How To Make Gunpowder
How to make gunpowder and what you need.
How To Make Gunpowder
Gunpowder, also called black powder, is a simple mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal. The trickiest part of making black powder is sourcing these three supplies. Once you find them, you mix them together and create an explosive black meal. Be extremely cautious when handling black powder, and make sure to store it away from heat and flame.
Get your hands on some saltpeter. Saltpeter is the common name for potassium nitrate. In the days when black powder was widely used, saltpeter was manufactured from bat guano or made from horse urine and other “manurial soils.”[1] It’s used in many fertilizers, as part of science projects, and in certain recipes. You have several options for sourcing saltpeter:
- Look for “stump remover” in garden stores. Saltpeter is often sold under this name. You may also find it labeled as saltpeter, niter, or potassium nitrate.
- Buy it online. If you do a search for saltpeter, you’ll get plenty of results, and you can easily have a bottle delivered to you.
- Make it yourself out of a cold pack. Cold packs you can buy for a few dollars to help with sore muscles contain sodium nitrate and water, and can be used to make saltpeter.
- Make it with urine. This is definitely the most difficult way to source saltpeter, but some black powder enthusiasts prefer to make their powder entirely from scratch. To do so, one process is to fill a drum with manure affixed with a drain, valve, and filter at the bottom. Urinate into it, then top it off with water. After about 10 months, dry it out on trays.