Triple Se7en - HISTORIC???

[Josh Smith]

Hello,

I'm sure this will rile some folks a bit, but I got to looking around at how brown powder and other stuff was made.

Without going into detail about how to make the stuff (as per forum rules), it would seem that Triple Se7en is very close to a mixture the Swiss were using near the dawn of the smokeless powder age. That mixture used no sulfur.

You see, they got curious - a weakness I share - and asked, "why are we putting sulfur in this stuff?"

Turns out that it lowered the combustion temp for flintlocks.

When a mixture was put together without the sulfur, what resulted would go off just fine with caplocks and cannon, but a lot of the smoke and smell was eliminated.

From what I can tell, this mixture was used until the Swiss Army went smokeless.

Looking at all the MSDS I have laying around here, it looks like the Triple Se7en comes very, very close to duplicating what the Swiss discovered 120 to 130 years ago.

While I do like stirring the pot now and again to keep folks thinking, I also like to share these discoveries, especially when it's "oopartlike," and thus, stunning to me.

Thoughts, Gents?

Josh

 

[Pete Gaimari]

My thoughts are 777 is not black powder no more than i'm a banana.

Use real black powder like Goex or Swiss.

 

[BigDogg]

I'm with Capper. I'll stick with real blackpowder thanks.

 

[Stumpkiller]

The English were using Cordite 130 years ago (nitroglycerine + nitrocellulose + vaseline).

Nitrocellulose does not blackpowder make.

And furthermore:

However, Christian Friedrich Schönbein, a German-Swiss chemist, discovered a more practical solution around 1846. As he was working in the kitchen of his home in Basle, he spilled a bottle of concentrated nitric acid on the kitchen table. He reached for the nearest cloth, a cotton apron, and wiped it up. He hung the apron on the stove door to dry, and, as soon as it was dry, there was a flash as the apron exploded. His preparation method was the first to be widely imitated ”” one part of fine cotton wool to be immersed in fifteen parts of an equal blend of sulfuric and nitric acids. After two minutes, the cotton was removed and washed in cold water to set the esterification level and remove all acid residue. It was then slowly dried at a temperature below 100 °F (about 38° C). Schönbein collaborated with the Frankfurt professor Rudolf Christian Böttger, who had discovered the process independently in the same year. By coincidence, a third chemist, the Braunschweig professor F. J. Otto had also produced guncotton in 1846 and was the first to publish the process, much to the disappointment of Schönbein and Böttger.

So the grandfather of "Cordite" conceivably goes back 164 years. It still ain't blackpowder. Sulphur gives it that added spice. Like Chalupa sauce. :haha:

 

[Dave Rosenthal]

Interesting........

I'll still use real black though....I just love the smell and the smoke! :haha:

Breathe deep--it's the smell of freedom! :applause:

Dave

 

[necchi]

Thoughts, Gents?

Josh

:hmm: :hmm: :idunno: :hmm: ,,Nope.

 

[rawhide]

I realy like the stuff just not the price. so theres my 2 cents :blah:

 

[Jason Lewis]

i'm sure they got the idea for the stuff from somewhere. it's an interesting footnote but for my tastes that's about as far as i'll go with it.

 

[Dphar]

I would like to see the documentation for the use of a potassium perchlorate/chlorate propellant powder by the Swiss military and where you found the information on how "brown powder" was made if its not typical BP. There were brown BPs made with charcoal made in a manner that produced brown charcoal IIRC.
There were lots of things developed and tried but nothing was really successful in replacing BP until the advent of true smokeless or semi-smokeless powder. The development of a nitro powder for use in firearms took about 40 years from the discovery of nitro-cellulose in 1832. Some smokeless was apparently developed in the late 1860s, but the French powder of 1884 is credited with the first in most cases, this was 126 years ago.

The 1883 Swiss Rubin rifle used a compressed pellet of BP as did the 303 British cartridge when first adopted. Compressed shape grains of BP were known from before the American Civil war. Large grained cannon powder was pressed to final form rather than pressed, broken and screened. This gave better control of burn rates since blown guns were pretty common with the large naval, coastal defense and siege cannon of our Civil War.

