Testing the Gunpowder "Proof" Legend
VloĆŸit
- Äas pĆidĂĄn 30. 06. 2024
- Go to buyraycon.com/rogue for 15% off your order! Brought to you by Raycon
đĄ -------------- accreditation -------------- đĄ
Table of Contents
0:00 intro
1:50 historical significance
2:49 control test - dry powder
3:41 test - black powder and water
5:43 testing the rum
7:37 testing 40
8:46 testing 50
10:40 testing 75
12:25 testing everclear
13:48 extra credit
15:55 Raycons ad
16:51 cta
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music used in this video:
"Lightly Roasted" by John Montoya
linktr.ee/jlmcomposer
"Espresso" by Dekaff
dekaff.bandcamp.com/
"Breakup Breakdown" by Cullah
cullah.com/discography/cullah...
"To The Rhythm of the Funk" by Cullah
www.cullah.com/discography/cu...
"Where You Do Belong" by Cullah
cullah.com/discography/Cullah_...
"Espresso" by John Montoya
linktr.ee/jlmcomposer
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Most of the music from the show: bit.ly/mrspotify
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post-production powered by Doghouse Systems
doghousesystems.com/rogue
Use promo code âROGUEâ and get a free 500gb SSD now!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This video was made with the help of:
Brian Brushwood - host -- / shwood
Jason Murphy - host / research -- www.jasonsmurphy.com - / captainmurphy
Brandt Hughes - camera operator -- / gatowag - / emergentbeacon
Bryce Castillo - camera operator (ad) -- / brycas
John Rael - editing supervisor / editor (ad) -- / skepticallypwnd
Annaliese Martin - live audio engineer / camera operator (ep) / copy editor -- / amuseliese
Cory Cranfill - guest / production assistance -- / ccranfill
Heather Gardner - editor (ep) -- / burlesquebaker
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Mailing Address
Modern Rogue
539 W. Commerce
Box 1975
Dallas, TX 75208
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scam Nation: / scamschool
Patreon: / modernrogue
Discord (patron reward): / discord
MR Articles: themodernrogue.com
Outtakes & BTS: / scamstuff
Subreddit: modernrogue.reddit.com
Merch: scamstuff.com
Twitter: / modernrogueshow
Instagram: / modernrogueshow - ZĂĄbava
Did you miss the Modern Rogue-themed Mystery Jackpot? Guess what we're giving away this week! These boxes come with a mystery assortment of goods from Scam Stuff. Plus, every boxâs contents are worth more than the price of the box and satisfaction is guaranteed! Weâre giving away TWO Modern Rogue Mystery Jackpots to random winner of this weekâs free giveaway. To enter, just sign up at gimme.scamstuff.com (no purchase necessary, giveaway ends 3/4/2021). Congrats to the winner of last week's misfit Houdini's Cell giveaway: Niall Flannery (we will contact you via email within two weeks.)
You guys should test out skunk remedy recipes/treatments. Get some pieces of tanned fur (simulating a dog) sprayed by a skunk and then try different things to try to remove the smell. It would be hilarious and useful.
I know raycon earbuds sponsor your videos but damn they suck at all points. Besides that, i love your videos!
Try even more crazy projects tho
actually the v2 rocket flew with only 70%alcohol so ever clear is more alcoholic than rocket fuel 12:26
Science ajason lol
"You can set anything on fire if you really believe in yourself" words to live by
Need that on a t-shirt!
And this is how we got the flamethrower
So is this the sentence that comes before or after "anything is a dildo if youâre brave enough"?
ClF3 has entered the chat
@@MrTheSmoon Ah yes. The chemical that can burn things normally sane people would think are non flammable...like bricks or asbestos or things that have already been burned!
I like to think that Brian and Jason yell "Cause I'm a modern rogue!" at the end of each episode, but the editors cut it out every time
Day five of me asking them to bring back "Cause I'm a modern roooooooooogguuuueee" in the intro.
I miss that intro
@@doubtful_seer help me bring it back!
No we removed the programing because we had to take out one of their hard drives rack in order to make more space for a ram expansion.
I read "Gunpowder" but I think "Brian and Jason blows themselves up accidently."
