Chassepot needle rifle: Better than s...shooting

[Blacksmith101]

Here is another source for information on making homemade Black Powder, remember to print out what you think you may need because the internet will likely be unavailable in a major emergency:

http://www.musketeer.ch/blackpowder/bp_menu.html

 

[SlowShooter]

I grew up with wood burning stoves, pig/chicken manure pits in the backyard farm house. So making saltpeter out of manure will be walking in the park, but I never reveal this secret to my wife or she will stop me from using the kitchen sink to wash my black powder guns.

With all the information online, I still have a hard time figuring out where to find Sulfur in Montgomery, Maryland. Currently I am buying sulfur powder from Amazon for my roses. When SHTF, there will be no Amazon, no hardware stores, no nurseries... I don't see hot springs or volcanoes in my neck of the woods, sooo... where can we find sulfur locally?

How can we resolve this issue? anyone?

Thanks.

 

[whistlersmother]

At one time, and maybe even now, people feed sulfur to horses for some reason. Given the number of horse farms in this area, you might be able to source sulfur from a feed store. If SHTF, you may be able to raid abandon farms looking for it.

IIRC, sulfur is also used to treat the skin of dogs for various conditions.

Where did the Southern's get sulfur for their powder? I once read the Confederacy produce high quality black powder, so it must have come from somewhere.

 

[Threeband]

The Confederates made sulfur by treating iron pyrites with nitric acid:

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id... sulphur from iron pyrite confederate&f=false


Had they only treated their cotton with that same nitric acid, they could have made cordite!

 

[SlowShooter]

This is just emerge from the back of my head:

In the old days in Viet_Nam, my ancestors harvested sea bird's droppings from Hoang_Sa (Paracel Island) and Truong Sa (Spratly Island) to make gunpowder. Sea birds eat fish so their droppings are rich in Nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, and they were (and still are) accumulated there from ages and ready for saltpeter processing. I guess they got Sulfur from Indonesia through trading.

In Maryland, I never heard of any bird sanctuary, but we have a lot of chicken farms.

From the internet, I just learn how to make Nitric Acid out of thin air. We only need 9K volts transformer and electricity soooo...where around here can we dig up some iron-pyrite?

 

[whistlersmother]

The whole subject of making smokeless, getting nitric acid, etc. can be found on other forums. Google something like sciencemadness.org - several threads on smokeless, nitric acid, sulfuric acid, priming compounds, and ... more interesting compounds - theory only, no practical steps.

For SHTF, we need to step back in history to the point it becomes (relatively) easy to produce what is needed from stuff around us. Civil War era technology is interesting because it comes before electricity and "modern" chemical methods.

As for nitrates, some sources of "niter" include caves, old barns, old outhouses, urine from meat eaters, natural deposits (but only if you find yourself in the Atacama Desert).

Is the full production of a weapon system something to be prized in SHTF? I would think so.

 

[SlowShooter]

I thought the main subject here is to produce a home make black powder. So far I can see that charcoal and saltpeter can be made in the back yard, but it take up to a year. to find or to produce sulfur is another story. You can be shot looting other people's horse farm. producing sulfur from iron pyrite could be done only if we can make nitric acid and find some pyrite locally. I thought the South had a hard time buying sulfur from elsewhere (could be Mexico) to make black powder. Today, if SHTF, we can find solar cells, transformer, copper/plastic tubing easily so producing nitric acid to mix with iron pyrite to produce sulfur could be done at home. I don't want to be shot sneaking around people horse farm.

 

[whistlersmother]

That's why I suggested ABANDON'ed horse farms.

Anyways, you can make black powder WITHOUT sulfur:



Here, someone uses iron oxide - rust - as the catalyst instead of sulfur...



However, in Part 2, he simply heats the iron pyrite in an oxygen poor environment to get sulfur:



Necessity is the mother of invention - or something like that.

 

[SlowShooter]

Rust!
It's everywhere. especially when cities are crumbled, roads are filled with abandoned cars.
Now I feel safer than ever!
Thanks Whistlersmother.

 

[SlowShooter]

Imagine this:

5 years after the Chinese launched nuke-attack to North America and we had no other choice but to destroy them. That set off a domino effect of wars. and somehow we survived.

At that time, most of our centerfire ammo nearly exhausted defending our way of life. so it is time to dig up the old shit house, scrape off rust from our once beloved cars, smash the charcoal from the house next door . the top layer of the manure will be used for farming. the bottom layer will be cooked into a home make black powder.

