Keep Your Powder Wet

"Keep your powder dry" is a sound military rule; it is also what makes powder manufacturing a risky business. Last week Western Cartridge Co. told of an unorthodox but effective and less hazardous method of making smokeless powder under water.

Under older methods, nitrocellulose (made by treating cotton or wood fibers with nitric and sulfuric acids) is forced through "macaroni" machines, chopped into grains of various sizes. This smokeless powder is necessarily handled dry in many stages of its manufacture, and in large quantities.

The new ball powder (so called because the grains are spherical rather than rod-shaped) is formed chemically, not mechanically. It need be dry and dangerous for only a short time. Nitrocellulose, immersed in ten times its bulk of water, is liquefied by various chemicals, among them ethyl acetate, much used in nail polish. The liquid nitrocellulose rises to the surface of the water as a creamy lacquer. Stirring breaks it into globules, like olive oil in salad dressing. Other chemicals keep the tiny pellets separate. Speed of stirring determines the size of the grains of powder.

American hunters banged away with ball powder at deer and grouse before the season was opened on Japs and Nazis. The British were the first to use it in military ammunition: after Dunkirk, Western built a plant for England. Since then, more than a billion rounds have been loaded with the new powder. Factories in the U.S. went up in jig time because the process needed only materials and equipment available locally--often assembled by local boilermakers.

Western's process was developed by its technical department headed by Dr. Fred Olsen, formerly in charge of research at Picatinny Arsenal. Called one of the few basically new ideas since the Chinese invented black powder, the process cuts manufacturing time from a normal 15 days to three.

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