Gunpowder

[quade 4]

Watching "The Book of Eli" and it occurs to me a cache of guns and ammo, no matter how large, is only a temporary solution in a post apocalyptic world. Even if you have somebody skilled at reloading shells, you'd eventually run out of lead and gun powder, and while it was a snap for 9th century Chinese alchemists to create crude gun powder, my guess is the technology to create gun powder of a quality usable in modern weapons grinds to a halt in the post apocalypse.

Or does it?

If the world as we know it came to an end tomorrow and you ran out of ammo, does anybody here know how to make gunpowder of sufficient quality to actually be useful in a modern weapon?

Even better . . . has anybody here actually done it? Made their own gunpowder and loaded it?

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[matthewcline 0]

Oooh, good question. How will we keep our arms "armed" when the factory type stuff and the materials to reload are all burned up?

I have reloaded rounds before, but never mixed gun powder, I think it could be fun!

Hell, too many of my generation and the ones behind me can't "survive" with out a Wal Mart and the inter-webby. This could be a neat venture.

Matt

But, I will stock up on bulk ammo, just in case.

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[chutem 0]

You might be able to make gunpowder and shells, it's primers I'd think would be hard to come up with if you run out.

James

[Amazon 7]

Quote

Oooh, good question. How will we keep our arms "armed" when the factory type stuff and the materials to reload are all burned up?

I have reloaded rounds before, but never mixed gun powder, I think it could be fun!

Hell, too many of my generation and the ones behind me can't "survive" with out a Wal Mart and the inter-webby. This could be a neat venture.

Matt

But, I will stock up on bulk ammo, just in case.

Powder... LOTS of powder.... bullets in your preferred calibers and weights.... primers in large and small sizes depending on what you are loading... oh and spare dies in your favorite calibers.

And picking up a good ole smoke pole that you can cast your own balls and bullets for.. and a good supply of percussions caps.... and a "few" cans of black powder would not be a bad idea.

Making powder can be challenging....and hazardous.... plus now you have to worry about looking over your shoulder..because others are watching very very carfully... you might just be a terrorist

[matthewcline 0]

I would use this thread as proof of my intent at research. It should work right?

Matt

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[Kennedy 0]

Nope, you're right. Modern gunpowder is beyond 99% of gun owners I'd guess. I knows it's beyond me and anyone I shoot with or work with. Black powder is easier to mix up, but also not realistic for most shooters. If you're talking a minor collapse or significant violent unrest, then factories may still be up and running for government types. In that case stealing is easier than making powder. In a full on post apocalyptic world, ammo is a very valuable and irreplaceable commodity. Guns would matter for months or years, but being able to make your tools is more important to making it in the long run. There are lots of books about making bows, arrows, and knives without electricity. I'd say small plot farming knowledge is at least as important as those skills, if not moreso.

witty subliminal message
Guard your honor, let your reputation fall where it will, and outlast the bastards.
1*

[Amazon 7]

Quote

I would use this thread as proof of my intent at research. It should work right?

Matt

Look into some of these..

Modern black powder is fun to shoot...
http://www.black-powder-guns.com/category/1212-Remington_Black_Powder_Rifles.aspx

[popsjumper 2]

Quote

Making powder can be challenging....and hazardous....

Two words:
Homeland Security

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[Belgian_Draft 0]

As a junior high science fair project I made black powder the same way it was made 150 years ago. Too bad the prudes wouldn't let me demonstrate it's use in the gymnasium. Probably a good thing.

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[Amazon 7]

Quote

Quote

Making powder can be challenging....and hazardous....

Two words:
Homeland Security

No sheet

[billvon 3,067]

>Even better . . . has anybody here actually done it?

I've made it from lab ingredients, and it sort of worked in the really crude toilet paper roll explosives we made. It made a reasonable bang and huge cloud of smoke without too much concussion. (In retrospect it's fortunate for us that it didn't work all that well.) We had plans to try to make a cannon out of some iron pipe we had, but never got around to trying it. Again, that's probably a good thing.

But making it from raw sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter would be significantly tougher. I wouldn't even know how to start making potassium nitrate (saltpeter.)

