Could you really make blackpowder if you went back in time?

[CaptainChewbacca]

Its something I've seen in alot of scifi; a guy ends up in the past, and knows how to make gunpowder to save the day. As I recall, the ratio is 3 parts charcoal, 2 parts sulfur, and 15 parts potassium nitrate by weight. Are these all things you could find in a european villiage in the year, say, 1006? Could they be safely blended together without blowing your hands off?

[darthkommandant]

The charcoal would not be difficult to find, though you could always make some yourself by burning logs. Thye sulfur would be difficult to fine unless you villiage is near an active volcano. The potassiun nitrate iirc could be found if you were willing to collect enough urine. Also unless you happen to be a pyrotechnics expert making the black powder would be very dangerous at best.

[Superman]

The charcoal would not be difficult to find, though you could always make some yourself by burning logs. Thye sulfur would be difficult to fine unless you villiage is near an active volcano. The potassiun nitrate iirc could be found if you were willing to collect enough urine. Also unless you happen to be a pyrotechnics expert making the black powder would be very dangerous at best.

Sulfur was formerly called "Brimstone," and not uncommon. One could find it around hot springs, as well. It is supposed to be common in evaporites of eastern Europe. You could definately trade or get it from other places.

As for the potassium nitrate, you could get that from poop. Seriously. Ammonia from the decomposition of urea and other nitrogenous materials would undergo bacterial oxidation to produce nitrate. Potassium nitrate could also found in the deposits of crystallising cave walls or the drainings of decomposing organic material.

If one knew what he was doing, I don't see why he couldn't put it together.

[Molyneux]

I don't know jack about gunpowder...I would know some other useful things, though. Like an archimedean screw (Wasn't that knowledge lost during the Middle Ages?), or the construction of a crossbow or ballista, or basic physical principles like F=ma (which could jump-start technology by a few hundred years easily).

If I don't end up burned as a witch, I think I'd do okay. And I could always experiment with the gunpowder thing in my spare time.[/url]

[Talanth]

I know how to turn a young yew-tree and a pig-gut into a longbow, but I wouldn't have a clue on how to make the arrows. As for gunpowder, I wouldn't know where to start! I think probably the most eficient people for living in medivil times are medevil people. Gunpowder or no, they are the ones who would know how to survive best in their enviroment, so it would probably be one of them who would "save the day".

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Its something I've seen in alot of scifi; a guy ends up in the past, and knows how to make gunpowder to save the day. As I recall, the ratio is 3 parts charcoal, 2 parts sulfur, and 15 parts potassium nitrate by weight. Are these all things you could find in a european villiage in the year, say, 1006? Could they be safely blended together without blowing your hands off?

I don't see why you couldn't. As Superman said, the parts aren't hard to find, provided you're willing to get really, really dirty. And you could make it yourself, provided you started out with small batches, and your time-travel experience didn't cause you to take up drinking.

Of course, what you could actually do with the black powder might be very limited. In most time-travel scenarios you find yourself in, you could make a fragmentation grenade or land-mine out of a clay pot, some pitch, whatever debris you had handy, and some sort of fusing mechanism. You could concievably build some sort of rocket, if you had the time to develop the loading needed to produce a rocket, instead of a bomb. If the people you were helping had a lot of time, they could build a cannon out of a tree-trunk of sufficient size and some iron bands, and if they had the metallurgy for it, they could cast cannon or light artillery. But the latter applications are much more difficult for out spunky time-travelling protagonist to convey to the peoples of the time. And for the vast majority of spunky time-travelling protagonists, firearms would be completely out of the question.

[LongVin]

yeah I would be screwed I'm not very handy or good with hands on science. The most I could do is hope I had a lighter on me as I get teleported through time and amaze the natives by going "Behold Fire!" and lighting things. Of course they will probably consider me a wizard and burn me at the stake...possibly using my own lighter to start the fire.

[Feil]

You can get the nitrates from a lot of places. If you look hard enough, particularly in caves, chances are you'll see precipitates of the stuff. You can precipitate your own, though that would require a fairly sophisticated bit of work and a lot of time, and more knowledge than your average time-traveling Joe.