Phil Sharpe describes several perchlorate powders developed as early as 1850s and says that "the so-called "white gunpowder" which became prominent during the Civil War was a mixture of about 49 parts Potassium Chloride, 28 parts of yellow prussiate of potash and 23 parts sulfur."
I would think this would be too impact sensitive to be safe but I could be wrong. Potassium chlorate is a component of corrosive percussion caps and primers.

I have never read of this being used by anyone. I suspect it was because as Sharpe states it "lacked many of the excellent propelling qualities of ordinary BP and was extremely corrosive... it simplified the process of cleaning... "
Since the various military organizations were concerned with uniform ballistics I can't see this as being useful if it lacked consistency as Sharpe seems to indicate.
Just because they knew how to make the stuff is no indication it was practical to use.
See Phil Sharpe's Complete Guide to Handloading.

I would dispute this claim as to cleaning since the chlorate salts are more difficult to remove than BP fouling and failure to get it ALL out is far disastrous to the bore than BP.
He also mentions sugar based powders but fails to mention that they can and have literally liquified and dripped out of a powder horn in high humidity.

Dan

 

[Josh Smith]

Link to Black Powder recipe removed!

 

[Tumblernotch]

The English were using Cordite 130 years ago (nitroglycerine + nitrocellulose + vaseline).

Nitrocellulose does not blackpowder make.

And furthermore:

However, Christian Friedrich Schönbein, a German-Swiss chemist, discovered a more practical solution around 1846. As he was working in the kitchen of his home in Basle, he spilled a bottle of concentrated nitric acid on the kitchen table. He reached for the nearest cloth, a cotton apron, and wiped it up. He hung the apron on the stove door to dry, and, as soon as it was dry, there was a flash as the apron exploded. His preparation method was the first to be widely imitated ”” one part of fine cotton wool to be immersed in fifteen parts of an equal blend of sulfuric and nitric acids. After two minutes, the cotton was removed and washed in cold water to set the esterification level and remove all acid residue. It was then slowly dried at a temperature below 100 °F (about 38° C). Schönbein collaborated with the Frankfurt professor Rudolf Christian Böttger, who had discovered the process independently in the same year. By coincidence, a third chemist, the Braunschweig professor F. J. Otto had also produced guncotton in 1846 and was the first to publish the process, much to the disappointment of Schönbein and Böttger.

So the grandfather of "Cordite" conceivably goes back 164 years. It still ain't blackpowder. Sulphur gives it that added spice. Like Chalupa sauce. :haha:

A side note to this is that since some of the armies in Europe were beginning to switch to guncotton, they released some of their latest blackpowder longarms to be sold to the belligerents in the US during the Civil War.

Also, a former US Army Captain, Isaac Roland Diller got involved with a German scientist named Hochstatter who had developed a new powder that used a chlorate instead of niter. The North at the beginning of the War was faced with a shortage of niter and were searching for a replacement. Lincoln himself tested a small batch after receiving a sample along with an introductory letter. The powder ignited quickly with a puff of smoke. But Lincoln said to Capt. John Dahlgren who watched the demonstration, "There is too much there", referring to the residue left. Later, after a large enough amount was delivered, it was tested at the Navy Yard and was found to be a success. The only problem was, it was in a dust form or "corned". It needed to be grained and it was found to be cost prohibitive. Further work also showed that even if packed into grains it was still too unstable for storage. Then to pretty much put an end to Diller's powder, powder makers were beginning to make powder from Chilean sodium nitrate instead of niter from British India.

 

[Josh Smith]

Link to Black Powder recipe removed!

Sorry Claude. I was asked for a link and that's the only one I had. Figured it would be iffy.

Josh

 

[wy0mn]

"Breathe deep--it's the smell of freedom"!

I like that, but demonologist speculate if we 'smokers' weren't the genesis of the 'fire & brimstone' legends; bad smell + death & destruction...

