Important: Safety Warning
This page contains instructions involving gunpowder or other explosive or pyrotechnic compositions. Preparing explosives as described has caused severe injuries and deaths, and is illegal in most places.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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To Make Gunpowder
Pulverize separately, 76 parts nitrate of potassa, 11 sulphur, and 13 freshly burned charcoal, and mix them with a little water, so as to form a the black powder in the air. The decanted cake when rolled out on a board. This is then ammonia, when gently heated, yields, on dried on a clean sheet of paper placed in a cooling, small crystals, which possess a still warm situation, and afterwards crumbled into more formidable power of detonation, and grains. It will form unglazed gunpowder. will scarcely bear touching, even while under The pulverized ingredients, thoroughly mixed, the liquid. This compound is exploded by without the addition of any water, constitute the slightest friction or percussion, and should what is called meal powder; this may also be therefore be only made in very small quantities at a time, and handled with great caution. Its explosive powers are tremendous; in fact, it can hardly be handled with safety, even in the moist state. Many frightful accidents have happened from the spontaneous explomade by pulverizing grained gunpowder very cautiously in a mortar, or with a muller. (See Porphyrization, No. 25.)