Foreign Powders (Hime).
| France. | Sweden. | Germany. | Denmark. | France. | Sweden. | Germany. | |
| 1338. | 1560. | 1595. | 1608. | 1650. | 1697. | 1882. | |
| Saltpetre | 50 | 66.6 | 52.2 | 68.3 | 75.6 | 73 | 78 |
| Charcoal | ? | 16.6 | 26.1 | 23.2 | 13.6 | 17 | 19 |
| Sulphur | 25 | 16.6 | 21.7 | 8.5 | 10.8 | 10 | 3 ³ |
³ Brown or coco-powder for large charges in guns. The charcoal is not burnt black but
roasted until brown, and is made from some variety of straw, not wood.
When reasonably pure, none of the ingredients of gunpowder absorbs any material quantity of moisture from the atmosphere, and the nitre only is a soluble substance. It seems extremely probable that for a long period the three substances were simply mixed dry, indeed sometimes kept separate and mixed just before being required; the consequence must have been that, with every care as to weighing out, the proportions of any given quantity would alter on carriage. Saltpetre is considerably heavier than sulphur or charcoal, and would tend to separate out towards the bottom of the containing vessel if subjected to jolting or vibration. When pure there can only be one kind of saltpetre or sulphur, because they are chemical individuals, but charcoal is not. Its composition, rate of burning, &c., depend not only on the nature of the woody material from which it is made, but quite as much on the temperature and time of heating employed in the making. The woods from which it is made contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and the two latter are never thoroughly expelled in charcoal-making. If they were, the resulting substance would be of no use for gunpowder. 1-3% of hydrogen and 8-15% of oxygen generally remain in charcoals suitable for gunpowder. A good deal of the fieriness and violence of explosion of a gunpowder depends on the mode of burning of the charcoal as well as on the wood from which it is made.
Properties of Ingredients.—Charcoal is the chief combustible in powder. It must burn freely, leaving as little ash or residue as possible; it must be friable, and grind into a non-gritty powder. The sources from which powder charcoal is made are dogwood (Rhamnus frangula), willow (Salix alba), and alder (Betula alnus). Dogwood is mainly used for small-arm powders. Powders made from dogwood charcoal burn more rapidly than those from willow, &c. The wood after cutting is stripped of bark and allowed to season for two or three years. It is then picked to uniform size and charred in cylindrical iron cases or slips, which can be introduced into slightly larger cylinders set in a furnace. The slips are provided with openings for the escape of gases. The rate of heating as well as the absolute temperature attained have an effect on the product, a slow rate of heating yielding more charcoal, and a high temperature reducing the hydrogen and oxygen in the final product. When heated for seven hours to about 800° C. to 900° C. the remaining hydrogen and oxygen amount to about 2% and 12% respectively. The time of charring is as a rule from 5 to 7 hours. The slips are then removed from the furnace and placed in a larger iron vessel, where they are kept comparatively air-tight until quite cold. The charcoal is then sorted, and stored for some time before grinding. The charcoal is ground, and the powder sifted on a rotating reel or cylinder of fine mesh copper-wire gauze. The sifted powder is again stored for some time before use in closed iron vessels.
Sicilian sulphur is most generally employed for gunpowder, and for complete purification is first distilled and then melted and cast into moulds. It is afterwards ground into a fine powder and sifted as in the case of the charcoal.
Potassium nitrate is eminently suitable as an oxygen-provider, not being deliquescent. Nitrates are continually being produced in surface soils, &c., by the oxidation of nitrogenous substances. Nitric and nitrous acids are also produced by electric discharges through the atmosphere, and these are found eventually as nitrates in soils, &c. Nitre is soluble in water, and much more so in hot than in cold. Crude nitre, obtained from soils or other sources, is purified by recrystallization. The crude material is dissolved almost to saturation in boiling water: on filtering and then cooling this liquor to about 30° C. almost pure nitre crystallizes out, most of the usual impurities still remaining in solution. By rapidly cooling and agitating the nitre solution crystals are obtained of sufficient fineness for the manufacture of powder without special grinding. Nitre contains nearly 48% of oxygen by weight, five-sixths of which is available for combustion purposes. Nearly all the gases of the powder explosion are derived from the nitre. The specific gravity of nitre is 2.2 : 200 grams will therefore occupy about 100 cubic centimetres volume. This quantity on its decomposition by heat alone yields 28 grams or 22,400 c.c. of nitrogen, and 80 grams or 56,000 c.c. of oxygen as gases, and 94 grams of potassium oxide, a fusible solid which vaporizes at a very high temperature.
