Why I Traveled To the Hottest Place on Earth for this Yellow Rock

Another distilling technique, for materials with low melting point, is to dip a glass/steel rod into the molten material. This plates a thin layer of the lowest melting point material by cooling it out of solution. Remove the rod, scrape off the material, cool the rod, dry it, and dip again. It's sorta like dipping wicks to make candles.

I assume you have already done some research for purification but if you want some suggestions. For the Potassium Nitrate re crystallization from hot water would be my suggestion but filter the material while hot through as fine of mesh as you have. Allow the material to crystallize slowly by covering it to prevent the water from escaping. Don't allow it to go to dryness. Filter out the crystals that form first before it is totally dry and it should help remove some of the impurities. For the sulfur there are two routes. The first is evaporation. When hot, sulfur can evaporate fairly easily as long as you keep it below 159 C Have a cooled piece of glass or metal above your heated pot of impure sulfur and it will slowly grow sulfur on the cooled surface. The other option is to extract it with a hot solvent. Toluene or Xylenes works well for this and grows very nice sulfur crystals. Not sure if that is a technology you have unlocked yet so I would probably go with the sublimation method. Another fun thing you can do with sulfur is heat it above 159 C (I would heat it above 180 just so it goes faster) and it will change from a liquid to a viscous material called polysulfur. Its a polymer that is composed entirely of sulfur. Upon cooling it will turn back into crystalline sulfur over time but if you can safely handle it at these high temperatures its stretchy like rubber. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions. I did a good chunk of my PhD work with elemental sulfur and enjoy sharing what I know.

Gonna have to save the video before youtube removes it like it did with Cody's vids on gunpowder 🤔

You haven't ground the powder nearly fine enough! That's why a ball mill is used to grind and mix the components!!! It needs to be extremely fine ground in order for the three chemicals to be adequately mixed and in close proximity to themselves! it can then be wetted and pelletized to whatever grain size is needed and then dried for use! Also, your potassium nitrate is extremely dirty, it should be as close to a white powder as you can get it.

You could try adding water to your gunpowder mixture and continuing to grind the wet paste, I understand that was a historical technique for improving the quality of your gunpowder, if your ratios of ingredients are correct the only concern is getting that mixture as fine and homogenous as possible, and grinding it while it is a paste apparently helps a lot with that.

Next video: Gathering Uranium ore to make enriched uranium

Please do not grind your mixed black powder :P Grind the components beforehand and mix them by gently stirring them together. Loosing some fingers isn't too likely with a mixture like this, but it would be a bad day if your batch decided to auto-ignite in your mortar. Aside from that, I look forward to seeing a video of the refined version!

An easier way would be through goldpanning to get fools gold also called pyrite containing 50 percent iron 47 percent sulfur using a pot in pot boiler over fire you can separate the sulpher from the iron as a residue on top and separate the iron slag to melt into one ore

The most important aspect for purity is the KNO3 -- the Saltpetre. I used to use sulfur prills that have a small amount of clay in them. Made some very very good Blackpowder back in the day. Your KNO3 looks, I have to say, "not optimal".

"Oh look an abandoned mine in the middle of death valley at the end of an unplanned solo three mile hike. If something were to happen it could take days to find me... Well, in I go!" Glad you made it back. Please don't do that again.

Your next goal, of course, is to build a homemade cannon from bamboo so you can take care of the Gorn.

A town in Louisiana gained its name for the mineral that was mined there: Sulphur. Back in the day, a fellow by the name of Herman Frasch developed a method of extracting the mineral more efficiently using steam. This might be of benefit to your endeavor.

For more pure saltpeter, saturate it a LOT. Dissolve as much as possible into the water. Let it sit and settle with all the water until you get a nice separation of the organics and chemicals. Absorb as much liquid as you can with cotton and wring the cotton out thoroughly. Let that sit and evaporate (you can boil it gently to speed the process) until you are left with relatively pure saltpeter. For higher purity carbon, get a large sealable metal canister that you can fit a lot of wood chunks in, and punch a small (1mm) hole in the lid. Put the canister in a fire and “cook” it until the flames are no longer shooting out the hole in the lid. Then let it naturally cool. You will be left with very pure charcoal. As for the sulfur, the best extraction process I have seen for that, that doesn’t require modern chemicals, is to light mostly pure sulfur in fire and let it melt itself (you will get a bright red liquid). Once the source stops draining the sulfur liquid extinguish the flame and let it cool. Collect the now solidified puddles and crush into a fine powder. All doable with the technologies you currently have. (For the charcoal, you can use a clay vessel with a tight fitting lid with no need to vent it)

The biggest problem with the gunpowder was most likely the potassium nitrate, not the sulfur. The sulfur burning looked actually pretty nice

For the salt peter, just find a farm area, that has slow running water/pond area.. (especially any cattle farm or pig farm area) and look around a low / mushy/swampy area for the white powder.. that white powder is a nitrate powder byproduct.. which is easily gathered into a bucket, and then you can water wash it to continue separating contaminants.

Along with purity, the ratios of the ingredients to each other are important. You only really need about 2 parts sulfur and 3 parts charcoal, but the amount of saltpetre needs to be much higher, like about 15 (there's a Leslie Fish song about this, probably called 'Black Powder and Alcohol'), especially if you have difficulty purifying it enough.

That is a really cool apothecary setup, definitely a must have for when society gets thrown back to the stone age.

Need to get NileRed to kick your chemistry up a notch

I shoot blackpowder semi-regularly, and I occasionally make my own powder. The type of wood you use to make the charcoal is VERY important, as is the purity of the other ingredients. next issue is how long you mill it for. Generally speaking you need to use a ball mill for at least 24 hours with either lead or brass tumbling media. Just using a mortar and pestle for a few minutes won't get you very far.

Try using a double boiler method to melt and separate the sulfur. If you use oil or fat in the bottom pot you should be able to keep the temperature steady just above the melting point of sulfur without risk of ignition from inconsistent heating from a flame. This also means you could keep it molten for a longer period of time to allow gravity to separate some of the materials for you based on their densities.