Making gunpowder

A few months ago, I made corned beef from scratch. Part of that process involved me using saltpeter (potassium nitrate) to preserve the beef. Of course, I knew that saltpeter is a key ingredient in gunpowder. As I learned from the Gorn episode of Star Trek, all you need to do is mix, carbon, sulfur, and saltpeter, and you have gunpowder.
I had some time this weekend, so it was time to make gunpowder.


Obviously, making gunpowder is inherently dangerous, so I was carefully in my preparation and protection.
Carbon is readily available as charcoal. Sulfur is easily found at the gardening store. Saltpeter is a little tougher to find. I’m not saying it’s hard, but it’s not something you can find at any local store. I had mine leftover from making corned beef.

The sulfur came as small pellets, meant for spreading in your garden.

After about 5 minutes of grinding, the sulfur was as powdery as I was going to get it by hand.

The charcoal briquettes were a bit tougher to crush. I had to apply some real force to get these into grinding size. This made a bit of a mess.

But in the end, I had the charcoal ground into a powder as well.

The saltpeter was already ground fine for food usage. The exact recipe for gunpowder varies from purpose to purpose. My recipe was:

  • 1 part carbon
  • 1 part sulfur
  • 4 parts saltpeter

As I researched this, it was interesting to learn that saltpeter is the oxidizer for the reaction, meaning that gunpowder does not need air to burn. That means you can fire a gun in outer space! The molecules of saltpeter contain plenty of their own oxygen atoms.


To grind the components together, I wore gloves, long sleeve shirt, face and eye protection. I sure many people have been hurt making gunpowder. I can’t imagine what it took to make it hundreds of years ago.
After grinding for a bit, the gunpowder took on it’s characteristic grey appearance. Things were looking good so far.

For the initial test, I built a small test pan out of aluminum foil. I had also picked up green fuse to give me plenty of time to get to a safe distance.
Here is a video that shows what happened with my various tests.

Sure enough, my gunpowder worked.

In the Mini Rocket test, I used an old mini rocket that normally used an insertable motor. I filled it with gunpowder and attached a fuse. As you saw, it went nowhere, but did burn nicely.

I really wanted the gunpowder to work as a propellant, so I made rocket out of a old prescription (Rx) bottle. I placed that on the launcher and again, it went nowhere. You can hear the satisfying whoosh of the exhaust, but it just went nowhere.

The flames burned out the bottom of the bottle.

For the last attempt, I put all the remaining gunpowder into a second Rx Rocket and hoped for the best. As you saw, it made a satisfying whoosh and lots of smoke, but went nowhere. The lauching pad was completely destroyed.
I really need a nozzle to focus the exhaust. 😉
In one aspect, the experiment was a success. I did make gunpowder from scratch. This was not hard, but it would be hard to make it in large quantities. However, my attempts to use the gunpowder to launch a rocket, as is often seen in fireworks, was a failure. The combination of lacking a proper rocket body and a proper nozzle to direct the exhaust proved to be a serious flaw. I could simply get a bunch of model rocketry gear, but what’s the fun in that? It’s much more fun to try to launch plastic prescription bottles.
The biggest mistake I made ws using my wife’s mortar and pestle to make gunpowder. She was upset and now refuses to allow the mortar and pestle back into the kitchen. They are now sitting on my workbench in the garage. I have to buy a new mortar and pestle. In the future, I must avoid angering the wife.
Warning: I won’t tell you not to try this at home. If you are not an adult, do NOT even think about trying this. If you do duplicate this, please be careful. Gunpowder is dangerous stuff and you need to be very careful to avoid getting hurt. Wear protective clothing and eyewear at all times. And don’t use your wife’s kitchen gear in your experiment.

Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper

A few weeks ago I saw an ad for Cherry Chocolate Diet Dr Pepper on television. I had even seen the Cherry Chocolate Rain song by Tay Zonday on Youtube.


It took me a bit to find it, but I did. Quite an assortment of flavors we find here.

The soda itself really does have a red tinge to the normally caramel colored liquid. The smell was slightly sweet, with strong hints of cherry.
I could distinctly taste the cherry and chocolate flavors. Seemed to me that there was a bit of vanilla too. The Dr Pepper taste was in the background and subtle. The aftertaste is exactly that of a spoonful of Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s.
It’s quite a niche flavor. I can’t see drinking this day after day, but it would be good on occasion or as the base of some sort of mixed drink or shot.

The Colossal Remote

Last weekend I was in walgreens to pick something up when I spotted the Colossal Universal Remote Control.


The remote is 11″ by 5″. Compared to a standard Tivo remote, it’s positively colossal!
Obviously, I had to have this. Even my daughters would have a tough time misplacing this. I bought it and took it home. I put in two AA batteries and entered the standard Sony universal remote code and wham, it was controlling our Sony TV.
However, all it could do was turn the TV on/off, change channel, and work the volume. When I tried to change the video input, the menu would come up, but there was no way to select a new input.
There are three buttons on the top of the remote for TV, VCR, DVD. They can be programmed to any code and are not tied to one function. I looked for the code for my Oppo upconverting DVD player, but saw nothing. Scouring the web was fruitless as well.

