Customer Rating:  
Summary: An ok book...
Comment: Ok, this book is ok. There are only two different recipes to make is the problem, but I did give it three stars because it has good information and tells you how to get the materials without having to buy them at the store. It also looks like the recipes could take quite a while to make.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Simply Informative and Useful
Comment: Iv'e read some drivel that the processes in this book are too hard to follow, or that they take too long to bear fruit. Look, if you don't want to leach out potassium nitrate, go buy it. I won't tell you where I get it, but if your'e making gunpowder you should be resourceful enough to find your own. Charcoal shouldn't be a problem, and you can order large quantities of sulfur for a good price. Also, you can buy all of these items, follow the processes in the book for putting it together, and still pay less for black powder than you would at the store. It's kind of funny, but I had more success with the sugar and rust recipe than with the traditional black powder. The burn rate was absolutely amazing, and the noise from my fence post driver cannon was too. The only reason that the techniques for resting all the ingredients from the earth were included in the book was to give you an idea of how to make powder from the ground up IF YOU HAD TO. You can easily go buy the ingredients, skip to the recipe pages of the book, and make gunpowder. I wouldn't recommend it though, because it's a very interesting book. I'd say the most important part of the book are the safety rules. I can personally attest to the importance of these. Just remember, someday you will accidentally ignite this stuff. It's a fact. So keep your batches small and separated. Also, if your'e making over fifty pounds of it you might consider an explosives manufacturing license.
Customer Rating:
Summary: not as easy as it sounds
Comment: This book is moderately interesting for its history of gun powder, although culturing your own salt peter or sulfur seem like they would be more trouble than they are worth
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not What I Expected
Comment: Although the book is very interesting, it really didn't have in it what I thought would be in it. I actually bought the book for my husband, who is into model rocketry and is making his own rocket engines and I thought this book would be informative enough to teach him to make the black powder that goes in them. Well, it is...if you have ten years to wait for everything to cure and get to a point where it's "good" enough to use for black powder. I really did think he could put the knowledge he gained there to work immediately and therefore I was disappointed in the content of the book. If you have ten years to wait for everything to come together then this is a book for you. If you want to put the knowledge to work for you right away, forget it!
Customer Rating:
Summary: class act
Comment: This book tells you exactly how to make gunpowder from manure, wood, baserock and many other simple around the house and free from the land type materials. I found this book very useful and informative.
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