Making black powder according to TM 31-210

I have tested a few methods of making black powder. Of course I tried the basic method of grinding the individual ingredienst and throughly mixing them in the right proportions. I have found the results obtained by this method to be very medioce, because the mixing is never good enough and it is not possible to control the grain size of the resulting powder.

By coincidence I found a recipe for black powder in the TM 31-210 Improvised Munitions Handbook. It works by disolving the ingredients in hot enthanol and crashing them out with cold water. The product is extracted through a filter and dryed. The dry flakes can be ground trough a sive to produce the final grains as wished.

I have found these results to be very satisfactory.