Good Charcoal for Black Powder

The main fuel that compounds Black Powder and many other pyrotechnic compositions is Charcoal.

Charcoal is basically burned wood, but for an excelent Back Powder the kind of wood and how it is made matters.

In this post I'm going to talk about how I made a good quality charcoal for Black Powder. First, I started by collect some young and thin Willow branches from some Willow trees near a river close to my home. Then, I cut them into small pieces and put them to dry in the sun for a couple days as you con see in the picture below:

The next step is to "cook" the wood. For that, we need a metal pot with small holes on the top. In this case, I used a large tin can:

Now, all we need is to put the wooden pieces inside, close the lid and put in the middle of a bonfire. After a few seconds you will start to see the wood gas going up and it (the gas - smoke) will start burn.

Let it "cooking" and wait until the wood gas stops burning - this is the moment the charcoal is ready and you can stop the process.

Now you have a very soft charcoal, perfect for a good Black Powder.

As a curiosity, the Willow charcoal is also used in many other things than black powder, it is used, for example, for painting and components of the Willow skin are used to make a well-known remedy (Aspirin) - read more about this amazing tree on Wikipedia

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