Toilet Paper Makes THE BEST Black Powder?
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- What’s the best carbon source for powerful Black powder? The answer might surprise you…
All of the black powder test are done using my 45 caliber Kibler Southern Mountain Rifle, using 50gr, .440 round ball, .020 pillow ticking patch and each shot is primed with the same powder it’s charged with.
This is why I asked you to try pure cellulose from a pulp mill. The chemicals they add to the pulp are just to purge impurities to get as close to pure cellulose as possible. Toilet paper has very little in the way of glues etc. added to it. I think if you get pure pulp sheets before anything else has been done to it you will get less residue and should have the same or better speed. Pulp from pulp mills is what they make modern day nitrocellulose out of.
That seems sensible. How cost effectively could you source such pulp from a manufacturer compared to stockpiling TP?
Do you think a cheaper and 'rougher' TP would work better?
This is pure Pulp Fiction :)
From using coffee filters to tp keep on your toes an never let anyone know your next move
@@0neDoomedSpaceMarine It really depends on your location for how easy pulp is to source. The pacific north west and states like Minnesota have loads of pulp mills. Because raw pulp is usually a product for other industries it tends to come in bulk amounts that would be less than useful unless you were going to make a lifetime supply of powder in one go or something. If there is a pulp mill nearby to him I would contact them directly and see what you could get for research purposes. If they think it would later turn into a more industrial process if your research pans out it would be in their best interest to get you good samples. If you could find a mill that already supplies nitrocellulose makers instead of the paper industry that would be even better as their product is already tailored for the type of use a back powder maker would want. Next best would be a pulp mill that supplies the TP industry and get some of their pulp before it is processed into TP.
Suck free vid as usual👍 We buy the giant TP bricks from Costco, so I'm set. 😆
That is just great. Toilet paper is ALREADY the first thing to get scarce in a situation. Now you found a reason for the preppers to buy ALL of it. Thanks a lot.
Hah! Well struck.
Are you actually mad? Lmao
Comedic ironic gold
Siempre nos quedará 🖕😁
When the plandemic started, I remembered "Crocodile Dundee" and bought a bidet for each of our three toilets. But now I will buy TP again, for other purposes.
From an engineering perspective, this makes sense because toilet paper is about as close to pure cellulose as you're going to get for an unburned carbon source, meaning that practically every single non-Carbon atom will be either Oxygen or Hydrogen, and nothing else in any significant quantity. It's also extremely fine, making for maximal mixing and contact with the Sulfur and Potassium Nitrate components.
Seems reasonable
I just thought exaclty the same ! So, you must be right !
@@Everythingblackpowderwat about the puup on it💩💩💩🙊🙉🙈🙈🙉🙊😳
It works so well because the paper is so finely processed, from extremely fine fibers. When you carbonize a tight roll of such a material, you create a carbon that is almost entirely air inside, like a charcoal version of aerogel. Grinding this up creates extremely fine particles, allowing for extremely well mixed black powder. That's why you're burning so hot and clean. Your carbon particles are WAY tinier than the would usually be, so your mix is much more well-blended
I like the aerogel comparison! That’s essentially what it is. 👍
Well said , I need to try this method.
If its too fine could it make the combustion dangerous to the user?
Sorry to sound thick but what do you add to the mix for black powder.
@@ewanburnett3956 Potassium nitrate and sulfur. The recipe described (77%, 13%, 10%) in order always is charcoal first, then potassium nitrate, then sulfur last because black powder requires only a small amount of it to work.
I worked at Scott’s paper in mobile and we always used pine pulp as like most all other mills. It’s the number of pours that in the paper compared to just wood coal. It soaks up more of the potassium nitrate compared to wood coal. Here’s something that will surprise you. Me and another friend found this out back in 1978 when we were testing different types of wood for our muzzle loaders and for our fireworks. We found out by sending up a three inch round shell and it exploded like we had put flash powder in it but no just old plain toilet paper black powder. I also am getting 1800 fps in my Thompson and in my Kentucky long rifle which I get about 30 more fps with my Kentucky. We’ve used toilet paper since. We bought cases of toilet paper that was going back to the vat to be recycled because of a flaw in the paper. But when you cook the paper it burns off any acids and bleach that is put into the pulp and then the bleaching tanks. So it’s pure old pine.
Question?
Wow you work at the Michael Scott Paper Company? That's crazy man
I believe that the wood fibers being ground into such a fine and consistent pulp form prior to being pressed into the paper is the reason. I believe the uniformity and consistency of the ultra fine fibers is the key
Seems reasonable
How much could one 'distill' the charcoal? How pure, how fine grain? Wood pulp seems a promising candidate, but there's probably a lot of variables.
Is anyone producing balsa pulp?
That’s what I was thinking. The incredibly thin nature of the TP also means the charcoal would be incredibly fine, which would aid it in burning, much like how the dust in flour mills can become explosive, the ultra fine nature of the charcoal from the paper gives more surface area to grain volume, so it should burn better, is my guess.
I think that the main reason is that all lignin is removed from wood during the paper manufacturing process
Yeah, there is various pulps. Cottenelle might contain some cotton in addition to wood pulp. @@0neDoomedSpaceMarine
Wow. Who knew a household item could make such high velocitys. I'm into pyrotechnics and I've been searching for a good carbon source for years. This is a great breakthrough in the blackpowder community. Thank you!
Happy to help
This is great news for pyros. I don't have to worry about soot for my lift charges just the power. Now I don't have to order eastern red cedar charcoal.
Ill be trying this out soon.