 

[TFoley]

Hello,

I'm sure this will rile some folks a bit, but I got to looking around at how brown powder and other stuff was made.

Without going into detail about how to make the stuff (as per forum rules), it would seem that Triple Se7en is very close to a mixture the Swiss were using near the dawn of the smokeless powder age. That mixture used no sulfur.

You see, they got curious - a weakness I share - and asked, "why are we putting sulfur in this stuff?"

Turns out that it lowered the combustion temp for flintlocks.

When a mixture was put together without the sulfur, what resulted would go off just fine with caplocks and cannon, but a lot of the smoke and smell was eliminated.

From what I can tell, this mixture was used until the Swiss Army went smokeless.

Looking at all the MSDS I have laying around here, it looks like the Triple Se7en comes very, very close to duplicating what the Swiss discovered 120 to 130 years ago.

While I do like stirring the pot now and again to keep folks thinking, I also like to share these discoveries, especially when it's "oopartlike," and thus, stunning to me.

Thoughts, Gents?

Josh

Uh, according to the manufacturers, who prolly know a lot more about it than any of of us, the main constituent of Triple 7 is sugar.

This is why -

a. setting it off smells like a fire in a sugar beet factory.

b. it is even cold water-soluble.

c. it has none of the usual constituents of BP - no sulphur, no charcoal, no potassium nitrate. The main constituent of so-called brown powder or cocoa powder was incompletely combusted charcoal.

d. Triple 7 burns a whole LOT hotter than so-called Brown Powder, Pyrodex or even black powder, which is why it is recommended to use hotter caps to ignite it.

tac
Supporter of the Cape Meares Lighthouse Restoration Fund

 

[Josh Smith]

Looking at the MSDS, I'm showing, for Triple Se7en, charcoal. No sugar anyplace.

I'm not exactly sure if I can say what's all in it, due to the rules. It's not black powder, but the MSDS gives a complete formulation, minus the percentages of each.

Josh

 

[contenderfan]

I like regular old Black Powder...love the smell of it. Wife thinks im nuts of course as do many of yours on here Im sure.

 

[JMinnerath]

Did you expect to see the word "sugar" on the MSDS for Triple Seven?
The MSDS for anything doesn't give a chemical formula, it lists only substances with a rating for certain things.
fire, health hazards, etc.
Triple 7 gets its carbon needed for combustion from the compounds found in the sugar family.
Various sugars have been used in explosives for years.
You, of course, wouldn't remember, but it was rationed in WWII because of the demand for producing various explosives and propellants.

 

[Josh Smith]

Hello,

I like the smell of the sulfur as well.

That's really not the issue.

I love to experiment, love to read about experiments, and love to see old ideas come back around in new packaging.

The Turtle submarine, for example, is a favorite weapon of mine used in a war against Britain.

I like seeing combustible paper cartridges... and then seeing ammo companies today playing around with caseless ammunition.

Revisiting old ideas.

I even learned here that there was something similar to the Foster slug back in the 1860s in Europe.

Just because I bring this up, does not mean I like the stuff (I've actually never tried it, and have no real plans to do so as of right now).

I just like, as I said, seeing old ideas revisited today, especially when they're introduced as new, improved over the old stuff. I get a kick out of that.

Mostly though, my favorite time in history is during the late muzzleloader/early breechloader era. Practical repeating arms were coming on the scene as cap and ball revolvers, but repeating rifles hadn't found their niche yet, and if you wanted power and accuracy, you went with a good muzzleloader.

I like to poke around that era and see what I can find hidden in the nooks and crannies, mostly forgotten by mainstream history. I love the Starr double-action cap'n'ball revolver, tape priming systems, scent bottle primers, etc.

Got to thinking about the muzzleloading air rifle on used on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and IIRC, there was a corps of Austrian(?) riflemen who used air rifles against Napoleon(?) (really have to dig out the history books again).

Anyone caught with an air rifle during that war was put to death because it was considered "cheating".