Close enough fore every MR fan XD
I keep expecting Jason to paraphrase Adam Savage and ask "Am I missing a beard?"
thatd be actually impressive, considering how non-explody gunpowder is in most situations
"try as hard as you can to make an explosion"
brian sure gets confident when he thinks nothing can go wrong lol, this is dangerous
This felt like an episode of Myth Busters. Even had a back story about the myth and had multiple trials and everything. Also it was so science-y
If MR improved their methodology a bit more and wrote stuff down, they could definitely be youtube's Myth Busters
The difference is this feels like two neighborhood friends who were like âwanna drink my dadâs booze and play with gunpowder?â
Where Adam and Jamie were like a kid on a perpetual sugar rush and his mutually unimpressed father
Somebody tell them to get Adam on the phone
Excuse me they are called the legend testers TM
@@griffingeary3356 They're bootleg Mythbusters and you know it
I swear these are the only premiers I can make. Everyone else is too early in the day for that shit.
I actually think that using Black Powder is better for this legend than smokeless as this is what would have been used in the day as this is true âgunpowderâ where modern smokeless isnât traditional gun powder.
It is. They did this by timing how long it took to catch the powder. If it was low proof it did not catch at a drop of a match. And if the liquor caught on fire with the drop of the match they timed it. Shorter the time higher the proof.
Most modern "black powder" isn't even true black powder there is usually an ingredient that has been added or changed.
@@brandonschriner7745 It's still the same black powder. Goex has their own charcoal plant because what charcoal you use makes a big difference, and no one is making softwood charcoal commercially. The main differences would be that historically, the charcoal used would vary by region and would cause differences, and these days commercial black powder would be tumbled with graphite at the end to help prevent sparks setting it off. The graphite coating could affect this test as the guys saw, polished and coated grains are slightly hydrophobic. So no real chemical differences, but the grain polish and coatings may have been different historically.
@@GigsVT I'm pretty sure there are still some companies that make charcoal from softwood for art purposes. I know I've seen willow bark charcoal at craft stores.
@@1lovesoni heh I wonder if they buy it from goex. But if they don't I assume that goex uses a huge quantity, just easier to make it themselves.
God, the flashback to you guys in your garage making sugar smoke bombs shows just how far this show has come.
Theyâre slowly turning from âscience adjacentâ to âa science Jasonâ itâs always sad to see children grow up đȘ
Sciency Jason :D
Science and Jason
Brian: weâre getting a little bit more science adjacent
My brain: With Evan and Katelyn
Science adjacent with Brian and Jason
Quick little science thing: the primary reason for the switch from black powder to smokeless is that the former causes significant fouling. Black powder burns dirty and deposits lots of corrosive salts and gunk in the action. This limited the effective use of rifling, since the grooves would quickly fill in, and hurt the development of auto-loaders. Smokeless powder burns both cleaner and faster, which had the additional benefit of more velocity.
Ah hold on, smokeless powder burns faster *under pressure* at STP smokeless burns significantly slower than black powder
Rule of thumb when using blackpowder is to clean the same day you shoot. With smokeless, you can easily neglect your gun after shooting and clean it once a year. Not the BEST for the gun, but it won't ruin it
There are records about the fouling with muzzle loaders, which include men on the battlefield having to urinate down the bore of their weapons to help clear that fouling during a long battle. Needs must when the Devil drives, I guess. I'd definitely be verifying my last shot actually cleared the barrel before getting the muzzle anywhere near my crotch.
@@jasonsexton8869 Did they not have water? A quick pour from a canteen would have been plenty effective at clearing the residue
@@johnbeauvais3159 your canteen was clean(ish) drinking water. Why waste that when getting more might take a while? Plus, this was done in the middle of battlefields. You arent going to waste your drinking water to unfoul your weapon when you have other options including a full bladder.
I see gunpowder in the title and I immediately thing, "Oh, nice, an episode with the resident adult, Cory"
Imagine my surprise when it's just these two kids playing with alcohol and black powder.
Yeah, my dad senses are tingling. Someone needs to tell them to get out of the shop till he gets home to supervise
It just booze and explosives... what could go wrong?
