409 🤣🤣
Brilliant vid sir! You have developed and set the new standard for blackpowder shooting, keep up the high standards please. 👌👏👏
I have a wooden ramrod with a steel core capable of accepting a screw in accessory on one end. it fits on my 54 caliber custom Hawken rifle. I don"t remember the outfit that made it but they may still be available. The ramrod is of course a bit heavier than standard wood. I used to use it when hunting as it also makes loading easier. The extra weight isn't intolerable & you don't have to worry about breakage which in the field can ruin your hunt. Thanks for the videos they're always interesting & entertaining.
Chemistry is mysterious!!! That's why it's related to alchemy and magic!
When I looked it up before I donated..I saw it does all the paperwork you do..for you..
So stoked to see you guys so happy with it..🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
Thanks again!
Old Fire Fighter trick. Use a couple of drops of a wetting agent like dish washing soap. Working perimeter clean up on a fire line we used this to deep penetrate the charcoal on logs that were still smoldering. Works really well on charcoal.
That might not be the best thing because it would be almost impossible to remove without multiple washings and it would likely cause the denatured alcohol and the powder to emulsify at least somewhat even if it was temporary. It would almost certainly add multiple steps to remove it all.
@@EnvirotekCleaningSystems
If minimum ammounts are used I don't think it matters if you leave it in.
Old FF here myself, Dish soap breaks the surface tension of water to let it soak in. In dont think other solvents like denatured alcohol or ethanol would react the same
Alcohol already does this. It has way less surface tension than water.
Did NOT Suck! I love your videos. Always excited to see what you guys are cooking up. Glad you love the Garmin. They're sweet. Unfortunately, I no longer get to laugh real hard watching you go ballistic on that old chronograph. Such as life. Can't wait for part 2. God Bless
P.S. I bounce my ramrod all the time. It gives assurance that my ball is properly seated.
You changed the compression of the charge. I always thought that the bounce was very nice to get, because when it happened, the compression probably was very near the same on every shot. Forget the haters, do the bouncy maneuver.
I agree with MMA10mm. I think the liquid is absorbing some of the energy from the media. Water is something like 800x more dense than air and is probably slowing the balls down or buffering the impacts. I know that in industrial applications like mining, they sometimes wet mill and sometimes dry mill depending on the application. I’ll bet there’s a whole metric tonne of science behind ball mill efficiency and it would be really interesting to visit an industrial ball mill and pick their brains. Perhaps a field trip is in order?
Awesome you are the black powder man 😊 good video pawpaw
Thank you
Funny, I’ve been bouncing my ramrod sense the 70’s and still shoot one inch groups at 100 yards. First time I’ve seen a ramrod brake that way. 😊
Last time you use the old Chronograph - it works perfectly.
Just found this channel because of your cottonelle short. Great content and now I need to learn.
Well…the old saying, keep your powder dry, never rang more true😁
Morning everyone, I can't stay too long I just got through a surgery yesterday.
Just checking in, have a great time! 👍
Great video, and I love the sign-off line. 👌
I brought up wet milling before but I may not have asked if you had used a blender to speed things up, yet get the same uniformity. I was thinking a blender would only need to be run for 10 or 15 minutes max. That Garmin is nice. I have a stack of chronographs we have destroyed with strikes from wads and sabots.
I haven’t used a blender but maybe that would work
It seems the processing of the 12 hour wet mill powder takes as much time as a 24 hour dry mill. Excellent work as always Gentlemen 👍
Thank you
That bounce was taught to me by an old mountain man when I was getting into black powder. I've never had a hang fire doing it and have hit a 5 gallon bucket at 300 yards with a Kentucky long rifle doing it.
Glad you got a garmin! Love mine works like a charm! And friends don’t shoot the legs off my old chronograph hahaha
Nice to see the Garmin. That will shut all the fan boys up. But good to see you guys are pretty happy with it too. It does seem to be good 😉👍
Channel is absolutely fascinating. Always curious on the creation of black power creation
Thanks for another great video. Oh, I like the hat you shoot in.