But I don't think you'd be able to assemble a gun out of natural deposites and trash in a minute and a half, guided by instructions from Spock, so that you can shoot the nasty Gorn captain who is trying to kill you.

[Ghost Rider]

Its something I've seen in alot of scifi; a guy ends up in the past, and knows how to make gunpowder to save the day. As I recall, the ratio is 3 parts charcoal, 2 parts sulfur, and 15 parts potassium nitrate by weight. Are these all things you could find in a european villiage in the year, say, 1006? Could they be safely blended together without blowing your hands off?

Sure, the materials are not hard to get, and the mixture won't blow your head off if you sneeze.

The question is what the fuck do you do with it, except a primitive bomb since I doubt many have the skills to even begin to make a primitive flintlocke, let alone something that won't blow up in their face.

[Solauren]

COuldn't the old 'blowing up arrow' from Army of Darkness work?

[General Zod]

COuldn't the old 'blowing up arrow' from Army of Darkness work?

Long as you can find something suitable to hold the explosives in, and something to act as a fuse, I don't see why it wouldn't be feasible. Though it'd probably take a decent amount of testing to get the fuses just the right length so they're practical for that type of use.

[Sriad]

If you happened to be carrying a moderately rugged firearm when you went back, would the blackpowder made here be usable to make your own ammo?

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

If you happened to be carrying a moderately rugged firearm when you went back, would the blackpowder made here be usable to make your own ammo?

Yes. It wouldn't be quite as effective as our current smokeless powder, but it could work, and probably penetrate mot of the personal armours of the day, though not anything bigger.

[Feil]

I'm not sure how well a firearm would work without shell casings to hold the bullet in place. Though those you could probably cast yourself...

Will black powder combust when struck, or does it need a spark?

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

If you happened to be carrying a moderately rugged firearm when you went back, would the blackpowder made here be usable to make your own ammo?

Yes. It wouldn't be quite as effective as our current smokeless powder, but it could work, and probably penetrate mot of the personal armours of the day, though not anything bigger.

Forty grains of black powder will launch a 255 grain lead bullet at velocities between 800 and 1000 FPS out of a .45 caliber Colt 1873 Single-action Army revolver. This is .357 Magnum energies on a bullet big enough to shoot clean through a deer or black bear of reasonable size. Most opponents in primitive personal armors won't stand a chance. And this is a gun that was originally designed for black powder loads. Mind you, you the amateur time-traveller won't will probably get something along the lines of 600-700 FPS out of the same gun. That still gives you modern .38 Special energies on a much heavier, bigger bullet. Even an older cap-and-ball revolver will still launch a 140-150 grain lead ball at well over 1000-1400 FPS. If you had a replica of a Springfield single-shot trapdoor rifle firing .45-70, you could shoot a 400 to 500 grain bullet at around 1100 FPS. Mind you, you'd have to also bring back a cleaning kit, and clean your gun frequently, as burnt black-powder is hydrophillic and will corrode your barrels to rust in no time at all.

Mind you, the biggest caveat to all this is that these loads require primers, and primers require a fair bit more know-how to make than a flask of black-powder (being that they're explosives set off by precussion contained in a little brass cap,) so unless you also happened to bring back a box or two of primers and a lot of empty brass casings, you'd better hope the gun you brought back with you was a muzzle-loading flintlock rifle or musket.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

I'm not sure how well a firearm would work without shell casings to hold the bullet in place. Though those you could probably cast yourself...

Will black powder combust when struck, or does it need a spark?

You could use a muzzle-loading firearm, or some older breech-loading designs, like a cap-and-ball pistol or a pin-fire rifle. The most shell-casing those required was paper, and that's much easier to find than trying to cast brass shells. And black powder requires a source of ignition. Though it occurs to me that if you wound up in a place where they can cast bronze or iron tubes of sufficient strength, you could build a primitive sort of muzzle-loader. With a spring-loaded arm and some sort of latch, you could build what's known as a matchlock. The arm would hold a slowly burning length of black-powder impregnated cloth. When you release the arm, it would smack the burning match to a small hole you drilled in the breech of the firearm. The burning material would then serve to ignite the black-powder.