I'm telling my kids this is Daft Punk after retirement
âThe difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.â
-Adam Savage
most of the black powder commercially produced nowadays is pressed and coated with paraffin to make it more resistant to moisture and water... thats why it was not absorbing water that good...
Day five of me asking them to bring back "Cause I'm a modern roooooooooogguuuueee" in the intro.
How many days are you at now?
@@SylvieTheBagel They got back to me at aboiut day 13, sadly they refuse
@@noahgranger6749 that's so sad! we should bring it back...
@@SylvieTheBagel i know right! but such is the Rogue; Unpredictable
@@noahgranger6749 yah... well... Have a good day!
For those of you playing at home, zippo fluid will pull the water out of liquor. I donât recommend drinking it afterward but you can watch the boundary layer change as the water transitions out of the rum and into the naphthalene
As of yet, to my knowledge, MR has yet to do a video of Brian and Jason actually trying to make their own black powder. They have used it in a few episodes but have not tried making it themselves and I feel like that is something they really ought to do.
Didn't the king of random chanel do a video about that and had to take it down because they got into legal trouble?
I'm totally for the idea of them making a video about making blackpowder, but don't want them in any trouble.
(I might be remembering it wrong tho)
@@vbence12 I hadn't heard that, but it seems odd because there are plenty of videos on how to make black powder on youtube, plus I wouldn't think Texas would really have any laws against doing such a thing.
Honestly, as close as the come to blowing themselves up on the regular on a good day, I really don't think them playing with making gunpowder is a good idea. Good way to get dead, and I would really rather they not do that.
Black powder _is_ gunpowder. Modern smokeless powders are explicitly different propellants.
I mean, itâs powder... for a gun. Whatever the exact technical term is, itâs still practically gunpowder.
Language changes over time. Black powder was gunpowder until smokeless powder became standard in firearms, and took the name gunpowder.
My usage has gunpowder as an umbrella term for both varieties, for what little it's worth.
@@Magrijack Nah, it's gunpowder for black powder, and smokeless powder for the more modern stuff (they often aren't even powders, but small extrusions of various types). It's a bit important because you really don't want to confuse the two
Also, modern smokeless powder doesn't burn nearly as well in an open environment as black powder will. Modern smokeless tends to need an enclosed space to build pressure for a complete burn. If you just dump it in a pile, it will burn, but you'll have a rather pathetic and incomplete flash unlike black powder.
@@farmerboy916 Youâre absolutely right. The definition for gunpowder details itâs chemical composition and when it was invented, and the fact that it is distinct from smokeless powder. But... if I were to play devilâs advocate..., it has a sub-definition that is as follows: _broadly_ : any of various powders used in guns as propelling charges.
Colloquially, most people donât specify the difference, so in a language sense it can be used as such. I do think you are absolutely in the right here, but the point of view is there to be argued and thatâs what the internet has become. I donât really feel like arguing it though, because I know youâre right.
I love you. You've helped me through some hard times and i just wanted to say thank you.
This reminds me of the hydrogen episode when brian thought for a second they killed Kevin
you know they absolutely could have done this with just everclear, watering it down to different levels, but they needed an excuse to buy like 4 bottles of rum
11:14 ""I feel obligated as the fire eating expert to inform everybody the more explosive and flash-pointy it can be, the SAFER it is." And this mindset permeates this show
That last sheet of aluminim with the powder burns could be an interesting art print
Oh man your camera work and lighting has come such a long way. Those shots are luscious!!!
"and we've got alot of balls to try this without knowing what we're doing" this honestly sums up alot of your guys' videos.
Tune in next week, as the Rogues test whether or not Shepard could have actually lit the gasoline by throwing a cigar at it.
_LEGEND TESTERS!!!_
The editing is so good on this episode. i love the character
Y'all got yerselves a mighty fine cinematography dept there, sirs. Very dope shots and pans of the foil.
I cannot say enough how entertaining these videos have been getting over the last few years. I remember from the start of the channel it was great even then! I came from scam school when spikes were a thing... love you guys!
Well I timed this subway pickup perfectly. Just got back and played up my sandwich!
Black powder is very hydroscopic, it absorbs water readily. When used in firearms it leave behind a lot of corrosive residue. After shooting black powder it's important to clean your gun thoroughly. This is why you don't see modern semi-automatic and fully automatic firearms until the development of cleaner burning smokeless powder in the 1890's.