Good gravy, another reason to horde toilet paper. 😂😂😂😮
If you making BP as well. Give us your opinion here also. Thnx
I love how when testing something as ridiculous as toilet paper powder you take it completely seriously and the results show, great video
I didn’t take this too seriously
@WillardMcBain of course but you took it seriously enough to properly make this comedic powder and got some great results and footage
Very true
@@Everythingblackpowder seriously enought to be consistent with everything else.
It is extremely uniform and pure, so when you cook it you get an extremely uniform charcoal. Most of the chemicals in modern toilet paper are removed. When I make black powder I use the cheap TP used in Porta-shitters and such. You can get it in huge rolls and it makes an extremely fine charcoal powder. It works very well for black powder. 45-70 loads
new test: compare cheap gas station public bathroom single ply to double ply gourmet quilted charmin
I used to work for a paper manufacturer, we made copy paper at our plant, toilet paper next door. TP is made from pulpwood, so it's going to be either mostly hardwoods like Aspen, birch or Maple, or where I live pine and spruce. Where I live its red pine specifically. But TP on occasion can be made from sugarcane or bamboo depending on where it comes from. I would wonder if you switched brands if that would change how effective it is if the materials use change to make the TP. TP is also made from shorter fibers than copy paper and writing paper so it can break down better in septic tanks. Not sure if that makes some difference but maybe it helps get a cleaner burn and produce a more refined charcoal. I can tell you even with the bleached paper and all the chemicals in it, one of the biggest risks we had working in a paper plant was the occasional fire because the stuff would spontaneously combust under the paper machines. They're constantly wet but still the stuff if it builds up at all can go "poof" really easily. It was so quick that we had our own fire crews among the trained guys who work in the machine room in case it does happen, and we usually had a fire break out at least once a year but the guys would knock it down fast. So bleached with the chemicals didn't slow the paper down at all if it caught fire.
Thank you for the info! We’re going to try a few other brands and see what we get
@@Everythingblackpowder Try Scott 1-ply stuff and see how it goes. It's not as fluffed up or embossed with loft, but that may not matter.
@@Everythingblackpowder Perhaps try at least one of the super cheap brands just to see if quality matters. Great content by the way!
I worked in the largest paper mill complex in the US, one of the old Scott plants and was there for the KC "merger" aka sell out.
Loblolly and slash pines was the bulk of our pulp mill, with some hardwoods for the SD Warren mill beside us that made craft and office paper.
Pine is a very pitchy wood, and even with the green and brown liquor squeezed out of it, is pretty easy to light up. We had some spontaneous fires in the massive pulp piles.
Wetlap bales is the product that exists before being repulped into the process to make towels, TP and other paper.
I doubt an individual can buy that cheaper than budget TP for a cellulose source to char...for personal use.
Cottonelle is a Southeast Timberlands heritage productline so likely still pine.
One of the goals in making toilet paper is to have it break down quickly and easily in septic systems. This equates to more volatility.
Paper mills do use chemicals to isolate the cellulose fibers in wood, but they wash all of those chemicals out before the pulp moves to the papermaking process. Printer paper, newsprint, etc all have additives (such as clay) to give a desired surface finish, but your soft Cottonelle is probably about as close to pure, clean cellulose fibers as you're likely to get from a trip to any store. The mill has already taken care of removing anything you might not want in your charcoal, so while it seems strange (Toilet paper, amirite?) if you think about what it is, and not its intended use, it makes perfect sense.
Totally agree, and when he said he was using solvents to try washing his material, I noticed that none of what he presented was acids, like bleaching agents, which I believe that the TP factories use, I think acids would more effectively dissolve away foreign materials that arn’t cellulose, what do you think?
Aslong as theres no lotion in the TP its pure cellulose
@@CowboybubPercussion
Additionally, charcoal is used to capture odors and poisons because it has millions of microscopic pores which capture and hold anything. There's no getting all the chemicals out AFTER it's charcoal.
If he boiled and cleaned the source material BEFORE charring it, he may have gotten different results.
We shit in clean water and wipe our asses with finely machined and purified plant carcasses.
@@senseisecurityschool9337 I concur, it’s not so much about cleaning the charcoal, it’s about having a clean carbon source to char.
When the wood is processed at the pulp mill the lignin is stripped from the wood. Lignin is basically the "glue" that holds the wood fibers together. Don't know if that would make a difference but all the other woods you have used would probably still have the lignin in them.
That's true. When making slow match for matchlocks, the preparation process involves various methods for removing the lignin. You might well be on to something as part of the reason.
I came here to say the exact same thing. I agree wholeheartedly.
Nice test. I've always used 75 15 10 for fireworks. Are you using 77 13 10 because it's cleaner burning?
Yes and a little bit more powerful
I also make 75 15 10 for fireworks and this year I try add some aluminium flashpowder - 5 potasium nitrate; 3 aluminium powder; 2 sulphur into classic black powder and it work good. With increasing ratio of flashpowder it make bigger boom but in gun it will be probably dangerous
@@matejgigel5494 I'd love to see the chamber pressures on various black+flash powder loads. I've also heard *STERN* warnings on not putting *ANY* _smokeless_ powder into a *_black_* powder gun. Fair enough, but I would like to see it *SAFELY* simulated to measure chamber pressures. (Even with a small amount of homebrew guncotton.)
Not that much cleaner. I told him I worked at scotch paper for years and back in 78 my friend and I tried this paper and we’ve used it in our rifles and in the fireworks we make. 75/15/10 is all we ever make unless I’m making pulvron bp.
Don’t put any flash powder in a gun barrel. Not even a little because it explodes out in all directions and you really don’t want to be behind a firearm when it goes off. Ask my cannon barrel that exploded half into from adding a couple grams to 30 grams of bp mix.