>does anybody here know how to make gunpowder of sufficient quality to actually be
>useful in a modern weapon?

Modern weapons? No. A flintlock? Maybe, if I had the lab ingredients - but anyone who has access to good ingredients probably has access to gunpowder as well.

>you'd eventually run out of lead and gun powder . . .

Lead would be pretty straightforward; most car batteries contain pretty easily extractable lead (just chop out the plates and melt them) and casting is one of the easier technologies to recreate.

[nanook 1]

The Mad Max series touched up on this many years before. I remember noticing the absence of firearms in the last two movies and accepted it as bullets are an extreme commodity.

Crossbows and compound bows are your friends.

_____________________________

"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln

[matthewcline 0]

Quote

Quote

Making powder can be challenging....and hazardous....

Two words:
Homeland Security

I'll take Oxymorons for 1000 Alex!

Matt

An Instructors first concern is student safety.
So, start being safe, first!!!

[Amazon 7]

Quote

>Even better . . . has anybody here actually done it?

I've made it from lab ingredients, and it sort of worked in the really crude toilet paper roll explosives we made. It made a reasonable bang and huge cloud of smoke without too much concussion. (In retrospect it's fortunate for us that it didn't work all that well.) We had plans to try to make a cannon out of some iron pipe we had, but never got around to trying it. Again, that's probably a good thing.

But making it from raw sulfur, charcoal and saltpeter would be significantly tougher. I wouldn't even know how to start making potassium nitrate (saltpeter.)

>does anybody here know how to make gunpowder of sufficient quality to actually be
>useful in a modern weapon?

Modern weapons? No. A flintlock? Maybe, if I had the lab ingredients - but anyone who has access to good ingredients probably has access to gunpowder as well.

There are modern black powder weapons out there based on weapons from the late 1800's that were breech loading and predate the smokeless nitro-cellulose powder. The cartridges can be reloaded just as they did back then. Many of the older designations like the 45-70 Govt or .50-90 Sharps weapons denoted the caliber and amount of grains of black powder.
I know of a few people who shoottheir Winchester 30-30 loaded with 30 grains of 3F Pyrodex and a magnum primer. Messy to clean the gun after a day of shooting... but fun

[Belgian_Draft 0]

For cleaning BPCR's, try Ballistol. www.ballistol.com/

The more you use it, the easier and quicker cleaning becomes. I used it to clean my Shiloh Sharps and after just 3-4 cleaning sessions the time spend went from 15 minutes to less than 5. Great stuff for cleaning guns, preserving leather, etc. and it kills bugs too!

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[billvon 3,067]

>There are modern black powder weapons out there based on weapons from the late
>1800's that were breech loading and predate the smokeless nitro-cellulose powder.

Are there breech loaders that don't need primers?

[Belgian_Draft 0]

Quote

>There are modern black powder weapons out there based on weapons from the late
>1800's that were breech loading and predate the smokeless nitro-cellulose powder.

Are there breech loaders that don't need primers?

Yes. Google "Ferguson Rifle".

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[quade 4]

Quote

The Mad Max series touched up on this many years before. I remember noticing the absence of firearms in the last two movies and accepted it as bullets are an extreme commodity.

Oddly, they still seem to have gasoline. (Which my guess probably runs out MUCH faster.)

quade -
The World's Most Boring Skydiver

[kelpdiver 2]

Quote

Nope, you're right. Modern gunpowder is beyond 99% of gun owners I'd guess. I knows it's beyond me and anyone I shoot with or work with. Black powder is easier to mix up, but also not realistic for most shooters. If you're talking a minor collapse or significant violent unrest, then factories may still be up and running for government types. In that case stealing is easier than making powder. In a full on post apocalyptic world, ammo is a very valuable and irreplaceable commodity. Guns would matter for months or years, but being able to make your tools is more important to making it in the long run. There are lots of books about making bows, arrows, and knives without electricity. I'd say small plot farming knowledge is at least as important as those skills, if not moreso.

If one were planning for the end of times and expecting it to last decades, you'd have to take a multi-tier approach. Black powder is awkward for multi shot engagements, but works "great" for hunting or against those with knives. But you can carry and ration your supply of manufactured ammo and use only when you have to.

