Black powder

Cannon in a Civil War re-enactment: The discharge of black powder often affected visibility significantly.

Black powder was the original gunpowder; it was practically the only known propellant and explosive until the middle of the nineteeth century. Since then it has largely been superseded by more efficient explosives such as smokeless powders for use in guns and TNT, for blasting and bomb-making purposes. Black powder is still manufactured today, however, primarily for use in fireworks, model rocket engines, andmuzzleloading weapons.

The primary problem with black powder is that, when fired, it produces a cloud of smoke, and this smoke obscures the target also making the position of the shooter readily discoverable. In addition, the amount of energy in a given unit of black powder, compared to energy in the same amount of smokeless powder, is relatively small.

Today there are shooting competitions limited to guns using black powder, and some jurisdictions have special hunting seasons restricted to muzzle loading or blackpowder guns.

Description

Black powder consists of the granular ingredients sulphur, charcoal (provides carbon to the reaction), and saltpetre, KNO₃ (provides oxygen to the reaction).

The products of burning do not follow any simple equation. One study showed: 55.91 perecent solid products (potassium carbonate, potassium sulfate, potassium sulfide, sulfur, potassium nitrate, potassium thiocyanate, carbon, ammonium carbonate); 42.98 percent gaseous products (carbon dioxide, nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen, methane); and 1.11 percent water.

Saltpetre is the primary ingredient in black power account for almost 75 percent of its content by weight, followed by charcoal and sulfur.

The optimum proportions for gunpowder are: 74.64% saltpetre, 13.51% charcoal, and 11.85% sulfur (by weight). The current standard for black powder manufactured by pyrotechnicians today is 75% potassium nitrate, 15% softwood charcoal and 10% sulfur; it appears to have been adopted as far back as 1780.

For the most powerful black powder "meal" a wood charcoal is used. The best wood for the purpose is pacific willow, but others such as alder or buckthorn can be used.

The ingredients are mixed as thoroughly as possible. This is achieved using a ball mill with non-sparking grinding apparatus (e.g., bronze or lead), or similar device. Historically, a marble or limestone edge runner mill, running on a limestone bed was used in Great Britain; however, by the mid 19th century this had changed to either an iron shod stone wheel or a cast iron wheel running on an iron bed. The mix is sometimes dampened with alcohol or water during grinding to prevent accidental ignition.

Black powder is also corned to change its burn rate. Corning is a process which first compresses the fine black powder meal into blocks with a fixed density (1.7 g/cm³). The blocks are then broken up into granules. These granules are then sorted by size to give the various grades of black powder. Standard, USA, grades of black powder run from the coarse Fg grade used in large bore rifles and small cannon though FFg (medium and smallbore rifles), FFFg (pistols), and FFFFg (smallbore, short pistols and priming flintlocks). To reduce accidental ignition due to an electrostatic discharge, coarse black powder grains are sometimes coated with graphite dust, preventing charge build-up during handling. Very coarse black powder was used in mining before the development of nitroglycerine and dynamite.

Black powder is classified as a low explosive, that is, it only deflagrates (burns) rapidly. High explosives instead detonate at a rate approximately 10 times faster than the burning of black powder.

Although black powder is not a high explosive, for shipping purposed, the United States Department of Transportation classifies it as a "Class A High Explosive" because it is so easily ignited. Highly destructive explosions at fireworks manufacturing plants are rather common events, especially in Asia. Complete manufactured devices containing black powder are usually classified as "Class C Firework," "Class C Model Rocket Engine," etc. for shipment because they are harder to ignite than the loose powder.

History

A description of saltpetre-aided combustion was written down in the 9th century. The explosion recorded was an accidental by-product of Taoist alchemical efforts to develop an elixir of immortality. A book dating from c. 850 C.E. called "Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao of the True Origin of Things" warns of one elixir, "Some have heated together sulfur, realgar and saltpeter with honey; smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down."