I think the TP worked best in your process because it was much more easily reduced to an extremely small particle size than the wood charcoals you've tried. If you took your willow charcoal and milled it by itself for 24 hours with the brass balls and then milled your batch of BP with the pre-milled charcoal it would be very fast powder. Also, the carbonization temperature (when using wood) is very important to the speed of the BP made from that charcoal. Swiss powder charcoal is carbonized at carefully controlled temperatures. In my opinion, your toilet paper wins because it beat out the other contestants on particle size alone. The power in BP charcoals comes from the remaining volatiles that are not flashed off in the carbonization process. The fastest BP charcoals have only 70-80% carbon. My knowledge of black powder comes from making fireworks, and I know nothing about guns.
My information was meant to add to yours, not to be at odds with it. Your video was very informative and entertaining. I love how you demonstrated the density check. I'll certainly be watching more of your videos. I'm sure I'll learn more from them :)
Nice explanation. 👍
Try even smaller/faster powder ignition by trying those paper thin 1000 sheet rolls!
Even less fluff size!
Sub'd to see more trials.
It does not surprise me one bit, as toilet paper is very refined wood cellulose.
The entire roll of toilet paper is consistent in texture and quality, and it has to be,
considering where it is used, and any splinters are a danger!
You would get the best char from unscented and white only paper, where there isn't any ink or chemicals to work around.
As with your cork experiment, the cork you used was ground and glued together chunks of cork, and the amount of cork
to adhesives was at a ratio that made for a poor quality char, where it is just the opposite with toilet paper.
Try that John Wayne single ply. Doesnt take $@#t off anyone. I cant believe they do much in the way of treating it. I have even seen it brown from lack of dye. Great video. Thank you
Just a guess but a very high percentage of the "hard" particles have been chemically removed thus leaving a very high percentage of pure cellulose. I would speculate that it doesn't matter what king of wood is used (although I'm sure they have their own specs) if it is processed down to that level then any type of wood would work. In our primitive ways of reducing (charring) the wood there are a LOT of particulates that we just cannot remove unlike the chemical processing of the fine folks that make it easier on our backsides than using corn cobs.
Thats an idea!!!! use CORN COBS!!!!!!!!!😮😮😮😮😮😮😮😮🤐🤐😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 ( dont forget to " CORN " your powder tho!!!!) 😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆😆
Wow , I wonder how that marshmallow inner core of a corncob would work as a carbon source ?
@@kellyseeman741 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂!!!!
Just read your coment ( a 3rd time!!) I wonder how COTTON would work for charcoal, THAT is pure cellulose!! ( worth a TRY!!)
Although the inner part of the corn cob would work the easier part of the corn to use would be the actual stalk so this is worth a try as it is plentiful to most, even in the big cities it's only a few minutes drive into the country and if cut green would be easy to peel and the core would dry quickly. Hmmmm Might have to go for a drive this summer.
to get rid of the salts and sugars in the wood, black powder manufacturers in the past aged the wood chips outdoors for 2-3 years. I suggest soaking the toilet paper and rinsing it in distilled water, then drying the paper mass and making charcoal for black powder from it. maybe black powder would be cleaner to shoot
Another reason to like this channel: experimentation, info sharing, and humor. These results are very interesting. All this time I have been raiding my woodlot for random samplings of woody flora and neglected my bathroom cabinet! I am impressed you got enough charcoal from a roll to make a batch of powder. Anyone have results from regular paper from a paper shredder? I like to use what others throw away, but think I'll stop at used TP. Keep exploring!
You could try cotton pads since they’re pure cellulose. More expensive but should burn REALLY clean.
When paper pulp is made the wood is boiled to leave just the cellulose behind. It is a brown muck. It then gets bleached. If you could get the brown muck before it is made into paper, and charcoal that it might be clean and fast.
I bet
Please be careful about telling someone to collect the "brown muck" when speaking of toilet paper...😁
I have a book on appilation gun makers. The book mentions the use of the pith inside dried cornstalks when making charcoal. The claim was that it was the cleanest burning black powder. It is the styrofoam like stuff inside the stalk that they used. Might want to try it.
Have you tried making your own Pyrodex?
I did it at home, but I didn't use a ball mill, which I don't have.
I used the simplest recipe: 75% potassium nitrate, 10% sulfur and 15% sodium benzoate.
I made it hot, just like I make boiled black powder.
1. Boil half a liter of water in a pot.
2. Then add 750 grams of potassium nitrate, which dissolves perfectly in water and does not need to be ground.
3. Then I add 100 grams of sulfur and mix the solution.
4. Finally, I add 150 grams sodium benzoate.
5. I turn on the gas burner and start slowly cooking the whole thing, stirring all the time so as not to bring it to a boil. In the meantime, isopropyl alcohol is cooling in the freezer.
6. After about 15 minutes of cooking, I take the pot off the burner and set it aside for 10 minutes to cool down a bit. After this time, I pour a quarter of a liter of very cold isopropyl alcohol into the pot, or a little more, and rapidly cool the solution, which begins to boil and reacts with the cold alcohol.
The operation is aimed at better binding of the saltpeter particles with sulfur and sodium benzoate.
At the same time, isopropyl alcohol perfectly binds water, which evaporates better.
The solution begins to thicken quickly.
7. Here comes the only technical problem.
When it all sets, you can form a ball, which, when it dries, can be rubbed on a sieve to obtain the appropriate granulation. The problem is that the whole thing turns into a thick and very sticky green goo. You can't put it through a sieve because everything immediately gets stuck and won't get through to the other side.
Therefore, a better idea is to roll out this green "dough" into a cake 1-2 centimeters thick and leave it in a warm place for a few days to dry.
8. After drying, we obtain a white substance with a slightly yellowish color and considerable hardness. After breaking it into smaller pieces, I crushed it in a brass mortar, then poured it into a steel sieve and rubbed it.
