Black Powder: Carbon (Part 1)

nospam@example.com (Sunrunner20) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 09:48:56 -0700

The making of black powder is really simple, however I'm going to spread this out over a few days so I don't spend all my free time on just this. :)

I chose to start with the most interesting part of making black powder- the charcoal. Its actually pretty simple! First, put a few chunks of grilling charcoal in a grill and start them burning. Then you prepare your wood that will be turned into charcoal usable in black powder. To do this find a piece of softwood, I used a small piece of 2x4. Wrap the wood in several layers of aluminum foil to keep air from getting to the wood, then poke a hole about 1/8 of an inch in diameter to let the gases escape. After that, just stick the aluminum foil wrapped wood on the charcoal and you will get something like this once the grilling charcoal has burnt out and your chunk of wood has cooled off:

Sunrunner20's Blog - Science

Black Powder: Carbon (Part 1)