The final test was amazing!
My understanding of the original test was that 50 proof booze when mixed with an equal amount of gunpowder would burn with a clean blue flame. Your test seemed more concerned with the gunpowder igniting than what kind of flame the mixture would produce. .
It is actually more accurate to call black power, gunpowder then it is to call smokeless powder, gunpowder
Both are (or were) used in guns.
Alton Brown actually had a segment about this. You did this because if you dump booze on black powder and light it, you can tell a lot about how potent the alcohol is by what kind of flame you get, (color and intensity) and by how long it takes for the powder to ignite. Beer or wine will just stop the whole thing from lighting in the first place, there's too much water in them. Fortified wines like vermouth aren't a lot better. They have grain alcohol in them, but not all THAT much of it. 80 proof will actually light, more or less, but it takes quite a bit of effort and it doesn't burn well. (Your use of map gas is the main reason it worked. Constant high heat source to boil the water off.) I think once it's lit it tends to keep burning, though. The heat vaporizes enough alcohol that the fumes will keep burning. 140 is usually the minimum for being able to easily light it with a match, produces a decent flame, and then the powder lights soon after that. 190 lights easily, burns high and bright, then the powder kicks off quickly. It was a way of being sure of how much alcohol was in your booze if you didn't have the equipment to measure specific gravity or know how to use it. (A lot of people HAD black powder handy, so it was readily available as a measuring technique.)
When Covid his hard in NYC last April you could find rubbing alcohol on any shelf. I just mixed Everclear and filtered water 70/30 for my sanitation spray as it was "safer" since it was food-grade ethanol. I just used a spray bottle to spray items and hands to sanitize.
I've been watching the channel for years but I just realized after watching this episode that this is just Mythbusters but without the "professionals" or "experts" or "safety measures", we that's exactly how I like it!
Just wanted to say thanks for the discount just ordered some raycons! also going to be ordering some of your modern rogue masks soon!!!!!!!!!
Brain: Fancy 20th Century Talk is what I'm hearing!
Me: Brian does know we've been in the 21st Century for over 2 decades right?
alternative title: "how to make miniature white phosphorus for all of your 1/35 scale Vietnam war-based panorama scene needs"
Jason just FYI, black powder rifleâs are still in common use and in many states used every day four not only hunting but competition. In fact some states have specific hunting times dedicated for black powder rifleâs đ
Just turned midnight in the uk and it's just released.
That foil looks like beautiful art đ€
Iâm grateful for the modern rogue thank you guys for your show it makes my day
Music is spot on! Feels like the planning phase of a heist movie.
Ok, here's what I know: In order to get a flame from a glass of alcohol drink you DON'T just drop in a match! (it needs air, fluid and heat to ignite) By droping the match in, you eliminate the air component, then the flame just disappears. You should hover the match on top of the liquid.
Another observation...Black Powder has a higher igniting rate (it burns faster, makes a quick POOF!) but gun powder burns notably slower. By mixing the alcoholic beverage in the black powder you made the burn last longer. That's something to consider for a future smoke bomb :) It also seems the amound of alcohol in the powder makes the burn last longer or less, more consistent or less.
Can't wait to see what you guys gonna come up for the next episode! Have a great day MR!
the ration of rum issued to sailors was meant for sterilizing the water they had but some did save up this ration to binge on after the built a stash
The funny thing is that I had a teacher who made his own gunpowder as a kid and he figured out that if you mixed the gunpowder with water then dried it and ground it..... very carefully... the boom you got was bigger
Oh! I remember this preview picture now! And that was black powder not some liquor I was not familiar with.
The water gets absorbed into the charcoal like a sponge because of it having tiny pores and the water also dissolves the potassium nitrate and the sulfur at least thatâs my best hypothesis on why water ruins black powder or gun powder
Proof!! Now where's the academic paper?
I like the idea of using "A Jason" as a unit of measure for how science-y things get. If it's not very science-y, it's low numbers of Jason, if it gets very science-y they reach many Jasons
Fantastic Slow motion shots đđ»
You guys should sell the aluminum foil with the burnt black powder. Looks like beautiful, unintentional artwork.