It's going hard because the pieces are hard. Certainly the best way is to grind it roughly in a ball mill, but not for too long, because it is only about giving the right gradation of the powder. Everything has already set while hot, so there is no need to grind it into dust again.
I mention this because, as we know, the inventor of Pyrodex died in his factory during an explosion in a ball mill.
With the Pyrodex I made, I only shot the Remington 1858 revolver from Uberti and I must say that the powder prepared in this way was much stronger than any black powder I had tried to make.
I recommend trying it.
The next challenge I want to take on is making "vitamin" powder based on vitamin C
That’s really interesting. I’ve never looked into making any substitutes.
I just had a thought about this while driving into Virginia tonight on my way to North Carolina.
The CSA destroyed a lot of cotton during the Civil War, in order to pressure the European countries into interceding in the war on their behalf, and they also used a lot of cotton bales to make soft armor on their boats. What if they had turned that cotton into black powder? Try making a batch using a bag of cotton balls.
Will have a video on it this weekend
That's how they make char-cloth for fire starting. Use old blue 👖 jeans
The Confederacy's problem was a nitrate shortage as opposed to charcoal, thanks to being blockaded or embargoed. They had to distribute technical guides about how to refine it from urine in special straw filled barrels and the like via cottage industry.
@@MoreEvilThanYahweh grass in a 5-gallon bucket with water on it out in the sun after a couple days it starts to smell like cow manure I have no idea how much I made but it did the job
@@shanefowler3504 Yeah, but we're talking enough produced to help supply an army. So they had to go about it properly.
Used or new? You'll need a control batch. 😊
🎉propane powerd witch on a brooom dont know what ya feed them makes er fart well 🦬🐎
When a youth growing up in N Wisc we cut and peeled aspen to sell as pulpwood to companies like P&G who had a mill in Green Bay that made Charming TP. Aspen is extremely fast growing wood with long fibers. Would be interesting to compare the wood charcoal to the tP. The biggest difference being that the wood has the lignin and the TP is heavily bleached and the wood has passed through the pulp digester to break down the lignin to get the wood fibers broken down for the paper making process. Extremely interesting video with potentially game changing results!
I meant to say Charmin. It would be real interesting to see the velocity with TP BP in the Plowboy loads!
I'm not familiar with Aspen, but in general faster-growing open-grained woods are capable of being turned into some very fast charcoal. Black willow is an old standard, though it's my understanding Goex utilizes a mixture of maples, which depending on species can vary from fast growing, weak wood (e.g.: silver maple) to much harder, slower-growing wood (rock maple, sugar maple). Bear in mind the commercial powder manufacturers are NOT trying to get the fastest powder! That would make their product too variable, since you get different growth characteristics from even the same species growing in different locations, in wet vs dry years, etc. They are maximizing UNIFORMITY, not speed. So you know x grains of powder will propel a given projectile a given distance, or at least give reproducible muzzle velocities.
I peeled my share of pulp sticks as well , my son couldn't believe the logs were cross ways the train cars there having grown up in the PNW .
I got 2 theories. 1st being that the processing makes smaller fibers or grains and that makes it easier to mill. The 2nd and better theory is most paper processing is aimed at removing a compound called lignin from the wood pulp. Wood is mostly made up of cellulose(the structural part) and lignin(glue that holds the cellulose together). The cellulose has bonds that break and char better whereas the lignin has very strong bonds that won't break down into pure carbon and leaves behind impurities that are hard to dissolve. So this is my educated guess
Yes I think you nailed it, I've been looking for and researching fiber with the least lignin...,...... suspecting it was the culprit . And low and behold it may have just been in my bathroom all along.......
@@tompowers8495 to add to the theory, I believe it’s also the fact the factory uses acids (bleaching agents) to isolate their cellulose from the wood pulp to get rid of impurities in the cellulose, and when he said he tried to wash his carbon sources, I noticed none of the things he mentioned were acids, all of them were solvents. I think he should try an attempt at making a cellulose isolate with an acid like bleach, I would use the type used for washing pool water to make a highly concentrated bleach for the task.
It not only shifts the proportions of cellulose and lignin, it leaches out all the nutrients, that contain other elements.
Lignin and cellulose are hydrocarbons. Only the distribution of carbon atoms is different, when it comes to charcoal.
@goiterlanternbase while it I'd true they are both hydrocarbons there are lots of aromatic structures in lignin. There are different papers where they have pyrolized lignin and they have found instead of producing only carbon there can be aromatic compounds left over that don't burn very well such as benzene and benzene derivatives. I think this could result in a better purer carbon source when the lignin is leached out
@@jaredrigdon3582I know, but pure cellulose doesn't work either. it has too little structure on its own. Not all the lignin is leeched out, by a far stretch. Toilet paper seems to have left just enough to work so much better.
Toilet paper comprises of both hardwood and softwood. Hardwood is used for softness, softwood for strength. Luxury brands are most likely to use virgin fibre in their pulping process (the white pressed sheets) and not recycled. The ratio of softwood to hardwood is 5/8 softwood and 3/8 hardwood in each single ply sheet of paper. The softwood undergoes refining to internally fibrilate the individual fibres, that makes each fibre form branches around it so that they bind together strongly.
The ligaments are removed during the papermaking process that’s the glue binder in the wood that holds it together as a tree. This is done in the digester with heat and lime. Leaving the long fibers.
I believe toilet paper is made from quick growing poplar. It should make a very fine char as it has been previously pulverized.
The question is, what would be more valuable in an apocalypse? Toilet paper or powder?
Powder is easier to make .
Have you tried straw yet?
