How to make a ball mill for black powder

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Black powder, also known as gunpowder, is the earliest known chemical explosive. It consists of a mixture of sulfur (S), charcoal (C), and potassium nitrate (KNO₃). The sulfur and charcoal act as fuels while the potassium nitrate is an oxidizer.

The table below gives the percentage (in mass) of each ingredient:

KNO3	75%
C	15%
S	10%

Use a coffee grinder in order to grind the ingredients separately in a very fine powder! NEVER mix the ingredients together with a coffee grinder, there is a high risk of explosion! Once the ingredients are ground, mix them up with the above proportions by hand with a wooden spatula. Don't use a plastic spatula, especially in a glass container: Rubbing plastic against glass is an easy way to generate static electricity that will produce sparks and ignite the mixture. Although the black powder that you will obtain at this point is of poor quality, it may still blast. Mix your powder, shake the container, and make a test. You will be disappointed by how slow it burn, and how hard it is to set it on fire.

In order to raise the quality of your black powder from poor to high, it is necessary to use a ball mill. In the video below, I show how I made my own ball mill. I also show a test of my black powder before and after going into the ball mill:

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