You could even make it more accurate than historic smoothbore firearms. You cast a cylinder of lead, round off one end, and then hollow out the other end, so the resulting projectile looks something like a badminton birdy. The resulting projectile will be much like a modern shotgun slug, i.e. front-heavy so it's less apt to tumble and roll about. You then wrap the projectile in a bit of greased cotton other cheap, available fabric (just enough to seal the gap between the projectile and the bore.) Then you pour in the black-powder as usual and stuff the wrappped projectile and wad down the barrel.

[Gil Hamilton]

Making basic gunpowder is not hard. You need the above materials and a ball mill, which if you are willing to put the muscle into it can be hand cranked with the right mill. The trick is so grind each element manually and individually first, then crank it for a while in the ball mill in to make really fine powder. However, the more fine the powder the quicker and easier it will burn, so there is a risk in making it too fine.

All of which is available and can be done with 1066 technology, once you know how to do it.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Is potassium nitrate just animal waste, or do you have to refine it somehow?

I... may be going back in time soon.

[Feil]

Is potassium nitrate just animal waste, or do you have to refine it somehow?

I... may be going back in time soon.

Potassium nitrate, in a form pure enough for use in black powder, can be found naturally only in saltpeter, which is a translucent white rock with a salty flavor.

Getting pure potassium nitrate from organic matter would require allowing that matter to decompose, so that bacteria in the waste would make nitrates, then leeching it with water, in which the nitrates would be dissolved. That done, one would mix the water with potash, which is produced by leeching ashes of hardwood trees with water, and is composed of various potassium-based compounds.

Potash is a fertilizer and should be readily available for purchase in the middle ages.

Potassium Nitrate should be able to be crystalised out of the mixture of nitrate-water and potash, like making rock candy.

[Gil Hamilton]

Is potassium nitrate just animal waste, or do you have to refine it somehow?

I... may be going back in time soon.

Classically, potassium nitrate is either mined, in which it is a crystal/powder called saltpeter (which is pure) or refined from really gnarly black soil. If you want it to be useful, you've got to refine it, since raw saltpeter doesn't allow for an explosion.

Here is a link to an old American Army manual on the refining of saltpeter, written literally for a frontier industrial base (IE, you've got nothing but alot of cows). It will tell you all you need to know to setting up your very own saltpeter production unit from setting up niter-beds to turning that shit (literally) into refined saltpeter.

[TrailerParkJawa]

Charcol and Sulphur I could identify or find, I really wouldn't know how to go about finding Potassium Nitrate without reading about it. I know it can be made in primitive conditions but I never seem to remember how, basically since I've never done it myself once reading about it always fades from memory after a while.

[Winston Blake]

COuldn't the old 'blowing up arrow' from Army of Darkness work?

Long as you can find something suitable to hold the explosives in, and something to act as a fuse, I don't see why it wouldn't be feasible. Though it'd probably take a decent amount of testing to get the fuses just the right length so they're practical for that type of use.

Assuming this 'blowing up arrow' is an explosive-tipped one, this sort of thing would be by far the easiest ranged weapon to make with our crude black powder. IIRC the island prisoners in a Stargate Atlantis episode used slingshot-fired bomblets against our intrepid heroes. Anyway, I'm sure that if the arrowheads were breakable ceramics, a simple spring-loaded mechanism could be used to mechanically initiate them. IIRC fine black powder does explode with a sharp impact. Throw in some broken glass or rock flakes and you've greatly enhanced the firepower of a bow. Hell, you might even design a hollow charge version for piercing thick armour.

As far as firearms go, the only things i can think of that would be simple enough to improvise would be a simple multi-barrelled pepperbox or harmonica gun. The trigger could punch a smouldering match-style mechanism through paper-covered touchholes in the rear of simple cardboard cartridges. You'd probably need prepared speedloaders to get any practical rate of fire.