Not yet
I'm impressed with your work, that's a notable increase in velocity. I have been working with homemade version of Blue MZ and getting 920-950 fps with 30 gr and conicals out of a 8" 1858 Remington. Your TP powder is worthy of further development, performance on par with prismatic BP where the charcoal is brown, cocoa color and a bit undercharred. To outperform Goex with TP, you earned my subscription Sir
You know, now your going to have to test all the brands as to which is king of the latrine. 😂
Coal has a large internal surface. That's the reason why coal is used for filtering dirt from liquids. If you wash your coal some of the dirt you try to wash out will clog the tiny holes or cavities in the coal an the internal surface is reduced. With reduced internal surface the coal will burn slower. You could try to coal up the washed stuff again, may be the internal surface area will be restored.
For the toilet paper, the washing was before coaling. The toilet paper is in fact clean cellulose whithout any glue. Cellulose is nothing else than carbon hydrogen and oxygen. After coaling you get the pure coal as result. It could be that the structure of the paper fibers also helps to get a good internal structure of the resulting carbon. So far my ideas about it.
Okay Jake, the TP powder is in the ball mill. It takes just over a roll of Charmin to make 1.2 ounces of charcoal and I had to grind it with my grain mill to get it to fit in the drum I use. Going at 75/15/10, will report on how it does in my Kibler SMR .45 soon.
Excellent
@@Everythingblackpowder Results are in, not great. 52 grains volume/50 grains weight, 3F @ 50 mesh, .445 PRB with .018" spit patch, averaged 1516 fps from MagnetoSpeed @ muzzle. Lots of fouling in "chamber" area but soft and no hard ring formed at all. Slow and dirty tells me not milled enough. Ground TP carbon and tumbled 16 hours, normally only do 12 with Willow that gives 1646 all else the same. GOEX 3F @50 grains is pretty solid at 1670 in my gun with my chrono. Charmin Ultra Strong is what I used. Back to the drawing board?
Can you try starch next, potato or maybe cornstarch? It's also a carbohydrate polymer like cellulose, but has granular structure instead of fibers, nanometer scale regular size globules, I imagine the carbon obtained will also preserve that microstructure.
Basta misturar o amido (35%) com o nitrato (65%), que já funciona como pólvora.
@@sandroventania782 No, I think the carbon derived from starch could have some special properties due to its extremely fine consistency, starch by itself is a poor fuel.
Well done. Very interesting. I believe pulp wood is usually a soft wood, could the chemical processes remove the
oils and leaving only the bare cellulose fibers?
Seems reasonable
When they make toilet paper, the pulverize the snot out of it, in order to make it soft, and they purify it to the n-th degree, in order to not irritate your "tender tissues".
Ultra fine wood particles and ultra pure cellulose --- sounds like the makings of some mighty fine charcoal powder to me.
funny that, When they make recycled paper they Beat the shit out of it to make it clean. :)
dude this is brilliant. i wanted to suggest using bone as your carbon source. Im a blacksmith and historically one of the way you could make steel was by carbonizing iron.
And one of the sources of carbon I've seen used was bone, Ive heard they used it cuz it was a really pure carbon source. dont know if that would work with blackpowder.
Hope this helps!
Bones will only give around 10% carbon. The rest is basically a 50:50 mix of calcium and phosphorous oxides which will cause severe fouling unless they are removed by acid washing.
This is fantastic news! To get these velocities is excellent, and the fouling is very acceptable, I would think the wood used for Toilet paper would be Birch or Poplar as they are both timbers without the usual elements found in hardwood. Very many thanks for posting this one! Chris B. P.S. I did think it was a bit of a wind up at first!
Thank you, Chris
I have seen pulp wood and family worked at them and it mostly pine down here
@@Nobodys-bd3bg That is interesting, they must use some aggressive chemicals to remove the high resin content on Pine, but I suppose the extra cost is offset by the amount of Pine they find available. Chris B.
YES Birch & Poplar are what is used in most of the paper mills up he in Wisconsin. ( the paper mills I know of here make brown cardboard paper rows mostly)
"Some big name stinker companies like Charmin, Cottonelle, and Quilted Northern, among others, are clear cutting trees from places like the Canadian boreal forest," -- Sierra Club
Lots of softwoods in those forests although some web sources say toilet paper is about 70% hardwood and 30% softwood.
Still would like to see you use Cottonwood that was the source for the powder with less smoke than any before it and was the final form of the best powder being produced by the Augusta Powder Works at the end of the War between the States.
Maybe the microscopic grain size of the remaining cellulose in the toilet paper lends to better absorption of the potassium nitrate and sulfur. Anything I would think is just a guess but the way to get paper soft is by making grain structure smaller and more gaps between them. I bet if you examined your charcoal under a microscope it would be more porous but uniformly porous
I wonder what results you would get using activated carbon. Being a commercially produced carbon you can get relatively easily I wonder if it would be more consistent then producing your own.
As far as the toilet paper I think the fact that it is uniform and consistent material with a large surface area probably makes it easier to completely carbonize.
Excellent velocity, fairly clean. Did you find any drawbacks?
As for why the TP works so well? All I can figure is something in the process that makes it work. At that velocity vs cleanliness and the very low cost and availability of toilet paper. If I was into making my own powder I’d stick with exactly what you made.
Absolutely no drawbacks, it performs exactly like Swiss
Very interesting video. I reload smokeless powder and have been interested in branching off to black powder since you can make your own black powder much easier than smokeless powder. I subscribed to your channel and will binge watch some videos to see what I can learn. I never realized the source of charcoal making material could make a noticeable difference. Phil
Wood is typically composed of about 25% lignin, and 70% cellulosic carbohydrates, with roughly 45% cellulose and 25% hemicelluloses (Sjostrom, 1993). A paper based product typically contains 90-99% cellulose fibers which are the primary structural element and the most important component influencing end use properties. A network of self-bonding cellulose fibers within network structure affects chemical and physical characteristics of the paper products. More molecular chain bond length equals more surface area for reactions with sulphur and potassium nitrate.