@@terrycheek4097 thank you
Thank you for sharing. Appreciate your report.
Truely appreciate all the hard work you do so the rest of us dont have to
Happy to help
I look forward to the answer! Great job on finding another can of worms! Your talent for it rivals my own!
Never let down your guard for Commies!
Another great video Jake. Always on the quest for a better batch of powder. FWIW I've always liked my 3/16th stainless range rod with the nylon muzzle protector.
Thanks for sharing your experience and documenting it saves me a lot of time
That bounce is how you know your ball is properly seated.
The bible of black powder would be Jake's knowledge of black powder. We just need to complile it....
Smoke won't bother the Garmin as it doesn't use light to spot the ball, it uses doppler radar, and smoke won't give an radar echo.... Must save up for one, they are the best.
Pity about breaking the ramrod... but you will have given it more use than I would in a lifetime. The "factory" on that came with my flinter looked a little fragile, so I put it byand made one from a fibreglass electric fence standard covered in black heat shrink tubing. Works great and is very strong.
The target was impressive; you are a fine offhand rifle shot...
It looks to me as if long time dry milling gives performance increases where wet does not. I have a feeling that the consolidation process is better dry than with the wet medium which might inhibit the powder particles from getting really intimate with each other after a certain time. Could that be so?
Your research is fascinating, and kudos to you for sharing it with everyone. Yay for the internet as I can watch from down here in NZ.
Great job. Glad to see that you are happy with the Garmin
I would say the lack of significant increase in speed for the “wet-dry” powder indicates there is SOMETHING wrong/lost with the wet method. My advice for a shortcut in dry mill is to upscale. Find some way to make more powder in a single batch. I know, no duh, easier said than done and what not but waiting 48 to 72 hours for a few hundred grams is slow but 48 to 72 hours for pounds and pounds of powder doesn’t sound too bad… provided upscaling can be done without loss of quality. But what the heck do I know, I’m just some nobody observer on youtube. Keep up the great work! Love the dang videos.
This is my struggle as well! It essentially takes me 6 days to make 1/2# of bp with my equipment. Which is fine...until i get a crummy batch. I haven't been nearly as consistant (batch to batch) as these guys have been...even though im using essentially the same methods.
99% of my homeade bp is fired in big bore cartridges...so 1/2# really doesn't go that far (especially through a lever gun...).
I think this winter i'll work on getting a larger diameter ball mill built so i dont have to make so many small batches throughout the year.
If I can get acceptable powder with only 12 hours of milling time, to me that is a win. It would be interesting to do batches with say 2, 4, 8 10 hours mill time and compare velocities. You might even be able to get by with less mill time. Just a thought.
It’s very possible
Yeah. I was also wondering whether the wet milling is initially faster, but plateaus sooner, such that like 2-4hr wet followed by a long dry mill might make sense.
You're the only guy I know who is as interested in BP as me! I bought the Garmin zero c1 a few months ago and it is another great time saving gadget. I swage precision copper jacketed bullets and the Garmin has been a big help. It's been very consistent when I expect it to be! I make and test my own smokeless powder.
I think an efficient use of time after this test is to wet mill your BP in small batches again, altering the ratio of components. I wet mill my BP in a coffee grinder for 3 minutes. It seems to be as good as it gets.
I learned two things in my organic chemistry lab that may be relevant in this.
1) Whenever we had any reactions that were sensitive to water, we had to use especially dried solvents and glassware (24h in a 70°C Oven) and then we had to build our reaction contraption and start the reaction within 20 minutes or else the reaction wouldn't run the way we intended. So maybe (probably) your solvents aren't dried to analytical specs and still have water inside and maybe at these speeds, the smallest amounts of water left, will slow down the deflagration as water takes a huge amount of energy to heat up & vaporize (that is why sweating is so efficient at cooling us).