Back in the day, they had "proofing guns" to test the potency of blackpowder. They resembled flintlock pistols except in place of a barrel, they had a spring and a scale that measured the power of the blast. If the powder was weak, they knew it was poorly made or contaminated. (They would increase the powder load to adjust for that batch) Alcohol is "proofed" based on the equivalent charge of blackpowder. They did it with math.By law every US state has a different proof (alcohol content) that's adjusted by adding water to the liquor.
Hiram Maxim, the inventor of the machine gun, was one of the inventors of smokeless powder. Traditional blackpowder causes smoke and a lot of fouling, which gums up gun actions that prevents you from shooting so many rounds in a row without cleaning. British muskets were loaded with .69" balls and had a bore that averaged .75". They were smooth bore because a rifled barrel would become too fouled to use after so many rounds. By using undersized balls, the soldiers could shoot more, up to 40 rounds in a row, if they survived that long, with the accuracy getting better because the fouling tightened up the bore diameter, stabilizing the Blackpowder doesn't create enough gas pressure that can be used to work most automatic or semi-automatic gun actions (you can load .45 ACP with blackpowder and it will work in a 1911 until it gets too dirty. .45 ACP was designed by J.M. Browning at the US Army's request to replicate the old blackpowder.45 Colt round they used during the last quarter of the 19th century. The volume of the .45 ACP case works out to be just right to produce the pressure needed to work the action using blackpowder or smokeless.)
The British invented "cordite" around 1900 which is cotton fiber soaked in chemicals to create nitro cellulose based powders. It was literally "cords" of loosely woven cotton string. During the Civil War they experimented with "gun cotton" which was cotton soaked in acetone, but it was very unstable and blew up a lot of cargo ships because of sparks. Cordite was sealed in brass casings, but it was still unstable from heat and would deteriorate. Later versions of smokeless used different formulas. When you read a modern novel talking about "the smell of cordite in the air", that could only happen if they used ammo from before WW2 or some old British surplus.
This reads like it was written by a bot that didn't understand how to stay on topic.
i really wish they did it the other way round, soaked black powder with a line to dry to see is the ignation waits for the alcohol burns off to ignite the dry powder, or if the alcohol has to be burned off then it all ignites
We should all give CZcams a shoutout for ruthlessly making you watch back to back advertisements multiple times without any ability to skip these ads with the sole purpose of driving you to sign up for CZcams premium. Its shameless but they don't quit. Lol
This is the most science adjacent since the cooking a body episode!
2:30 - "Let's get the flamey things away..." takes the alcohol to a safe distance, but leaves the blackpowder :)
1:46 Smokeless powder was actually first adopted en masse in the late 19th century by the French in their 1886 Lebel rifle
So that's why the black powder trail to the TNT barrel always took so long to burn.
It was doused with Captain Morgans.
You might be a modern rogue but are you a MODERN ROOooOUGE !!
You spelled it wrong.. how did you spell it wrong.. Brian literally spells it out nearly every single episode..
@@jimmy8469 you're just looking at it through rouge tinted glasses
Iâm watching this while wearing the lucky dice socks thank you Brian and Jason
this brings some nostalgic playing with dangerous stuff vibes
You should sign those pieces of foil and have them as a Patreon bonus or something.
"here is our sponsor"
*Skips 10 seconds*
"At some point the water evaporates off and it "BOOFS"?"
No, that's a different episode. Probably will get demonetized.
With that being said, MR... I think we need to see you two do some black powder shooting! Canons, Muskets and the like!
Jason; We'll be doing some testing in the lab today
Brian; OK I'll turn off the Smoke Alarms
I died at the âhow scientific you wanna be?â âA Jasonâ
Takeaway: the trail of gunpowder to the room they store the barrels of powder in can be shortened if you have alcohol to mix in. That gives you plenty of time to get to a safe distance to watch the ship explode.
Cool, I always wondered about that.
Correct me if im wrong, but i believe potassium nitrate (KNO3) is water soluble, so maybe on a chemical pov thats why the powder wont light when wet. But when the water evapourates, the KNO3 is left behind and allows for the reaction to happen again
as someone who does a lot of black powder rifle shooting and has gallons of black powder, i can smell this video. it smells good.