The impetus for the development of explosive weapons in China was increasing encroachment by tribes on its borders. The Wujing Zongyao (武经总要, "Collection of the Most Important Military Techniques") of 1044 C.E. contains three recipes for explosives that Joseph Needham considers to be the first "true gunpowder" recipes: two for use in incendiary bombs to be thrown by siege engines (48.5% saltpetre, 25.5% sulfur, 21.5% others; 50% saltpetre, 25% sulfur, 6.5% charcoal and 18.75% others) and one intended as fuel for poison smoke bombs (38.5% saltpetre, 19% sulfur, 6.4% charcoal and 35.85% others). One of the recipes describes a 'thorny fire-ball' bomb designed with caltrops to catch and stick to targets and set them alight. It calls for a mixture of sulphur, saltpeter, charcoal and other filler and combustible ingredients to be packaged into a ball that is lit just prior to being launched from a trebuchet. Printed editions of this book were made from about 1488, and in 1608 a hand-copied edition was made.

The Chinese began to use these explosives as a form of incendiary projectiles or fire arrows in warfare by 904. Kelly suggests that the Chinese began to use rockets in war in the middle of the 13th century. Although rockets certainly do appear by the 14th century, as they were documented in the Huolongjing by Jiao Yu.

One early use of saltpetre explosives as a weapon was the fire lance, a handheld flamethrower which could also be loaded with shrapnel; by the late 1200s the Chinese had developed these into the earliest guns. It should be noted that after a major battle in 1268, accounts which based on Yuanshi, listed the events with the use of firearms to the end of Mongol's conquest, when it was last mentioned on a battle at Wuzhou in 1277. An explosion was mentioned on 1280 at Yangzhou caused by the black powder. After 1279, most guns taken from the major cities were kept by the Mongols. In 1330s, a Mongol law prohibited all kinds of weapons in the hands of Chinese. However it was restricted to civilians, who didn't usually carry firearms. An account of a 1359 battle near Hangzhou records that both the Ming Chinese and Mongol sides were equipped with cannon. From archeology, the oldest cannon in China was excavated in Acheng in 1970 dated prior to 1290 by Wei Guozhong. Another discovery was the inscribed metal cannon dated to about 1298 (大德二年). Which is similar to the bronze cannon of 1332 (至顺三年), that also had its date inscription. In 1974, an agglomerated ingredients which contains 60% saltpetre, 20% sulfur, 20% charcoal that dated to about late the 13th century was unearthed in the city of Xi'an.

Many early mixtures of Chinese gunpowder contained toxic substances such as mercury and arsenic compounds.

In the 1270s, the Mongols conquered China and, with it, the technology of gunpowder. The use of cannon and rockets became a feature of East Asian warfare thereafter. The low, thick city walls of Beijing (started in 1406), for example, were specifically designed to withstand a gunpowder artillery attack, and the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) moved the capital from Nanjing to Beijing in 1421, because the hills around Nanjing were good locations for invaders to place artillery.

Saltpetre combustion spread to the Arabs in the 13th century. The Turks destroyed the walls of Constantinople in 1453 with 13 enormous cannons up to a bore of 90 cm firing a 320 kg projectile a distance of over 1.6 km.

The first written recipe for gunpowder in Europe is a recipe for pure black powder, set down by Roger Bacon in 1242 and later mentioned by him in 1252, 1257 and 1267 (Gartz 2007). This is the earliest extant written recipe for pure black powder, without any additional ingredients, from anywhere in the world.

The 15th through 17th century saw widespread development in gunpowder technology, mainly in Europe. Advances in metallurgy led to portable weapons and the development of hand-held firearms such as muskets. Cannon technology in Europe gradually outpaced that of China and these technological improvements transferred back to China through Jesuit missionaries who were put in charge of cannon manufacture by the late Ming and early Qing emperors. The latter half of the 19th Century saw the invention of nitroglycerin, nitrocellulose and smokeless powders, which soon replaced black powder in many applications.

