From: Norman Bassett, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The "chestnuts" item was interesting but may have been
only part of the story.
Chinese pirates around Malaya in the early 1950's were
using powdered atap (kind of palm tree) nuts and brown
sugar (doesn't settle when vibrated) as a propellant
powder. Also various kinds of "bungs" similar in use
to shotgun wads - and saboted concrete cannon-balls.
Natives were also using this mix in their shotguns and
reloading rifle cartridges with it.
I've not tried this personally but I'm told a lot of
organic materials when mixed with sugar can be used as
gun powders - that includes powdered milk, dessicated
liver etc. Certainly organic dusts will explode in air
- coal dust and flour dust explosions being the
commonest.
It's conceivable that ground chestnuts were being used
experimentally as gun powder and/or explosives in
shells.
Lyddite - I'm told this was not used as a propellant
but as a bursting charge - it doesn't explode fast
enough to break up the shell case but works fine to
spray metal balls. I'm told it's organic material
(rotting animal corpses dried and powdered) which has
been nitrated (simply mixed with concentrated nitric
acid). To avoid corroding the shell cases the
nitration was not total. So you got decayed animal
powder mixed up with the exploding nitrated decayed
animal powder - producing a dense brown smoke when the
shell went off. You also got vermin living in Lyddite
and eating it when it was out of its shell.
I'm also told the story that Lyddite had been made in
France from dried and powdered human corpses went
around the trenches and inclined the troops to approve
the temporary burial of their comrades in the trenches
where they fell - which temporary burial has so far
become permanent. Disgracefully.
Regards
Norman Bassett
drakenfels.org
--
There was an article in Gun Digest a few years ago about
how the guerillas in Afghanistan were making primers out
of nitrocellulose film that was a pretty interesting read.
Steve.
Cybershooters website: http://www.cybershooters.org
List admin: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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