This is hilarious and amazing at the same time! Well done Jake!
Thank you Ben
Hi, I think I have a possible reason why this is better. The main chemical for bleaching paper is sodium/potasium chlorate. You might've added a small ammount ofstronger oxidizer than KNO3 by accident that is left over from the paper making process. The sensitivity of chlorate is exacerbated by the addition of sulphur, so not only you added another oxidizer but you jacked it up by adding sulphur. One rule in firework making is not to mix chlorates and sulphur as it may self-ignite. Try the same experiemtn with unbleached paper and you can confirm.
For anyone who needs to know... On the otherside of the pond. Cottonelle is marketed as Andrex in the UK and Republic of Ireland, as Baby Soft in South Africa. and In Italy is marketed as Scottonelle
The septic safe single ply paper might even be better-- think that fluffy stuff might have a little something to help the plys fit together.
My uncle worked maintenance on paper mills, and one of his favorite things to say was, "if you knew what goes into toilet paper, you'd never wipe your ass again".
I'm interested in how well it does in storage...under the same conditions as you store your other powders. Shelf some of it and revisit it in 12 months. Also perhaps store small amounts of each in a humid environment and do a comparison on the breakdown.
I think at least one reason that tp works so well is being in a light format, during carbonation, the gases are less restricked, so you get a more pure carbon. It seemed that when I used sawdust, it was a better carbon, but I had to put a soup can in the center of the paint can or the center tended to have some sawdust left, that hadn't carbonated. It was also way easier to grind when already somewhat fine befor firing.
I had the same thing trying to make-up airflow and found if you don't pack the can it can breathe in there and then it worked
It kind of makes sense. Toilet paper pulp, to my knowledge, is mostly softwood ( pine ). All the recipes for black powder that perform well recommend pine char that I’ve seen. The flash rate seems to be more rapid, with reduced soot fouling.
These people act like the coolest people to hang out with they’re hilarious and got the best hobbies in the world
Good thing is if you had done this video two years ago, the toilet paper would have as hard to get as Goex was 6 months ago.
Yeah but if he'd done it 1 year ago he'd have found people trying to shift giant piles of TP at bargain prices!
Others seem to have answered the "why" question, so now i suggest you try different TP brands and qualities. Can you get the same performance out of the super cheap 1-ply stuff?? Very cool test!!
I know about nothing when it comes to flint and powder but this was highly interesting
I think the reason why the washing was bad for the charcoal but not for the paper is because the toilet paper wash happened pre-char, like you said.
If you had brought those washed coals back up to char temperature after washing, and crushed them up a bit, I think it would loosen up the carbon particles for a faster burn.
The chemical composition of toilet paper is very close to sugar. Sugar would be an interesting carbon source if you haven’t tried it yet.
This earned a sub. I build fireworks and we overlap in chasing the best charcoals for black powder. We use it to lift and burst shells. I am very curious how this would perform in fireworks conditions. There is far less pressures and much heavier payloads. Have you tried Eastern Red Cedar or willow?
Oh yes. They were my go to charcoals for a few years
This is hilarious because TP is the cleanest, finest, fiber source I could think of short of possibly cotton wool, free from all the impurities of wood charcoal, and it seems everyone was treating it like a joke.
I worked at a Kimberly/Clark paper plant outside Tulsa. They used pure eucalyptus pulp from Brazil.
At the time I was there, no recycling was going on.
Interesting. Thank you
I bet, honestly, that the cheaper the toilet paper, the cleaner it comes out. It is basically just pure cellulose. When you burn that down, you will get as close to pure carbon as you can make from home. It makes perfect sense. Liked and subscribed.
Have you ever used wheat straw?? I've heard of it but don't know. Love the videos!!!
Looks like your lock time was fast as well. Also it could be based on how tp is made.
I predict lots of unburn residues and LOTS of wipes for the barrel, mark my words
lol, consider them marked.
Skid-marked words?
@@Everythingblackpowdernoted, I assume you took cellulose based TP, which COULD work somehow. But judging on how badly it dissolves and decays when recycling (I used to work part time at my town's water recycling and sewage plants back in uni) I wouldn't get my hopes up...
Anyway the suspense is closing in, qlet me see...
@@Everythingblackpowderok, I assumed wrong, my bad... Nice, time for .45-70/50-70 TP loads I guess
@@levergatRapha we thought it would be atrocious as well! It really surprised us
I think they use Poplar wood to make most paper including toilet paper but I’m not sure.
I think your process for making the charcoal is heavily effected by the density of the starting material. The very clean and airy toilet paper is able to carbonize more completely and likely contains less minerals thanks to whatever they did to make it.
Maybe 🤷♂️
Seems reasonable
Ti have personally made this very product and brand for over 30 years. I has no recycled paper or plastic or even bamboo. Regardless of what these uninformed people say. My guess is that during the process of making it we actually "mechanically "treat the individual wood fibers to make them softer. Theis greatly increases the surface area. Burn rate is directly proportional to surface area so increasing surface area on individual fibers would make sense
Because it’s thin and not dense, the carbon formed by the toilet paper should produce finer and more uniform carbon powder after ball milling.
This allowed the black powder to burn instantly and thoroughly. This led to a faster explosion and much less unburned carbon.
While chemical strippers and bleaches are used in the manufacturing of toilet paper, all but residual amounts of them get washed out of the pulp (a mixture of hard and soft woods, and increasingly, hemp).
It's possible that it works so well because the natural glue (lignin) that holds the wood fibers together is removed (that's what makes TP soft and fluffy), and all that's left is the cellulose.
