From: Norman Bassett, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
In answer to ET - You can put together the components
of black powder as a fine dust - ie without forming
them into various sizes of grains, but
a.they tend to layer themselves by density when shaken
and hence don't stay intimately mixed as required for
best combustion
b. you lose the advantage of having different grain
sizes, which is that smaller grains go off with more
of a fizz, making them good for the touch-hole powder
and fuses and rockets, and bigger grains go off
faster, making them better for the main propellant
charge in a gun or bomb.
You can top-up the cartridge case with something like
tissue paper which stops the powder being shaken
around, of course.
I presume that you COULD "corn" (ie make into granules
of the size you wish) any kind of a mixture at all -
I'm told that glue is a good material to bind powder
into grains with - not overdone, of course.
The basic gun powder situation appears to be that any
"fuel" and any material that will combine with it can
be used in a confined space to produce large volumes
of gas and push out a missile. I understand you can
use a single drop of petrol(gasoline) in a big enough
cartridge case, for example.
The tube doesn't need to be metal, the powder doesn't
need to have ANY of the component chemicals of black
powder in it and the missile doesn't have to be made
of metal either.
Regards
Norman Bassett
drakenfels.org
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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