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Old 10-27-2018, 05:57 PM   #31
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by mlangsdorf View Post
I

Medium quality, possibly corrosive, not 100% reliable, likely to degrade over time and suddenly go boom primers are something people have been making for over 200 years. You can probably make it in a high school chem lab.
That leads to a Breaking Bad episode and from there to Mythbusters. The ginzo high school chem lab teacher/drug dealer was shown to have made himself a lump of mercuric fulminate the size of a golf ball so as to intimidate another drug dealer.

The Mythbusters found an expert who would do small quantity production of mercuric fulminate but he wouldn't work in more than what looked like 1/4 teaspoon quantities.

So you have high likelihood of heavy metal toxicity _and_ the problems associated with the production of a primary explosive. The creation of a properly designed industrial set-up is much likelier to work out than any bench-top production.
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Old 10-27-2018, 08:23 PM   #32
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by Luke Bunyip View Post
Looks like large calibre black powder it is then.
It doesn't have to. The Mannlicher 1886-88 used compressed black powder for it's 8mm cartridge. While this only gave about 60% of the energy of the Lebel's 8mm smokeless round, it had a vastly superior magazine system (Mannlicher en bloc vs Lebel tube, taken from the Kropatschek rifle). So, lower power and range, but much faster reloading. The Mannlicher was eventually updated to a smokeless cartridge pattern.
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Old 10-27-2018, 09:14 PM   #33
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
That leads to a Breaking Bad episode and from there to Mythbusters. The ginzo high school chem lab teacher/drug dealer was shown to have made himself a lump of mercuric fulminate the size of a golf ball so as to intimidate another drug dealer.

The Mythbusters found an expert who would do small quantity production of mercuric fulminate but he wouldn't work in more than what looked like 1/4 teaspoon quantities.

So you have high likelihood of heavy metal toxicity _and_ the problems associated with the production of a primary explosive. The creation of a properly designed industrial set-up is much likelier to work out than any bench-top production.
Potassium perchlorate-based primers seem like they're less problematic than mercury fulminate.
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Old 10-27-2018, 11:00 PM   #34
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Poking around a bit more, it seems Western Australia does have a lot of pyrite, and historically that was used as a source of sulfur.
Cool. Ta.
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Old 10-27-2018, 11:01 PM   #35
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth View Post
Potassium perchlorate-based primers seem like they're less problematic than mercury fulminate.
IIRC we're rather lacking in mercury deposits down here.
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Old 10-28-2018, 08:31 AM   #36
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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IIRC we're rather lacking in mercury deposits down here.
There's probably more than you think. People tend to be fooled by where the modern (or 19th century) production centers of something were, but there are always tiny deposits all over the place that are not big enough to be worth producing in a world already mining kilotons, but which would have been met local preindustrial demands just fine. And may very well have - there are lots of places with "iron" or "salt" in their name where nobody has produced any iron or salt in centuries, and the same holds for most other minerals.

In the case of mercury, they sometimes still do - this is where the massively uncertain "artisanal production" numbers you see in various statistical reports comes from, little sources that produce a pound quantities, mostly for small scale gold mining, that don't show up well in the statistics.
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Old 10-28-2018, 09:21 AM   #37
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

Since you are starting over anyway, thoughts on ditching chemical primers for electrically ignited cartridges? By the sounds of it, an alkaline battery and LC oscillator to produce a spark would be simpler and safer than all that mercury fulminate stuff.

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Old 10-28-2018, 09:34 AM   #38
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by lwcamp View Post
Since you are starting over anyway, thoughts on ditching chemical primers for electrically ignited cartridges?

Luke
To my knowledge the main example of electical ignition is the Voere VEC in HT. However, that igmites an advanced primer rather than affecting the propellant directly.

Black powder can be ignited by an elctrical spark. I've even seen it done on TV in a functional gun. I'm not at all sure about smokeless.
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Old 10-28-2018, 09:44 AM   #39
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

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Originally Posted by lwcamp View Post
Since you are starting over anyway, thoughts on ditching chemical primers for electrically ignited cartridges? By the sounds of it, an alkaline battery and LC oscillator to produce a spark would be simpler and safer than all that mercury fulminate stuff.
Should work OK for black powder, but I'm not so confident a spark will set off smokeless. Electrically detonated explosive charges usually set off a primary explosive primer rather than try to set off the explosive directly.

Note that you do need to build the spark gap into the cartridge. Getting a spark out of a battery that will fit in a handgun means a fairly precise gap and a narrow point - expose it to a powder explosion and it is not going to be reusable! This seems likely to be a moderately fiddly bit of machining for each cartridge, and potentially a fragile one, so it's not handicraft production either.
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Old 10-28-2018, 10:20 AM   #40
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Default Re: [AtE] Black Powder vs Smokeless

Wow.

Electrically triggered black powder. Nice.

Would it be better suited to larger calibre weaponry? Mortars?

EDIT:
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Originally Posted by malloyd View Post
... Getting a spark out of a battery that will fit in a handgun means a fairly precise gap and a narrow point ...
Rifles, anti-material rifle sized calibres?

Recoilless rifles?

A 1lb/37.5mm Maxim Pom-pom gun?
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