2) Whenever I had my finished product analyzed there were ALWAYS impurities of the solvent I used left behind and visible after I had my product in a vacuum dessicator for 24h. Acetone could be seen for 3 days (we were not allowed to put our products into an oven to dry because they weren't explosion proofed). So what i really learned was that whenever I Introduced a new liquid to anything I made, if I wanted to finish in a timely manner, some of it would just be there in the end. And I'm saying this as someone who got above average marks for purity.
This should be interesting.
12 hours wet milled gives the same result as 24 hours dry milled... except you then have to wait for the wet milled powder to dry, and you have the fumes from the solvent to worry about.
Yep
I'm impressed with how practiced you are with the flintlock manual of arms!
And I concur with others, you need to write a book 😊
Thank you
I think three factors could have affected the potency of the wet milled powder; 1) The liquid added tends to soften the blow of the mill balls. 2) The fact that you used a mill that did not have lifter bars. 3) The added amount of powder with the same amount of milling media (balls). At any rate, this is how you learn, trying something new. Enjoyed the video.
Aways a pleasure to watch mate. Keep up the great work!
Powder factorys which use wheel mills add the water before milling. The wheels weight 5 or more tons so it works perfect. A small ball mill can not handle the powder cake like a wheel mill.
That's a good video buddy! Thank y'all and thumbs up ~John
Thanks 👍
It should get the nitrate more integral in the charcoal!
Would love to see the results!
If this technique goes how I think it will go, a tiny spot of dish washing liquid in the mix would help the charcoal accept the water more readily and probably not contaminate the end result to any measurable degree. It certainly works well when mixing cement powder.
this can change everything
Very disappointed that the old chrono didn't get sent to the BP. Gods in the sky. Always love your videos. thanks
Historically urine (urea) and manure was used to make saltpeter. So using urine might be a wet vehicle that would not leach out some of the saltpeter energy as other vehicles like alcohols might. Of course using urine would be less desirable to handle. You might try DEF fluid (current diesel exhaust chemical) might be easier to obtain and handle. Some of the other comments about impact during the wet tumble seem to make sense as well.
Urine is mostly water, so using it in the mill would be just like using contaminated water, which you don't usually do.
Yes, but at what cost?
Joking aside, urea was, I believe, a source of nitrogen
Urine in fact was used historically in BP production, specifically stale urine. From what I've read it was used for pucking/corning, not sure if used for wet milling. I've used a 50/50 mixture of stale urine with dextrin dissolved into 70% IPA for wetting milled powder before pucking. I would surmise urine, being urea, creatine and dissolved mineral salts- would actually as pH buffer and possibly lower burn rate by action of the urea, create a more sustained pressure plateau versus peak. This in theory would give higher velocity and less solids. All of this is an art form and worthy of further investigation, but I've come to regard the pucking/corning of BP as bothersome, superior BP substitutes are readily available that don't have to be compressed to higher bulk density. Any way- don't give up on wet milling- dextrin in the solution will suppress the solubility of nitrate.
That looks like a nice chronograph Jake glad you have some nice equipment now saving on the frustration you deserve it
Thanks gray
Finally got a crony that works great job.. after a little training that cronigraph might even be able to serve a refreshing cold drink on those long days at the range testing powder.. you asked if someone had wet milled , I have had the same results and worse than you.. I am dry milling again and have found out something I didn't expect also, I have used many different recipes but this one is an old recipe that I've used for years and I use a 75-15 nitrate to charcoal and 7 sulfur and 3 table sugar only milled for 12 hours. This powder has almost a 15 percent gain in burning rate and I've fired this in one of my 50 caliber inlines with 50 grains of 2f and the rifle sounds like a 30-30 and has a sharper recoil than goex 2f... I have an idea that you may not want to use any powder that has sugar in it and I myself had second thoughts but I fired about 25 shots and found that the powder was extremely accurate and the third shot loaded as well as the first no problems with loading... THANKS for the testing and experimentation. I forgot to mention I use 7/16 inch brass round bar cut to 1 inch lengths for media plus a couple hand fulls of glass marbles makes for fast grinding.. just something to think about...