I was a bit disappointed that it couldn’t do much more than the TV. On a whim I googled looking for a Tivo code. Sure enough, Brookstone sells a rebadged Colossal remote (actually made by Innovage) and in the user’s manual is a code for a Tivo (111).
Amazingly, it worked and the Colossal Remote was running the Tivo. I can pause, rewind, fast forward easily. The record button even works. The channel up/down works, as does the numeric keypad. But without a guide button or directional buttons, you are very limited in using your Tivo.
The girls think the remote is neat, but I want my $10 back.

Snickers Charged

This morning, I stopped by the 7-Eleven for coffee with Michele and saw something new.


Yes, it’s a Snickers bar with caffiene and taurine. Of course I picked a couple up for Cruft Labs.
Previously, I’ve discussed Buzz Bites, but Snickers is a mainstream brand. Mars Company is seriously testing the waters here with caffeinated food.
I love the icon of a charging rhino on the package!

Included with the Snickers bar are the following stimulants:
60 mg caffiene – equivalent to to a can of Mountain Dew
250 mg taurine – 1/4 of the taurine in a can of Red Bull
0.2 mg vitamin B6 – 10% of the RDA
0.6 μg vitamin B12 – 10% of the RDA

I was hoping for something cool on the outside of the Snickers, like a rhino or something, but it just looked like a Snickers bar.

The inside of the Snickers Charged looks pretty much exactly like a regular Snickers bar. Some kind of color or sparkle would have been neat. The Shrek version was at least green…
It tasted exactly like a Snickers. I couldn’t detect any of the metallic caffeine taste that I’ve sometime found in other caffeinated foods. If I didn’t know, I would have thought it was just a plain Snickers bar.
The idea is interesting at least. With the candy costing less than a buck, it’s a cheaper caffeine fix than coffee, soda, or an energy drink. In the afternoon, the caffeine might actually ward of the sugar crash of the 25 grams of sugar you just ate.

Good movies

I’m not a huge TV watcher. I barely keep up with one television show at a time. But I do love a good movie, especially the classics.
Turner Classic Movies is airing 31 Days of Oscar this month. 5 classic movies a day with no commercial interruptions. It’s a Tivo owner’s dream.
Here’s an example of two days:
February 20th: Some Like it Hot, Stalag 17, The Caine Mutiny, The Buccaneer, On the Waterfront
February 29th: The Day of the Jackal, Three Days of the Condor, Marathon Man, The Boys from Brazil, Kotch
All without commercials…

Importing Photos in Vista

This post is for Vista users that might have run into the same problem.
I’ve been transitioning Michele from a homebuilt XP system to a iMac running Vista. Everything had been going along smoothly until I tried to import some photos. We’ve always used her computer as the import station for all our digital cameras. The photos are backed up on several other computers.
The issue is that the default Vista camera import method sucks, mainly because you can’t select which photos you want imported and where to put them. It’s an all or nothing arrangement. This may be great for for 90% of users, but many of us want to be a bit more selective about how we import and place our photos.
In XP, we had the Scanner and Camera Wizard, which was pretty damn good. I used it for years with no problem. Seemed simple enough to me.
The Vista team must have disagreed and made the new import system basically into a on-click, no options process. As a result, many people feel that the default Vista Import method is inferior to the XP import method.
The last couple days, I have done a bunch of research on alternatives. In the end, I found that Windows Live Photo Gallery is the solution. I’m not sure why it doesn’t come with Vista, but it’s a free download.
Importing with Windows Live Photo Gallery gives you back all the features of the XP Camera Wizard. It gives you the option to import everything or select individual photos or even groups of photos to import into specified folders and rename as you desire. There’s even an Autoplay option to always use it when you connect a camera.
I’m quite happy now with the solution and Michele is ready to move to her new computer full time.

A year in Hotel Rooms

I travel a lot and end up in a lot of hotel rooms. In 2007, I stayed in 16 different hotel rooms. That doesn’t include 2 vacations where I didn’t stay in hotels.
In 2006, I started making short videos of my hotel rooms to show to Michele and the girls. I’ve been posting them to my Vox account. Now that 2007 is over, I can present you with:
My Hotel Rooms of 2007
January 15th – San Jose, California
January 16th – Emeryville, California
February 6th – Toronto, Ontario, Canada
February 9th – Bellevue, Washington
February 24th – Las Vegas, Nevada
March 17th – Austin, Texas
March 27th – London, England
April 18th – Las Vegas, Nevada
May 14th – Cupertino, California
May 27th – San Francisco, California
July 1st – Long Beach, California
July 17th – London, England
August 24th – Seattle, Washington
October 10th – New York, New York
October 18th – San Francisco, California
December 5th – San Jose, California
Vox makes it very easy to upload videos when I’m in the road. They recently added the ability to embed Vox videos on other sites. Even if you already have a weblog, having a Vox blog is fun and useful.
As an example of the videos I made, here’s the one from Long Beach, when my daughters and I attended the Anime Expo.


My Hotel Room in Long Beach from https://cruftbox.vox.com/