[nanook 1]

Quote

Quote

The Mad Max series touched up on this many years before. I remember noticing the absence of firearms in the last two movies and accepted it as bullets are an extreme commodity.

Oddly, they still seem to have gasoline. (Which my guess probably runs out MUCH faster.)

Ehhh. . .crap. You're right here. The reality would have stopped the plot cold.

_____________________________

"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that you can never know if they are genuine" - Abraham Lincoln

[popsjumper 2]

Buying saltpeter is not possible. The military owns it all. They put it in the food in the mess hall.



You had to have been in the military to understand.

My reality and yours are quite different.
I think we're all Bozos on this bus.
Falcon5232, SCS8170, SCSA353, POPS9398, DS239

[mnealtx 0]

Quote

Buying saltpeter is not possible. The military owns it all. They put it in the food in the mess hall.



You had to have been in the military to understand.

nah, they don't do that anymore...food still tastes just as bad, though.

Mike
I love you, Shannon and Jim.
POPS 9708 , SCR 14706

[Belgian_Draft 0]

Quote

Quote

Nope, you're right. Modern gunpowder is beyond 99% of gun owners I'd guess. I knows it's beyond me and anyone I shoot with or work with. Black powder is easier to mix up, but also not realistic for most shooters. If you're talking a minor collapse or significant violent unrest, then factories may still be up and running for government types. In that case stealing is easier than making powder. In a full on post apocalyptic world, ammo is a very valuable and irreplaceable commodity. Guns would matter for months or years, but being able to make your tools is more important to making it in the long run. There are lots of books about making bows, arrows, and knives without electricity. I'd say small plot farming knowledge is at least as important as those skills, if not moreso.

If one were planning for the end of times and expecting it to last decades, you'd have to take a multi-tier approach. Black powder is awkward for multi shot engagements, but works "great" for hunting or against those with knives. But you can carry and ration your supply of manufactured ammo and use only when you have to.

My dad met a fella back in the mid '80s in a gun store in Colorado. The guy told my dad that he had bought a Swedish Mauser after WWII and a case of ammo. He had used the last of the ammo and was ordering some more to replenish his stock. He had raised his family and taught them all to shoot with that single rifle.
I imagine it also taught them the value of thrift!

HAMMER:
Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a
kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent the
object we are trying to hit.

[JohnRich 4]

Quote

Watching "The Book of Eli" and it occurs to me a cache of guns and ammo, no matter how large, is only a temporary solution in a post apocalyptic world. Even if you have somebody skilled at reloading shells, you'd eventually run out of lead and gun powder, and while it was a snap for 9th century Chinese alchemists to create crude gun powder, my guess is the technology to create gun powder of a quality usable in modern weapons grinds to a halt in the post apocalypse.

Lead is readily available in many places: car batteries, car wheel weights, impact berms at gun ranges, skydiving and scuba weight belts, and oh yeah, it actually occurs naturally in the ground too.

It's an easy process to melt lead down and cast it into bullets, but you don't want to inhale the fumes.

Your word "temporary" can be defined very broadly here. Modern loaded ammo will last for many decades, even up to a hundred years. I regularly shoot surplus ammo that is 30 to 40 years old, even some WWII surplus. It still shoots. So it wouldn't be until several generations later that anyone would even need to start thinking about manufacturing moden powder again, and probably by then the turmoil would have stabilized to where modern production could resume once again anyway. So the need for individuals to make it seems unlikely.

There are plenty of black powder firearms in circulation, and folks could go back to those for subsistance hunting and self defense.

Even in the Civil War, both sides managed to run plants to make black powder in mass quantities. The northern powder was actually less reliable, and they were the industrialized side of the conflict. Southern powder was higher quality, and made in more dire circumstances. The yankees loved to capture supplies of rebel powder.

[Skyrad 0]

Quote

Quote

I would use this thread as proof of my intent at research. It should work right?

Matt

Look into some of these..

Modern black powder is fun to shoot...
http://www.black-powder-guns.com/category/1212-Remington_Black_Powder_Rifles.aspx

Still pretty popular here and in Australia too.

When an author is too meticulous about his style, you may presume that his mind is frivolous and his content flimsy.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca