Does anyone know if it is legal to make your own black powder (in Texas anyway)? As I have said three times now, I am not concerned with how to make it, where to get the ingredients or the wisdom of making it. I just want to know if it is legal.
Thanks,
Rob
As near as I can tell, the answer is yes. Under Federal law (and Texas law that I can find) black powder weapons are not considered “firearms” and black powder and its substitutes are not considered “explosives” but “propellants.” That means they are legal to produce on your own. Sorta. You might still run afoul of local laws, or pollution laws or some other strange regulation, but I don’t see any straight prohibition against making your own black powder for a muzzle-loader.
Seems like circumspection is the watchword here:
Importation, Manufacture, Distribution and Storage of Explosive Materials (18 U.S.C. Chapter 40) (pdf)
Sure, there’s the issue of what they mean by ‘business’ and the like, but that amounts to a search for wiggle room, which is never guaranteed to keep you out of jail.
The model rocketeers have put a few dents in the code, but what with the riduculously tight definition of WMD’s since 9/11, and the above code, I’d be very reluctant to cook up even a gram of black powder to show the kids how it’s done.
As you have learned on your own, its a little bit of both legal and illegal. You can make your own legally but there are enough small clauses over building codes, placement, tools and other things to almost assure you violating some provision somewhere.
(PS - the critical part is corning. Do it right and you get something every bit as good as Moosic ever produced. Do it bad and you won’t have enough energy to get a tight ball and patch combo out the muzzle)
Back in 1975, I worked on an open pit mine development project in Northwestern Ontario, Canada where we employed 50 pound bags of Amex marketed by CIL (Canadian Industries Ltd) to be detonated by a high explosive cartridges such as Powerfrac, set off with a blasting caps.
Later on we purchased semi truck loads of 1 ton bags of ammonium nitrate and used a truck to mix a specific proportionate diesel into the prills and pump the mixture down the drill holes. We saved lots of money.
In Canada, Amex is Anfo.
Just an aside. Under certain conditions you can get ammonium nitrate to go high order boom without a blasting cap or primer explosive (or at least you could back in the day).
Do an internet search for “Texas City”. A fire started on a big cargo ship in port filled with fertilizer. It eventually exploded with the force of a small atomic bomb.
The old-timers down there still talk about it. The only saving grace, if there was one, is that the Monsanto plant & docks were fairly far from the populated areas, so the destruction didn’t extend terribly far into residential areas.
Still… the explosion flung the ships’ anchors miles inland- they have one at the TCR (Texas City Refinery) front gate, and one on the dike, with descriptions of where they landed.
The sort of chilling thing that I heard from my Dad (who was a toddler in Galveston when it happened), is that later on, it was not at all uncommon to find people from the area a couple years younger than him who had facial scars - apparently people put their baby cribs near the windows in those days, and the explosion blew the windows in and cut the babies’ faces.
Her ya go
Sounds like you need a license. I don’t think they are that hard to get though. A friend of mine has one because he is involved with amateur rocketry and fireworks. I’ll try to contact him. We are in NY but I don’t think the state matters. Pretty sure this is a federal thing.
ETA I guess Squink and I said about the same thing