There will be no gasoline around to buy, so it is impossible for me to go to the AGC range on the weekend. With free and easy to make black powder and no local law enforcement around, I see myself sitting on the sundeck shooting across the golf court every afternoon for fun after long hour working on the potato farm...

I think I can live with this. Now I have to buy for myself a flintlock for backup.

 

[Blacksmith101]

Imagine this:

5 years after the Chinese launched nuke-attack to North America and we had no other choice but to destroy them. That set off a domino effect of wars. and somehow we survived.

At that time, most of our centerfire ammo nearly exhausted defending our way of life. so it is time to dig up the old shit house, scrape off rust from our once beloved cars, smash the charcoal from the house next door . the top layer of the manure will be used for farming. the bottom layer will be cooked into a home make black powder.

There will be no gasoline around to buy, so it is impossible for me to go to the AGC range on the weekend. With free and easy to make black powder and no local law enforcement around, I see myself sitting on the sundeck shooting across the golf court every afternoon for fun after long hour working on the potato farm...

I think I can live with this. Now I have to buy for myself a flintlock for backup.

You will probably still make a yearly trip to the AGC to mine some lead.

Consider a Thompson Center Fire Storm for the best of both modern materials and old school ignition.
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2011/11/roy-hill/gear-review-thompson-center-fire-storm-flintlock/

 

[SlowShooter]

I just finish making another batch of test ammo for the Chassepot. I will test them Sunday for powder density, reliability, structure, speed and accuracy. adjustments such as casing shorten, cap's wing cut off, increase/decrease gunpowder could be made after the test. Toy caps are eliminated all together this time.

 

[Threeband]

Those look very pretty.

Did you put some powder inside the musket caps?

I would expect the wings to help hold them in place.

 

[SlowShooter]

This time I still put some powder in the caps. The powder only loosely packed so the caps can sink in. The 4 wings cover most of the case head. I may want to cut off 1 or 2 of the wings to let more gun powder gets behind the cap when the needle strikes.

 

[SlowShooter]

Here the results:

I tried to fire up to 6 rounds. 3 rounds went off (with some delay) and 3 round failed. The chamber was so dirty and I forgot to bring the cleaning kit so I just stopped the test.

After cutting and examined the 3 rounds that failed to ignite, the following are what I found:
- Pyrodex is not sensitive enough for this application and the cold morning (25 to 30 degree F) did not help. 2 of the 3 failure had the caps burned partially. the smoke came out but it could not set off the cartridge. I will use real black powder next time.
- my ammo were to fat and too long. they failed to chamber after 3 shots. the third failure happened when the bolt snoot shoved the round in the chamber successfully but displaced the cap. The needle striked the cap at the wall and failed to ignite the cap. I will find a way to make the cartridge taper at the neck next time.
- This test proved that I don't really need the toy caps.
- I think I put too much powder in the cap.
- I want to cut off 1 of the 4 wings for next load. This may help to ignite the ammo easier and faster.
- 3 shot group at 50yrd is about 3.5" (1st shot=1283ft/sec, 2nd=1175, 3rd=1128). The bullet got slower when the bore got dirtier.

 

[SlowShooter]

Thread update:

I got some real black powder last Monday, so it is time to make some ammo for the test on next Saturday. I did exactly what I planned to do in the last post and the ammo came out quite nice and uniform. I hope that all 10 of them will go off next test.

 

[Blacksmith101]

Thread update:

I got some real black powder last Monday, so it is time to make some ammo for the test on next Saturday. I did exactly what I planned to do in the last post and the ammo came out quite nice and uniform. I hope that all 10 of them will go off next test.

Good looking rounds I can't wait for the results.

 

[Machodoc]

This is pretty fascinating.

 

[Threeband]

Tres belles cartouches.

 

[SlowShooter]

Just finished my "Chicken Bake" and found 2 nice pieces of aluminum foil left behind. I used them to fabricate 2 more test rounds. This time I just used Scotch tape to hold everything together. I didn't even glue the caps to the paper wads. just dropped the caps into the casing then filled black powder over then packed them nicely. Another paper wad is put on top of the powder for each casing then "dryer lint" is filled in before seating the bullet. I don't believe these 2 will burn cleaner than others but they are sure smelling better.