Incorporation.—The materials are weighed out separately, mixed by passing through a sieve, and then uniformly moistened with a certain quantity of water, whilst on the bed of the incorporating mill. This consists of two heavy iron wheels mounted so as to run in a circular bed. The incorporation requires about four hours. The mechanical action of rollers on the powder paste is a double one: not only crushing but mixing by pushing forwards and twisting sideways. The pasty mass is deflected so that it repeatedly comes under first one roller and then the next by scrapers, set at an angle to the bed, which follow each wheel.
Although the charge is wet it is possible for it to be fired either by the heat developed by the roller friction, by sparks from foreign matters, as bits of stone, &c., or possibly by heat generated by oxidation of the materials. The mills are provided with a drenching apparatus so arranged that in case of one mill firing it and its neighbours will be drowned by water from a cistern or tank immediately above the mill. The product from the incorporation is termed “mill-cake.”
After this incorporation in the damp state the ingredients never completely separate on drying, however much shaken, because each particle of nitre is surrounded by a thin layer of water containing nitre in solution in which the particles of charcoal and sulphur are entangled and retained. After due incorporation, powders are pressed to a certain extent whilst still moist. The density to which a powder is pressed is an important matter in regard to the rate of burning. The effect of high density is to slow down the initial rate of burning. Less dense powders burn more rapidly from the first and tend to put a great strain on the gun. Fouling is usually less with denser powders; and, as would be expected, such powders bear transport better and give less dust than light powders. Up to a certain pressure, hardness, density, and size of grain of a powder have an effect on the rate of burning and therefore on pressure. Glazing or polishing powder grains, also exerts a slight retarding action on burning and enables the powders to resist atmospheric moisture better. Excess of moisture in gunpowder has a marked effect in reducing the explosiveness. All powders are liable to absorb moisture, the quality and kind of charcoal being the main determinant in this respect; hard burnt black charcoal is least absorbent. The material employed in brown powders absorbs moisture somewhat readily. Powder kept in a very damp atmosphere, and especially in a changeable one, spoils rapidly, the saltpetre coming to the surface in solution and then crystallizing out. The pieces also break up owing to the formation of large crystals of nitre in the mass. After the pressing of the incorporated powder into a “press-cake,” it is broken up or granulated by suitable machines, and the resulting grains separated and sorted by sifting through sieves of determined sizes of mesh. Some dust is formed in this operation, which is sifted away and again worked up under the rollers (for sizes of grains see fig. 1). These grains, cubes, &c., are then either polished by rotating in drums alone or with graphite, which adheres to and coats the surfaces of the grains. This process is generally followed with powders intended for small-arms or moderately small ordnance.
Shaped Powders.—Prisms or prismatic powder are made by breaking up the press-cake into a moderately fine state, whilst still moist, and pressing a certain quantity in a mould. The moulds generally employed consist of a thick plate of bronze in which are a number of hexagonal perforations. Accurately fitting plungers are so applied to these that one can enter at the top and the other at the bottom. The lower plunger being withdrawn to the bottom of the plate the hexagonal hole is charged with the powder and the two plungers set in motion, thus compressing the powder between them. After the desired pressure has been applied the top plunger is withdrawn, and the lower one pushed upward to eject the prism of powder. The axial perforations in prism powders are made by small bronze rods which pass through the lower plunger and fit into corresponding holes in the upper one. If these prisms are made by a steadily applied pressure a density throughout of about 1.78 may be obtained. Further to regulate the rate of burning so that it shall be slow at first and more rapid as the powder is consumed, another form of machine was devised, the cam press, in which the pressure is applied very rapidly to the powder. It receives in fact one blow, which compresses the powder to the same dimensions, but the density of the outer layers of substance of the prism is much greater than in the interior.
The leading idea in connexion with all shaped powder grains, and with the very large sizes, was to regulate the rate of burning so as to avoid extreme pressure when first ignited and to keep up the pressure in the gun as more space was provided in the chamber or tube by the movement of the shot towards the muzzle. In the perforated prismatic powder the ignition is intended to proceed through the perforations; since in a charge the faces of the prisms fit pretty closely together, it was thought that this arrangement would prevent unburnt cores or pieces of powder from being blown out. These larger grain powders necessitated a lengthened bore to take advantage of the slower production of gases and complete combustion of the powder. General T. J. Rodman first suggested and employed the perforated cake cartridge in 1860, the cake having nearly the diameter of the bore and a thickness of 1 to 2 in.
