Black powder was used in all firearms until smokeless and other type propellants were invented in the latter 1800's. "Black" powder (which was sometimes brown) is a mixture of about 75 parts saltpeter (potassium nitrate), 15 parts charcoal, and 10 parts sulphur by weight. It will explode because the mixture contains the necessary amount of oxygen for its own combustion. When it burns, it liberates smoky gases (mainly nitrogen and carbon dioxide) that occupy some 300 times as much space as the powder itself.
Early European powder "recipes" called for equal parts of the three ingredients, but gradually the amount of saltpeter was increased until Tartaglia reported the proportions to be 4-1-1. By the late 1700's "common war powder" was made 6-1-1, and not until the next century was the formula refined to the 75-15-10 composition in majority use when the newer propellants arrived on the scene.
As the name suggests, this explosive was originally in the form of powder or dust. The primitive formula burned slowly and gave low pressures—fortunate characteristics in view of the barrel-stave construction of the early cannon. About 1450, however, powder makers began to "corn" the powder. That is, they formed it into larger grains, with a resulting increase in the velocity of the shot. It was "corned" in fine grains for small arms and coarse for cannon.
Making corned powder was fairly simple. The three ingredients were pulverized and mixed, then compressed into cakes which were cut into "corns" or grains. Rolling the grains in a barrel polished off the corners; removing the dust essentially completed the manufacture. It has always been difficult, however, to make powder twice alike and keep it in condition, two factors which helped greatly to make gunnery an "art" in the old days. Powder residue in the gun was especially troublesome, and a disk-like tool (fig. [44]) was designed to scrape the bore. Artillerymen at Castillo de San Marcos complained that the "heavy" powder from Mexico was especially bad, for after a gun was fired a few times, the bore was so fouled that cannonballs would no longer fit. The gunners called loudly for better grade powder from Spain itself.
How much powder to use in a gun has been a moot question through the centuries. According to the Spaniard Collado in 1592, the proper yardstick was the amount of metal in the gun. A legitimate culverin, for instance, was "rich" enough in metal to take as much powder as the ball weighed. Thus, a 30-pounder culverin would get 30 pounds of powder. Since a 60-pounder battering cannon, however, had in proportion a third less metal than the culverin, the charge must also be reduced by a third—to 40 pounds!
Figure 16—GUNPOWDER. Black powder (above) is a mechanical mixture; modern propellants are chemical compounds.