I was wondering if saltpeter is available as a household substance currently. I’ve heard that it was illegal, and I’ve also heard that it’s not called saltpeter (I know it’s potassium nitrate, but you can hardly market it with that as the label). If this product is sold at, say, a supermarket, what are it’s practical uses??
Please help!
[Stuyguy furrows his brow trying to recall his basement chemistry experiments as he posts this…]
First of all, the term saltpeter can be applied to another salt besides potassium nitrate (ammonium nitrate or sodium nitrate… I forget which).
I remember buying one variation of saltpeter from the local drug store when I was in high school. I believe it’s used as a stomachache remedy, or to soothe a rash, or to accomplish some other such homespun medical cure.
“Saltpeter” or “saltpetre” is potassium nitrate, an oxidising agent used in black powder and other pyrotechnic compounds. You used to be able to buy it easily and cheaply for preserving meat. However, now that pipe bomb making has become a growth industry it is understandably more difficult to get hold of. As far as I know, pure saltpeter isn’t available as a household product.
“Chile satpetre” is sodium nitrate, so named because the major worldwide source of it used to be the huge mountains of seagull crap on the coast of chile. It is also an oxidising agent but it absorbs water from the atmosphere, making it unsuitable for pyrotechnics.
If you’re thinking of making your own black powder you’re probably in a dubious area legally - the age of innocence where you could happily mess about with explosives for kicks as long as you didn’t disturb anybody is gone. However, pyrotechnics and rocketry are established hobbies for a lot of people so there must be ways of getting into it - try a web search and get in touch with some legitimate groups.
One can get Salt Peter at health food stores.
One can get Salt Peter at health food stores
Interesting. Is it sold as a preservative or a food supplement? Is it actually potassium nitrate?
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- You can still commonly get saltpeter at health food and drug stores. (-sulfer is taken orally as a laxative, if I recall right-) Oftentimes drugstores have to order it/them. -And if you order saltpeter and sulfer at the same time, you betcher knickers the drugstore guy likely knows what you’re planning, but as long as you’re not ordering 55 gallon drums of the stuff he probably won’t say anything. As an explosive, black powder is very mild. A black powder firecracker isn’t going to damage much unless it weighs ten pounds or you stuff it up your nose or something. Other fiercer stuff can be easily had that doesn’t even involve fertilizer.
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- And anyway, if you’re lazy, you can go buy gallon jugs of gun propellant at most any hunting/shooting shop. - MC
I bought a couple jars of salt peter (potassium nitrate) at a local drug store a few years ago. I had to call around to find the store (it was a Thrifty Drug).
I was into shooting black powder revolvers at the time and wanted a quicker way of loading; so I bought some cigarette papers and cut them to size. Then I mixed the salt peter in some water and soaked the papers in the solution. When they dried, I put a .36 ball on the end of a brass tube I bought at a hobby shop and put the nitrated paper around the ball and tube. When the glue dried, I poured 20 grains of black powder in the end of the tube, removed the tube, and glued the end of the paper tube down. Repeat about 50 times. Now I had a box of paper cartirdges for my (Uberti) Colt 1851 Navy revolver. They worked great! The paper burned completely when the round was fired. Did I really “have to” nitrate the cigarette paper? I don’t know. But it worked for me.
Drug stores? Never would have thought they would sell it THERE
Just thought I would post a link to Cecil’s article for kicks:
MC -“And anyway, if you’re lazy, you can go buy gallon jugs of gun propellant at most any hunting/shooting shop.”
That puts a different perspective on things! Here in the U.K, it’s illegal to make or store any kind of explosives without a licence, and I think that includes pyrotechnics and propellants. Technically this means you’re not even allowed to own a box of matches but that’s legislation for you.
“A black powder firecracker isn’t going to damage much unless it weighs ten pounds or you stuff it up your nose or something”
It depends on the degree of confinement. Black powder is a miserable explosive, but it can still bite you. Even unconfined, it’s very spark-sensitive and it burns HOT.
Amedeus, thanks for that link! I’d forgotten about that one.
That puts a different perspective on things! - matt
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- I guess I should have said IL/USA. -I visit an airgun board, and subjects like this go round and round: British shooters are amazed at how easy it is to buy firearms in the US, and US shooters are amazed at how easy it is to buy silencers in Britain.
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- I still stand by my statements concerning black powder though. There’s the ever-present danger of something hitting you in the eye, but there’s other stuff roughly as easy to get that has much more kick.
The "When I Was Your Age" Dept: -I used to have a set of 1969 Collier's encyclopedias, and in the entry for "explosives", *it actually told you how to make explosives!* Some of the ingredients we couldn't find, but much of them we could. And did. - MC