That's also how nitrocellulose (smokeless powder) is produced.
It seems reasonable to me anyway.
Seems reasonable to me
Sound good to me
It's the "fluffiness". Surface area during charring combined with particle size.
NileRed did something similar a few years back where he converted the cellulose of Toilet paper into hooch and then later distilled it. Since the toilet paper is the one of the least densely packed forms of paper, you're getting almost pure uniformly aligned cellulose at very fine particle size. Try it again with ultra-cheap fluffy paper, the cheap stuff that just shreds apart.
T.P. That's why a mix of trees are used to make it. The long, strong fibers of softwood trees like Southern yellow pines and Douglas-firs are used to make toilet paper strong. The shorter fibers of hardwood trees like oaks and maples give toilet paper its soft texture. Toilet paper gets its softness from virgin pine pulp.
Like others have said, toilet paper is very treated to limit impurities.
One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the fact that TP is just small carbohydrates loosely bonded together. It's essentially just pure sugar, which is jammed packed with energy. It's no different than making gun powder out of extremely pure sugar.
Ultracheap paper towels will probably produce similar results. More expensive brands are likely to have additives for strength when soggy.
Inspired by your research- my version is dubbed TP-101:
50 KNO3/26% KCLO4/9sulfur/15 TP charcoal (Cottonelle)
Tested in a 50. Cal Savage ML-10, FFg 90 gr charge:
360 gr Lee cast Maxiball. 1437/1468 fps
200 gr .44 hard cast w/ sabot. 2120/2210
Burns much cleaner than regular BP, some whitish residue of KCL. Bulk density of only 1.24g/cc, thats after double pucking. Its the high surface area, super fluffy charcoal , Ive found if you only cook it for 2-3 hrs, the core of the roll will have cocoa colored charcoal. This another variable to play with. Cheers
Hemp charcoal has very similar preformance. The reason for the toilet paper working well is the high surface porosity per unit of mass. In fact hemp charcoal treated with acids to remove the metal salts is a "green" source of graphite for use in metal ion batteries. Works well with both sodium and lithium ions. Part of the reason it would work well as a gunpowder feedstock is that the potassium would intercsllate into it and electrostaticlly coat each particle with nitrate ions.
Paper is usually fir and spruce, with some pine and a small amount of hardwood. TP will be purer fiber, with very little or no of the kaolin, glue and other sizing needed for writing paper. Lignin will be almost entirely removed by the paper making process.
TP, surprisingly, will have high quality wood fiber, if it didn't it would fall apart while you used it. So there you go - it is a convenient source of relatively pure, relatively high quality softwood fiber. While all mills will likely use all the fir and spruce they can get, there will be some variation between different mills.
Scott or Georgia Pacific in the single ply 1000 sheet rolls would be top of my list for several reasons, but mainly because it likely will get you good quality fiber with very little added.
White TP will be bleached with either chlorine dioxide or peroxide like any white paper, I have no idea if that has any impact on powder quality.
I don't claim any special insight but I did grow up near a paper mill for whatever that's worth.
Card board or kraft paper may work too. There is a whole slew of videos that could be made from this line of research.
Now I got it. The people who hoarded toilet paper during the pandemic were not brainless morons- they were really wise guys, indeed. They hoarted it for making black powder!
😉
Toilet paper is the most cleanest cellulose you can buy. Expose TP to Nitric acid and Sulfuric acid and you have Nitrocellulose (aka guncotton). So by carbonizing the TP. You broke it down to a very pure cellulose charcoal. As clean as you can get it to be. All other types of papers have more impruities in them to make them more ridged. Now if you can carbonize cotten. You'll take thing up another level. Cotten (right off the plant) is 90% cellulose while wood is about 40 to 50% cellulose. Hemp is at about 57% cellulose. So here are a couple ideas you can play around with to make charcoal from.
Thank you! I’m making some with cotton right now.
First time seeing this channel, very interesting result. My college background is chemistry / biochemistry, so I have a couple of ideas to add to the discussion.
First, the source wood is most likely from fast-growing pine or fir trees. That is important because those soft woods burn and leave very little ash- e.g. they're full of high-carbon fibers of lignin polymer and sap high in turpenes / turpentine. That's in contrast to slower growing hardwoods which tends to accumulate more minerals like potassium and calcium, aka 'ash' which is where potash/potassium gets its name. That potassium and other 'ash' doesn't burn as well as pure carbon.
Second, since the paper is not dense, but fluffy, it should be very good at releasing the long-chain alcohols, waxes, esters and other aromatic carbon compounds which burn at low heat- thus leaving a fine mesh of mostly pure carbon that retains the 'fluffy' texture which provides lots and lots of surface area for adsorption when converting to nitrocellulose (note, not absorption, which is more about wicking into a solid). It's basically the same reason that activated charcoal is so good at purifying air, it has a massive surface area to react with the chemicals we detect as odors. Same massive surface area ensures almost 100% conversion of cellulose to nitrocellulose.
Third, I'd be curious what results you get from activated charcoal. Not the standard charcoal briquette, which is often made from coal silt and sawmill waste, but actual wood-based charcoal, which is formed by heating wood with limited oxygen so that the low-burning-temperature volatiles, alcohols, ethers, waxes, turpentines vaporize, leaving behing pure carbon which burns at much higher temperature. Also curious what would happen from grinding down anthracite coal into powder. Alternate way to approach that would be to charcoal-ize simple baking flour- it's already ground fine, and is comparatively cheap.
Interesting. Thank you very much! I’ve had a few people ask me to try baking flour.
@@Everythingblackpowder Interesting that people further down in the comments mention willow- I was going to suggest weeping willow fronds as a charcoal starter- they burn incredibly cleanly with no ash, e.g. no minerals to soak up the oxidizer during combustion.
