I dont really want to make my own ball mill, but after looking at the safety issues of just owning one rock tumbler, i think it would be best. I wanna make one so that i can have 3-4 different containers for different powders. My question is, can someone give me a site with really good directions and pictures? Dan williams site was good, but now i cant access it. Also, after reading through his steps and the prices of the pieces, his mill cost like 2-3 times as much as that $30 rock tumbler i want.

http://www.unitednuclear.com/ballmill.htm here is united nuclears page on how to build a ball mill. it looks like a good project and prob wont cost as much.

You can try this website, I've looked over it briefly and it seems to be pretty good: http://manly.delconet.com/klahn/tumbler/index.html

It cost him $70 but that is because it is huge. It might be a little advance for what you want to do, I don't know, but I figure I might as well post it. Someone may want to build one this big.

goto the webpage

http://huizen.dds.nl/~wfvisser/EN/ballmill_EN.html

it has really simple guide with pictures and it looks like its pretty cheap too

Well one of these days I should put together a ball mill just to sell. I have built 3 multiple sized ones, Largest being able to hold a 5 gallon jug. And I have only had one explode on me. Its really a simple project. You can go to Home Depot and spend under 100 USD to get what you need to build a good ball mill. Some people do it for far less. I usually use a ice cream machine motor. Because they are best for RPMs and endurance. If I ever build another I will post pictures.

What happened when it exploded? What damage was there and what was in it?

i read that site from EN. It said that ball milling is very dangerous and to do it outside, have a remote starter, and barricade it with sand bags, not to mention that there's nothing you can do to stop metals from becoming pyroforic (except open it every like 2 hours). Do you guys actually do all this safety stuff, and have your mills blown up on you like this?

I only have a very small rock tumbler as my ball mill, it can only to like 30g of BP at a time so I just don't worry about it ending up exploding because I don't think the balls in it can move with enough force to initiate BP. I might build a larger one in the future though, my mom is planning to throw our crappy tread-mill away which I figure can easily be made into a ball mill. It has a good motor, some gears, and a roller already so I really just have to remove that from the rest and put a drum on it.

I run mine outside in a shed but I don't have any fancy sandbag sheil or anything like that. It's running off an extension cord so I can unplug it at the source if I want to without going near the mill but that seems a bit excessive to me for blackpowder.