DANVILLE -- There will be an added bang to this year's Iron Heritage Festival in Danville.
For the first time in more than 130 years, black powder will be crafted from locally-made charcoal and detonated at the original site of Danville's powder mill behind Geisinger Medical Center along Powder Mill Road, giving festival visitors an up-close look at what the earliest iron workers did to mine iron ore.
The black powder project is the latest experiment derived by Van Wagner, a Danville native and local historian, and his faithful volunteers, who have spent each year of the festival adding their own special touch to the annual celebration of Danville's rich history of iron-making.
The group has done many living history re-creations over the years, such as handcrafting an early 19th century log raft and floating it down the Susquehanna River, as well as setting up a week-long charcoal-making campsite last year to showcase the authentic process of turning wood into charcoal.
That same homemade charcoal will be used again this year to make black powder.
"Since black powder was one of the key ingredients behind the iron industry, we figured that would be a neat thing to try," Wagner said. "If you couldn't blast loose the iron ore, limestone and coal, there wouldn't be iron."
Wagner, a science teacher at Lewisburg Area High School, researched how to make black powder and tested the process at his Danville home. From the successful experiments, Wagner is now eagerly looking forward to putting the practice to use for the festival.
"We will lead a hike up to the site where we believe the mill was and have a short discussion on the techniques used then, and then detonate the powder," Wagner said. "It doesn't matter what age you are, there is something special about fireworks."
Wagner said black powder was the explosive that made mining iron ore in the Danville area possible from the 1830s until mining ceased about 1890. The exact location of the powder mill is not known.However, the charcoal pits are still evident in the area, Wagner said.
"Many people are aware that charcoal was used in the iron industry before the introduction of Anthracite coal in blast furnaces. However, it's also a key ingredient to making black powder," Wagner said. "To make black powder, charcoal was mixed in specific proportions with sulfur and sodium nitrite. Sodium nitrate is derived from both bat and bird droppings. In caves where bat colonies had created thousands of years of droppings, the waste was mined and referred to as guano.' It's also possible to use bird waste to create sodium nitrate."
According to Wagner, an explosion in 1879 reportedly destroyed Danville's powder mill, and it's unclear whether anyone was killed in the incident.
n E-mail comments to jnorth@dailyitem.com.
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