Customer Reviews

The Do-it-Yourself Gunpowder Cookbook

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Iv'e read some drivel that the processes in this book are too hard to follow, or that they take too long to bear fruit. Look, if you don't want to leach out potassium nitrate, go buy it. I won't tell you where I get it, but if your'e making gunpowder you should be resourceful enough to find your own. Charcoal shouldn't be a problem, and you can order large quantities of sulfur for a good price. Also, you can buy all of these items, follow the processes in the book for putting it together, and still pay less for black powder than you would at the store. It's kind of funny, but I had more success with the sugar and rust recipe than with the traditional black powder. The burn rate was absolutely amazing, and the noise from my fence post driver cannon was too. The only reason that the techniques for resting all the ingredients from the earth were included in the book was to give you an idea of how to make powder from the ground up IF YOU HAD TO. You can easily go buy the ingredients, skip to the recipe pages of the book, and make gunpowder. I wouldn't recommend it though, because it's a very interesting book. I'd say the most important part of the book are the safety rules. I can personally attest to the importance of these. Just remember, someday you will accidentally ignite this stuff. It's a fact. So keep your batches small and separated. Also, if your'e making over fifty pounds of it you might consider an explosives manufacturing license.

This book delivers. It has valuable recipes to make your own black poweder and a sugar related substitute. This book also means it when it say to make everything from scratch. How to make your own charcoal, getting sulfur from unlikely places, and "Growing" a salt peter bed. Its not a thick book by no means but if you someday find yourself in the situation where you need to make all of these components from scratch this is a great book to have.

Just a quick little bit of help. Just because your compost pile is nitre bearing earth your going to be hard pressed to produce salt peter. your better off builiding a nitre bed like the author describes.

This book tells you exactly how to make gunpowder from manure, wood, baserock and many other simple around the house and free from the land type materials. I found this book very useful and informative.

it doesn't go in to the rest of the chemistry, but its a good start to learn where some of our raw materials come from...:) it also gives a history of farming and taxes and things, its kind of interesting....:)

This book shows how to make gunpowder from everything from dead cats to maple syrup to fools gold and gives you simple easy to follow recipes tells you what tools you need and how to do it. Whether you are a black powder shooter, reloader, or backyard tinkerer this book is for you.

There aren't many advantages to making your own gunpowder these days, much less your own gunpowder ingredients, but this little book covers all of it, along with some interesting history (including the impressive number of people who have blown themselves up, along with factories, shops villages and so forth). He does remind us of safety rules, but somehow it falls short of what some goofball on the internet might do with the information. Still, definitely something I'd want to be able to do if I needed to, so here it is.

I was expecting a bit more than I got in this little book. Maybe if I were a true survivalist, it might be more relevant. Anyway, I will keep it if for no other reason than to have a resource if I ever need to make my own black power. I feel bad giving this a sour review, but it was a disappointment. Maybe it's just me.

I did feel that many of the "recipes" were very difficult procedures, and it would be very unlikely that I could pull them off.

This book gives most all that you will need, however you are on your own as to where to find the ingredients for the BATTER. Interesting read.

Ok, this book is ok. There are only two different recipes to make is the problem, but I did give it three stars because it has good information and tells you how to get the materials without having to buy them at the store. It also looks like the recipes could take quite a while to make.

I was thinking that it was for different formulas for black powder. It turn out to be for making the chemicals for black powder. If you search the web you get better information, then whats in this book.