Civil use

Until the invention of explosives, large rocks could only be broken up by hard labour, or by heating with large fires followed by rapid quenching. Black powder was used in civil engineering and mining as early as the 15th century. The earliest surviving record for the use of gunpowder in mines comes from Hungary in 1627. It was introduced to Britain in 1638 by German miners, after which records are numerous. Until the invention of the safety fuse by William Bickford in 1831, the practice was extremely dangerous. Another reason for danger was the dense fumes given off and the risk of igniting flammable gas when used in coal mines.

The first time gunpowder was used on a large scale in civil engineering was in the construction of the Canal du Midi in Southern France. It was completed in 1681 and linked the Mediterranean sea with the Bay of Biscay with 240 km of canal and 100 locks. Another noteworthy consumer of blackpowder was the Erie canal in New York, which was 585 km long and took eight years to complete, starting in 1817.

Black powder was also extensively used in railway construction. At first railways followed the contours of the land, or crossed low ground by means of bridges and viaducts; but later railways made extensive use of cuttings and tunnels. One 800-metre stretch of the 3.3 km Box Tunnel on the Great Western Railway line between London and Bristol consumed a ton of gunpowder per week for over two years. The 12.9 km long Mont Cenis Tunnel was completed in 13 years starting in 1857, but even with black powder progress was only 25 cm a day until the invention of pneumatic drills sped up the work.

Further reading

• Blackmore, Howard, Guns and Rifles of the World ISBN 0-670-35780-4
• Brown, G.I., The Big Bang: A History of Explosives, Thrupp: Sutton Publishing Ltd., 1998. ISBN 0-7509-2361-X.
• Cocroft, Wayne D., Dangerous Energy: The Archaeology of Gunpowder and Military Explosives Manufacture, Swindon: English Heritage, 2000. ISBN 1-85074-718-0.
• Davis, Tenney L., The Chemistry of Powder & Explosives, 1943. (Republished) ISBN 0-913022-00-4.
• Earl, Brian, Cornish Explosives, Cornwall: The Trevithick Society, 1978. ISBN 0-904040-13-5.
• Gartz, Jochen, From Greek Fire to Dynamite. A Cultural History of the Explosives, Hamburg: E.S.Mittler & Sohn, 2007. ISBN 978-3-8132-0867-2.
• Xu Huilin, A History of Chinese Black Powder and Firearms, Shanghai: Kexuepuji Press, 1986. CN / TQ56-092.
• Feng Jiasheng, The Invention of Gunpowder and Its Spread to The West, Shanghai: Shanghai People's Press, 1954. TQ56-09/1.
• Zhong Shaoyi, Research on the History of Ancient Chinese Black Powder and Firearms. Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press, 1995. ISBN 7-5004-1800-0
• Liu Xu, History of Ancient Chinese Firearms and Black Powder, Zhengzhou: Elephant Press, 2004. ISBN 7-5347-3028-7.
• Wang Zhaocun, A History of Chinese Firearms, Beijing: Military Science Press, 1991. ISBN 7-80021-304-8.
• Feng Wu, et al., Selection of Ancient Chinese Military Masterpieces. Bejing: Jingguan Jiaoyu Press, 1992 ISBN 7-81027-097-4.
• Partington, James Riddick, A History of Greek Fire and Gunpowder, Cambridge: Heffer & Sons, 1960. Republished: Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-8018-5954-9).
• Urbanski, Tadeusz, Chemistry and Technology of Explosives, Volume III, Warszawa: Polish Scientific Publishers and Pergamon Press, 1967.
• Chase, Kenneth Warren, Firearms: A Global History to 1700 Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 0-521-82274-2

See also

• Black powder substitute
• Elizabethton, Tennessee
• Gonne
• Green mix
• Gunpowder warfare
• Jiao Yu
• Meal powder
• Smokeless powder
• Jiao Yu

External links

• Ulrich Bretscher's Gunpowder. www.musketeer.ch.

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