flash paper

why dont many people have videos of laser igniting flash paper? is it because it is harder to get than other things like matches. i saw this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1pcKJBt8ic

and now i want to get some! here is a link to an ebay seller selling flash paper:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Fantastic-Flash...ryZ14014QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

the stuff is priddy easy to make as well, using a flare.

then you can use black tissue paper for easy burning. fun stuff.

forgot the lnk

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=iLvIGCxtd5A&feature=related

To the above "tutorial" for making flash paper:

Holy crap that is retardedly dangerous

three problems I see:
1. cooking flammable materials over an open flame (a GAS cooker? are you serious??)
2. putting said flammable materials in your oven too! (what if its a GAS oven??)
3. after drying in the oven, now the inside has a nice coating of potentially toxic chemicals. COOL!

Black Spirit said:

the stuff is priddy easy to make as well, using a flare.

then you can use black tissue paper for easy burning. fun stuff.

Click to expand...

Nope, it's a pretty complicated and dangerous procedure.

What you linked in the youtube video is not flash paper. Flash paper burns much faster. What you see in the youtube video is a really dangerous and stupid method for soaking paper in an oxidizer, letting it burn much faster than before. Road flares are made up of some sort of oxidizer like maybe potassium nitrate or something, sawdust as a stabilizer, and strontium powder to produce the brilliant red light.

If you wanted paper to burn faster you could soak it in something like KNO[sub]3[/sub] or NaNO[sub]3[/sub]... To make it produce brilliant light you can add some sort of metal dust like aluminum or magnesium for white, other metals for other colors... These things can be bought much cheaper and more pure than in a road flare, and there are infinite ways of putting them onto paper that are infinitely safer than what the retard in the video suggests, but still, flash paper this does not make.

The real process (if I'm not mistaken) is something like guncotton... involving fuming acids, a scary exothermic reaction, and some really deadly fumes. It's basically making nitroglycerin out of the cellulose in the paper. Really not something you want to try at home.

The real process (if I'm not mistaken) is something like guncotton... involving fuming acids, a scary exothermic reaction, and some really deadly fumes. It's basically making nitroglycerin out of the cellulose in the paper. Really not something you want to try at home.



Yeh thats right, nitric and sulphuic acid. The process is fairly simple, if you know what ya doing. I make it alot.

The above movie is priddy stupid, i admit. But tis fun

Went and tried it with me BR, lit quick

Agreed - it's nitrocellulose. They won't even ship the stuff unless it's wet. A nearby magic shop stocks the stuff - it's fun to play with, but not so much with lasers. First of all it's white, then even if you color it black, about the best you can usually do is carve out shapes on it with the laser. It needs a (tiny) spark or flame to set it off.

It's crazy indeed - i'd advise anyone against attempting what the guy does in the video... it is quite likely to go severly wrong, at least resulting in a pot boiling alcohol catching fire.

If you wanted paper to burn faster you could soak it in something like KNO3 or NaNO3... To make it produce brilliant light you can add some sort of metal dust like aluminum or magnesium for white, other metals for other colors...

Click to expand...

This is something you can do safely, but i dont think it will work for igniting it with a laser. Paper covered in nitrate burns rapidly if done well, but doesnt have a particularly low ignition temperature.

Proper flash paper is nitrated cellulose, exactly the same as gun cotton. It can be prepared by anyone with decent chemics experience, and involves little more than treating cotton (or 100% cellulose paper) with ((near)fuming) nitric acid and a small amount of sulfuric acid. It can also be done with sulfuric acid and potassium nitrate if you want.

Though those chemicals form a very dangerous mixture, it'd say the whole method is a lot safe than what is demonstrated in the video, and will result in proper flash paper. One downside to this is that real flash paper can ignite very easily when dry and result in serious explosions if this happens in a confined space... it's more powerful than gunpowder and a lot more sensitive too, so think twice before attempts