The one question in my mind is the lifting features in the mill. The wet mill did not have them, but the dry mill does, and you saw an improvement with dry milling.
I would guess the lifting bars will have a limited benefit in a wet mill because the milling balls can't drop as hard through a relatively dense viscous solvent as they could through air
Yes all the dry mill containers have lifter blocks. The wet mill container does not
Yes all the dry mill containers have lifter blocks. The wet mill container does not
You should run a few previously tested samples through the new chronograph to find out if there's a correction factor for your data from the old one.
Comparing samples under a microscope might be helpful. Finding out what the extra milling does to the grains will help for tuning your mill process.
My WAG(wild ass guess) here, wet milling no matter the make up of the liquid used, becomes a lubricant and a cushion between the particles when incorporating the compound by force of action during milling. When the compound is dry, there is no cushion and incorporation is not interrupted.
The solvent extracts the volatiles from the charcoal and maybe thats the reason for slower velocities
Thank you gentlemen for sharing this very enjoyable video with us six stars
Thank you
Mom said wet milling would make me go blind!
A crazy Idea maybe, but how would tungsten Carbide ball bearing fair? They are heavier than lead, tougher than bronze or brass, and are non-sparking.
It would have to be subcaliber. The lead deforms to the rifling in the bbl, Tungsten would not.
@@chuckaddison5134 I was thinking for use in the ball mill.
When you get it THAT wet, the KNO3 and much of the Sulfur dissolves into solution. The charcoal doesn't dissolve but breaks up into its smallest particles and is held in suspension. Milling time isn't going to incorporate the ingredients any further. It's the drying time that's gonna get ya. Slower drying and the KNO3 crystals are larger and less incorporated. You'd probably have to dry your pucks in a very warm oven or dehydrator to get them closer to the dry mill specs.
very consistent! it's really good!
Nice vacuum setup. Ever use it to evac bell jars for storing powder? Works just like with a canner, full jar in, liner on top, vac, release, jar's vacuum sealed.
I agree! Share your knowledge and experience! Write a book! I’d buy it!
I'm stickin to what I've already learned from you ain't doin no wet millin good video Jake 👍
Nice Jake!! Yall have definitely got the scientific part of this down. I’m with Lawrence, a book would be great. 👍. Love the overalls too by the way. 😉
Thanks Benjy
to check your hypothesis, just collect liquid phase and evaporate the solvent. you can analyze the residue.
Cheers for giving this another go. Would be interesting to see this tried again, but with very little water added (barely more than damp really), to a consistency that you can put it straight into the press (before any crystallization can occur), from settling.
You can do this if your mill can handle it. Otherwise it clumps to much and not much happens. You want it just past that level of wet but not much more.
The first thing I learned about making up my own loads, be it smokeless or Black Powder, the key to accuracy is consistency. Honestly, if I can get a load made up that has a max spread of only 15 FPS, I consider it a good load and my group sizes indicate the same. I have also discovered that every gun has a sweet spot on speed that it likes the best for each of the projectiles I use. If its too hot, then my groups open up. I did some research on to why thats the case and its heavily dependant on the twist rate of the barrel. If you push a projectile past what it was designed to spin at, it destabilizes and the groups open up. The same is for both modern bullets and BP lead projectiles.
My dad taught me to bounce the rod . Back in the 80s everyone bounced it once or twice. I still do.
I'm a regular person at watching what shape does and let me tell you what Jake he does it right and he does all this work so we can do it well without a whole lot of experimenting and yeah he does research and it makes it easier on us so that this man has got it down I've been making black powder for well over 60 years and it's worked okay for me not had a problem very scientific and that's a lot of elbow grease going into that he does it so we can do it and make better powder
Thank you
mechanochemistry is very important. you cannot ignore it. you add a solvent, you change the environment.
Agreed
Fuck yeah, knew you guys would love the garmin. Best thing I ever did with my old optical chronograph was shoot it. Can't recommend that upgrade enough.
Hey Jake how are y'all doing praying u have a blessed weekend ty for the hard work in bringing these videos god bless you
Thank you very much!