A bigger problem with 'paper' is that newspaper and writing paper is mostly clay filler, bentonite / montmorrelite clay to give the white color and absorb the ink.
Another interesting option would be to check with local landscapers to see if they have wood chips of gambrel-oak, osage orange, black locust or hickory- those are all types of firewood that burn REALLY hot (I've had a black / honey locust in a fire pit that actually melted an aluminum grate into a puddle of metal.
Willow has been my go to charcoal for years.
I don't have a chemistry / biochemistry background. I finished grade 12. I'm a loser. I dropped out and got kicked out several times before I finally managed to get it done.
Lignin is a complex organic polymer, and it is primarily composed of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. When lignin is broken down during the bleaching process, these elements are affected. The bleaching agents chemically react with lignin, breaking its complex structure into smaller molecules. This process often involves oxidation, where oxygen reacts with the carbon in lignin. After lignin is broken down, the smaller, altered molecules are usually soluble in water or can be washed away from the cellulose fibers. This means that the carbon, now part of these smaller molecules, is largely removed from the pulp along with the rest of the lignin components. Although, the bleaching process may not remove 100% of the lignin.
I assume it works better because of design attributes. Toilet paper is designed to start decomposing and break apart immediately after it gets wet so it can be flushed easier. It also is designed to absorb and wick moisture fast, but not as fast as paper towels. Paper towels are also much stronger and don't break apart nearly as fast. So the only attribute they share Is wicked moisture fast. So maybe try paper towels, and if it works better than TP it's the wicking effect, if it works less good than might be its fast decompression property. May be try Decorative tissue paper, not normal nose tissues or just some sort of paper that decomposes faster than toilet paper.
From what i understand toilet paper is a mixture of soft wood and hard wood. The sap is probably removed from the soft wood during tp process which makes for better charcoal.
Surface area. With the wood being so processed before being made into the paper, the cellulose and other fibers are less compact. You burn away impurities and the material becomes even less dense. After pulverizing it in a ball mill, the powder is likely able to reach a consistency far more fine than products that have not been so heavily processed in such a short amount of time. With increased surface area, the burn rate is far faster than powders with less surface area available for the oxidization process of combustion.
I've used toilet paper before......I've tried leaves and grass too and it worked.....you can use pretty much any carbon source for making black powder the performance differs a lot but not as much as you would expect
i wonder if cheaper tp would be better? Tp is 70% hardwood (oaks/maples) 30% softwood (pines/first) makes sense it is good "charcoal". since washing charcoal was not good,, guess washing the wood before making charcoal is key? Thanks!!
Tissue paper will have tons of surface area and tiny, tiny, clean pulp.
I'm sure that means consistent and thorough charring.
Silk is very expensive, it costs $20 to $40 a yard, but you might be able to find it cheaper at a second hand or thrift store
Maybe another thing that would have a similar result is using cotton balls for carbon. I'd think it may be too thin to hold it's shape but it should produce an extremely fine charcoal powder straight out of the can. Looks like you're going to be making black powder from all sorts of supermarket items soon enough lol.
In the process of making tp the wood pulp is run through a digester. In this digester they use a combination of water and sulferdioxide(SO2). Any residew left from this process would be a sulfide compound that would aid in combustion when turned into black powder. That is my theorem. Love the video, keep up the good work.
Sulfuric acid is also a main component of making nitrocelleose powder, also known as smokeless powder.
Premium Laser Print Copy Paper, 24lb, Letter (8.5 x 11), 1 Ream (500 Sheets) This should react the same or better than the toilet paper.
General Washington filed the first patent in the US for potash.
He would be proud
If only you could reverse engineer toilet paper out of charcoal
Toilet paper is made from pure pulp (all pores open), free of resins and lignin. Dyed and recycled toilet paper could be dirtier because of the dyes. Cotton could also work.
I didn't see anyone else comment this, so i'm going to add it. It didn't sound like your personal process used an industrial press to remove the moisture or solvent. The rollers they use can create immense pressures.
I work on a paper machine in florida making TP. We use Eucalyptus and Southern Pine. Pine has a longer grain than the Eucalyptus, and doesn't lend itself to soft paper, so we tend to use a higher level of hardwood for the softer papers. Once it comes out onto the reel, it's been washed clean of any chemicals and detergents through a long process.
Interesting, thank you!
@@Everythingblackpowder And thank you for the informative video! I'm new to your channel and now I'm wanting to whip up a batch of my own. This style of content is what made UA-cam great. Keep up the good work.
I don't know if this has been tried for this application but using an age old recipie for a case hardening compound for hardening steel , leather charcoal always scores as the best for carbon content , I make my own by heating leather in an air deprived container
Just a thought
The difference is consistency toilet paper in pulp form is highly grounded... Maybe if all char is ground finer the burn will be quicker and hence stronger
the moisture is being removed way easier due to the paper being in thin sheets.
Because the powder from it is so fine, also the paper has been bleached / cleaned / refined. probably makes a cleaner carbon.
Paper is very pure cellulose, but can contain chemicals like in the paper sheets for printers. Toilet paper has actually less chemicals because it’s meant for contact with areas where you don’t want weird chemicals to be.
Next time I suggest that you try commercially available cotton pads for skincare as they are very pure cotton cellulose, or maybe an old pair of jeans if you feel like it 😁
Nitrocellulose propellants produce much less smoke and flash than black powder and deliver much more mechanical work per unit of weight. The other advantages of smokeless powder are its improved stability in storage, its reduced erosive effects on gun bores, and the improved control obtainable over its rate of burning.
Madam, that is entirely beside the point 😉
@WillardMcBain
At first, I didn't realize that this was your name, and the other was to your channel. Great video.
Thank you