Brian: "We are doing real science!"
Also Brian: Suggests a completely different way of doing the test for every sample.
i'd like to think that MR HQ has an amazing bar set up for between shoots at this point.
Pirates (golden age of piracy circa17th-18th century) didn't have matches either guys. What they called match was a length of woven linen cord soaked in saltpetre (potassium nitrate)
Fun fact: the reason the Alamo fell when it did was they could not keep their powder dry during a multiday spring rainstorm.
i think the idea with the alcohol proof was to soak the powder in rum but then let it dry, that should get you a burn at ~100proof because the water isn't actually in the way of the fire anymore, just part of dissolving the potassium nitrate
You know Jason felt like a jedi wizard when he said "Proof!" and it flashed đ
I have solved black powder in water, then let it dry completely out and it still lights,though it does burn much slower. Still, it's a good way to paint power or shape it...for the fun of it ;)
I think the problem is that if there is liquid left, the evaporation of said liquid cools it down enough to keep it below the flash point..
Iâm liking that âMiami Railâ you had there đ. Typically you gotta use the universal studios membership card. Then you know your a cool kidđ đ
We need a thunder mug episode!!
If my chemistry is correct:
potassium nitrate does not dissolve in ethanol.
If a liquor was low proof, the water in it would dissolve the potassium nitrate and separate it from the rest of the black powder, preventing the black powder from properly igniting even when left to dry.
The more ethanol there is in the liquor, the less potassium nitrate is dissolved and separated away, and therefore the better the black powder burns after drying.
I used to make smoke powder with fish tank oxygen tablets and instant lemon tea powder mixed together
15:48 did you guys get a new macro lens? Damn these shots look fine
well the reason they went to smokeless powder wasnt because it was less smoky tho that is a benefit, it was because it allowed for higher pressure with less powder and faster bullet velocity's, tho this caused lead bullets to melt or break apart in the barrel when fired which lead to incasing a lead core in a copper jacket to withstand the higher gas pressure and heat
I always thought that the lower % alcohol just had to get hotter to combust, because it needs to throw off more vapors before ignition because alcohol has a lower temperature liquid form then water
Hey guys, great episode, have watched the channel for years and always enjoy the sketchy bombs. BUT PLEASE CONTAIN THE EXPLOSION!!! Things will expand much more rapidly when compressed slightly. Use less liquor, just enough for flame, match heads, pingpongballs, and the powder, and boom. Anyways, great watch thanks guys.
this is like a less skilled and less produced mythbusters but I also mean that in a good way as I loved mythbusters
The Rogueâs Cocktail: 1 teaspoon black powder, sulfur from 1 match, and 20 ml of alcohol of your choice
(3 AM)
I should sleep
(Scrolls through CZcams feed and this video pops up)
Yeah I slept yesterday
The way the bottles are lined up is how my taste in liqour has chabged through out the past 5 years
The legend is that pirates and sailors would test the alcohol content of rum by wetting black powder with it and because black powder won't light when wet but it would still light if the rum had enough alcohol in it which would PROOVE that the rum was quality
"take a stick and mix it", grabs a pen...
Followed immediately by "it's a bit hydrophobic.. it's not till you get the capillary action"
I love this dichotomy of higher and lower brow, lol.
Probably worth noting but Jason says 15th century here, which is off by at least a few hundred years, the English, (yes English not British at this point and time, the Kingdom of Great Britain wasn't a thing until 1707) barely had a Navy in the 15th century, the dreaded Armada only comes knocking in the 16th century and at that point they're still woefully unprepared for it, it'll take them a few hundred years to get anywhere near their later top dog of the seas status. This practice probably comes from the 18th and 19th centuries, although I suspect that sailors have been drinking since the dawn of time.
I think it's the color of the flame if I remember correctly.
Determines the amount of alcohol present
There was a documentary on moonshining on the history channel.
And there was an expert talking about proofing with flame.
And he showed it being done I can't remember what he said and how exactly how he did it.
I was a few years ago.
@The Modern Rogue - is your black hat in ads fitted or adjustable? Also where are you buying it? I have been trying to find a short brimmed black cap to replace my terribly worn one for 2 years