They don't make ramrods like they used to 👍
I have a hypothesis. As the media is impacting each other it has to push whatever is between it out of the way. Whatever doesn't get pushed out of the way gets smashed by extremely high point load pressures. In the case of wet milling the fluid(solvent). Has much higher mass and viscosity than the dry milling fluid(air). That would give it a greater capacity to move particulate solids with it. It may be that there is a point with any given fluid where particles get to a size that they always get pushed out of the way with the fluid. The higher the mass and or viscosity of the fluid, the larger the maximum particle size that the fluid will move with 100% efficiency. So with the wet milling you reach the point of diminishing returns sooner.
I also think there could be some washing of the charcoal happening as well. Whatever was getting washed out of the charcoal in your previous experiments with charcoal washing , would almost certainly still be removed with wet milling.
It would be interesting to try milling in a vacuum to see if you could reach an even later point of diminishing returns.
I wonder if a different sort of mill is better suited to wet milling. There are wet grinders with stone wheels for food use. Used to make super fine chocolate, peanut butter, batter for idli and dosas in South Indian cuisine.
It would be worth saving some of this powder to see if it changes over time.
This is gonna be interesting
I just love a couple of guys on the range. cheers
Thank you
I don't pass one on often anymore but , this one I am .
Thanks T/C/E
My hypothesis would be:
The the ethanol is not compessible (as much as the air) and more dense than the air. So, there's a grinding level limit where the GP particles are affected by the liquid ethanol pressure between the media balls which results the probability of crush such particles by media balls decrease to 0. They are pushing outside of the crushing area of each media ball by flowing ethanol.
But thats only my hipothesis - it could be wrong.
People have been setting records with black powder and round balls at the matches at Friendship for nearly 100 years.
None of them throw their ramrod down on the ball like that.
Your loading method is consistent .
I will say that for you.
Gotta say dry milling seems to be the best
I wonder if the wet milled BP clumps as it dries? Soil aggregation is driven by repeated wet/dry cycles and so it seems reasonable to assume the same is true when drying out your freshly wet milled BP. So, your just starting over with fresh aggregates every time you dry the wet milled powder.
That's why 12 and 24 hour wet milling had the same result when both received the same number of hours of dry milling to "fluff up" the aggregates that resulted from drying the wet milled slurry. When you dry milled for longer you got better performance because the aggregates were getting more time in the dry mill.
Seems like the wet milling could improve the integration prior to dry milling but for the added time you would see the same performance results by sustaining the dry milling for the additional time that would otherwise be given to a seemingly superfluous prior wet milling.
“Bitchin’” powder… complains “You call this a muzzleloader?!? You’re out shooting in THIS heat?!? Where did you get this chromo-timer-muzzle- velocity thing?!?”
I have learned from old hunters (Europa) to first dissolved the potassiumnitrate in distilled hot water.
Than ad the grinded carbon (from Alnus glutinosa), so that this can absorb the potassiumnitrate in its pores.
Than ad the sulfur.
Now mill it for 24 hours in a ball mill.
(I think they used brass and glass balls. Not sure.)
I know for sure that they were great hunters. ;-)
Maybe this info is good for you.
I think with wet milling why you didn’t see an improvement with more time is because of particle size. Once the particles get to a certain size thy are going to stay suspended in solution. This means thy are going to flow around the balls and not get impacted between then.
Seems reasonable
@@Everythingblackpowder But the extra "dry milling" had no effect? Certainly a poser! More research!! 🥸
Thanks for another great informative video! I think the wet milling is having a lube effect on your milling media and not incorporating like dry milling, just my theory.
Anyway it would be very interesting to see the velocity you would get by milling the Cottonelle powder at 48 hrs.
What you want is an inelastic collision and the liquid is making this more of an elastic collision once the chemicals reach a certain size. You are more quickly reaching the point of elastic collision by using a liquid than when dry milling. This is why dry milling later works to speed it up because you are getting that inelastic collision needed to properly mix your chemicals to the point of max efficiency.