DL is correct, it is entirely possible to do at home, one just needs the right equipment, a working understanding of basic inorganic and organic chemistry, and the willingness to accept that it is entirely possible you will explode yourself even if you do everything completely correct.
Yeah, emphasis on that
working understanding. It's a bit like cooking, hence, slang term - Chemists develop the same kind of instinct you get with experience. You need to know what could go wrong and know exactly to expect at each step - so that you can respond to problems that arise.
It's all the other stuff like stabilizers and putting into a usable and stable form that won't cause fires and explosions that is the hard part.
There doesn't seem to be too much in the way of stabilisers in the mixtures - preventing accidental combustion is not gonna happen, which is why I suggest storing things as less volatile salts and producing what you need via salt metathesis.
As you may recall, I
was trying to prototype a design. That whole ordeal, which I'm
still working on, was how I ended up developing the fermentation method. Same issue I have with both - I don't have enough of a toolset to work with metal, and my heart is
fucked so it's hard to get everything I need.
Shit's crazy from a European perspective - all of the regulations in Europe depend on restricting nitrates, and now I'm in the stupidest position. The only reason my method makes sense is if there's
massive restrictions for it. So I can't do shit with it except continue development and hope that there's enough Americans who would like to brew gunpowder.
why not just concentrate your skillset on making high tension compound bows and crossbows? safer, quieter and probably more useful overall in a SHTF scenario.
If the goal is to make DIY ammo for an M60 so you can fight off invading platoons, then face it - you've already lost that scenario
Actually, the use of making your own bullets is to test out different compositions and bullet masses. The De Lisle carbine was quieter than a crossbow - and there are so many improvements to be made from the basic premise. It's a rifle which uses pistol rounds, a ported PCC/SMG barrel, with an integrated suppressor. You could get the same effect from a 9mm barrel, like the Schutzdaempfer - especially if you can rig the receiver to sap away a little bit of that pressure to keep the bullet subsonic.
Failing that, just use a different powder composition. I'm sure there's something inert you can add in to slow the burn a little bit.
No one mentioned gun cotton or any earlier, not perfect but good enough in a pinch solutions.
Gun cotton
is what we're talking about - that's the other ingredient. The hard bit is that HNO3, which - you're right - isn't easy. It's pretty clear you've ended up at the same problem I had, so I posted my solution to it. So I could do with some replication.
Useless people who give up and say that even trying is retarded because they believe that if you're not a chemist with a factory it's impossible.
Oh I had the same dude talking similarly before. He's one of the uh, "indoor chemists"
That said -
do not try the most efficient methods. The most commonly listed ones are usually the most common industrial methods - but the inside of the machines have higher pressures than the bottom of the ocean (hence, most of the world regulating exactly this chemical) and temperatures up to 1000C. The single most deadly industrial incident was letting Indians run a pesticide plant (Bhopa, ~16,000 dead) - shit isn't
easy and it's built for
maximum cost efficiency.
That goes double for what I'm assuming your username refers to - the dude who
discovered nerve agents nearly got killed, multiple times, in the process. At no point should you try to work with gases. That's not because it's "impossible" - it's that there's a reason they have special labs for that, out in the middle of nowhere.
What sort of tools and equipment do you have at your disposal?