I would hope that I could build a muzzle loading air rifle replica and discuss it here, as it would be historically correct, even though it wouldn't use black powder as a propellant.

A very interesting side note in history as far as I'm concerned.

Likewise, this stuff the Swiss came up with all those years ago and is now marketed as a substitute - it's not about making a better powder at all, at least not for me. Black powder has endured while air powered weapons have largely devolved into children's 'toys', and the no-sulfur Swiss stuff and brown powder faded quickly with the advent of the age of modern firearms. As far as I'm concerned, black is king.

The side notes of history are what I'm interested in, and I've learned more from you good folks at these fora in the couple of weeks I've been here than I have in the years on other fora, and books only go so far, as well, concentrating mainly on what survived to the modern age.

I was once an experimental archaeologist (though I did not know the term then). I built fairly powerful bows at the age of 10 or 12 for my friends and myself - and they did account for some small game. My friend was poor and the taking of squirrel inside a woods by his home inside town gave them some protein on the table.

Later, I got interested in the traditional sling - not slingshot - and built a few of those. Very fun to hunt game with. A couple rabbits fell to mine.

Then atlatls caught my attention, and my home fashioned spears would go a decent distance with them.

Boomerangs were pretty cool as well, though I was not so good at making those.

The point is, I explored each and every one of these arms thoroughly before making them. I studied even more beyond that, but didn't make them for a number of reasons - monetary (I was a teenager in school), lack of skills (I do not work wood well enough to fashion anything beyond basic bows - a wooden stock for my rifle seems a daunting task), or it seemed outright dangerous.

I did build a model cannon though. It fired a .30 caliber (IIRC) ball and used blackpowder pulled from firecrackers as propellant. The fuses served their purpose, and the barrel was a reinforced aluminum tube. Put a hole in the barn wall with that one.

Anyway, probably more than you wanted to know about me, and way more than I usually talk about.

Suffice to say, the wheres, hows, whats and wherefores interest me to no end.

I think there are a few folks on here like this, as well.

I apologize for the long-winded post.

Josh

P.S. I blew myself up once with something very close to blackpowder. I won't go into what it was made of for obvious reasons, but it was made to be rocket fuel. This is why I don't mess with the stuff today. I had 2nd degree burns on my hands and face, and I didn't do my lungs any favors. If anyone needs to use someone as an example of what not to do, feel free to use this. Suffice to say I was very, very lucky that it was not enclosed. It was far more energetic than I anticipated, and if it had been enclosed, I likely wouldn't be here. I have far, far more respect for the stuff than my attitude would sometimes let on. J.S.

 

[Josh Smith]

Did you expect to see the word "sugar" on the MSDS for Triple Seven?
The MSDS for anything doesn't give a chemical formula, it lists only substances with a rating for certain things.
fire, health hazards, etc.
Triple 7 gets its carbon needed for combustion from the compounds found in the sugar family.
Various sugars have been used in explosives for years.
You, of course, wouldn't remember, but it was rationed in WWII because of the demand for producing various explosives and propellants.

Are you speaking of charcoal made of sugar?

 

[TFoley]

Did you expect to see the word "sugar" on the MSDS for Triple Seven?
The MSDS for anything doesn't give a chemical formula, it lists only substances with a rating for certain things.
fire, health hazards, etc.
Triple 7 gets its carbon needed for combustion from the compounds found in the sugar family.
Various sugars have been used in explosives for years.
You, of course, wouldn't remember, but it was rationed in WWII because of the demand for producing various explosives and propellants.

Ah, thank you for posting that information. I do so hate to be called out on something so trivial.

The 'boyos' over here in Northern Ireland perfected the use of sugar-accelerant bombs made with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. Having been at the wrong end of one, I speak from experience of sugar-based explosives and propellants. I found that in spite of the intervening years, I was very uncomfortable shooting Triple 7 - smelled just like an IED to me.

tac
Supporter of the Cape Meares Lighthouse Restoration Fund