Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 31 July 1896 — HOW GUNPOWDER IS MADE. [ARTICLE]

HOW GUNPOWDER IS MADE.

The Part That Each of the Three Ingredients Play. Gunpowder then steadily developed as mechanic skill constructed better and lietter weapons in which to use it. until to-day it has reached a perfection of manufacture for various purposes which allows its effects to be foretold in any weaixm, even to the time it takes a grain to burn, and to the distance it will drive a shot. Roger Bacon's gunpowder was made of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal. Saltpeter is chemically called niter, and is a natural product found bedded in the earth in different jmrts of the worjd, chiefly in India and China. Sulphur, too, is found in a natural state in many volcanic countries, like Sicily while, as Is well known, charcoal is made from wood or woody substances by heating them almost to a burning heat in an airtight vessel, thus driving off everything in them but carbon. Saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal are still the only ingredients of the gunpowder In common use. although a new gunpowder made of different materials is undergoing sucessftil experiment. A mixture of saltpeter and charcoal alone would form an explosive , and sulphur is added chiefly to make it plastic, or capable of being pressed into cakes and shapes. All these Ingredients have to be purified by the most careful chetnle.il skill before they an* combined. I’heu an exact proportion of each has to be measured out according to the kind of ]x>wder to be made. For the gunpowder generally used you would find in every hundred pounds, if you could separate the ingredients. seventy-five pounds of saltpeter, fifteen pounds of charcoal, and ten pounds of sulphur;but It would be almost lm]xtsslble to separate the ingredients, for they are not merely mixed together as you might mix pepper and salt, but they are ground and rolled and stirred and pressed together by special machines until they are almost sufficiently united to form a single new substance. This mixing process is called “trituration,” and the powder Is thus made into the form of big fiat cakes, called press-cnke, and then broken up, and screened Into grains of special sizes, or ground to the fine powder lists! for shot guns and revolvers. The large grained powders are still further stirred together until the grains become highly glazed, and these are called cannon jiowders. A lighted match may be held to a grain of cannon powder and It will lx l found Impossible to set it on fire, but once Ignited it flashes off very'suddenly and violently—St. Nicholas.