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DIY Black Powder pistol cartridges
#31
I'm baaack!

I was going to post a GIF of surveillance footage of my laboratory during a recent priming compound mixing session, but the file was too big, will not post here, so no luck. It was a lovely fireball, though!

In my continuing quest for firearms self-sufficiency, I stumbled across information that I should have already known. I was actually looking for how to identify salt springs to render salt from like they used to do back in the day, but of course as the internet does, that click led to another click, and another, and another, and suddenly I found myself staring at an article on sulfur springs. Now, I had heard all my life of sulfur springs, but somehow it had slipped from memory.

"Sulfur springs" are a thing in the Appalachians. They can be detected because they emit hydrogen sulfide. Hydrogen sulfide smells like farts or rotten eggs, and that smell travels well enough that they can be detected at some distance. After all that information clicked from reading the article, it dawned upon me that there is a certain area near Vansant, VA, that always smelled like farts as I was driving through, as well as an area farther up Levisa Fork from Vansant, towards Shorts Gap that smells the same. I bet there are sulfur springs there to go along with the salt springs that color the Levisa Fork River a lovely turquoise shade. Can't render the salt from Levisa because of all the mining runoff that has polluted it with PCBs, but going to the source springs ought to alleviate that.

As a matter of fact, the well for this house pumped out what they called "sulfur water" or "stinking water" - but a coal mine running underneath the house fixed that by cutting the bottom out of the well as they were merrily mining along, destroying the well. The coal company paid to have the well filled back in and the house hooked to county water, but there went my nearby source of sulfur water...

Now all I have to do is track down the sulfur springs around Vansant, and figure out how to extract the sulfur from them, and I will have a readily available source of sulfur for gunpowder and priming compound outside of the commerce chain that is so vulnerable.

SO - I can make the primer cups, and the components of the gunpowder (potassium nitrate from bat caves and barnyards, charcoal from willow, and now sulfur from springs), and mold the bullets by hand at home. The primer compound components are next on my list, to make the compound from scratch, too. That compound, as nearly as I have been able to determine, is potassium nitrate, sulfur, and antimony sulfide together with shellac as a binder agent to keep it together and stuck inside the caps. The antimony sulfide is a sensitizer - it's what makes the caps go "BANG!" when you whack 'em with a hammer. Black powder is real stable, and won't do that. It has to be set off with a flame, a flame that comes from the caps.

So now I need to find a source of antimony sulfide, too... and maybe a substitute for the shellac, since there are no lac bugs here to make it naturally. I'm wondering if white pine sap, which is flammable on it's own, would work... I have a white pine tree right here, in spitting distance of my deck...

.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.

Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’




Messages In This Thread
DIY Black Powder pistol cartridges - by Ninurta - 11-20-2020, 11:51 AM
RE: DIY Black Powder pistol cartridges - by Ninurta - 06-01-2021, 11:09 PM

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