Pyrotechnic powders

[bloompyle]

I'm not too positive if this goes here, but I'm asking for help, and this is the help section, so eh.

I've been fiddling with pyrotechnic powders here and there for some time now. Very little to work with though. Just the powders I gut from fireworks (silly, and dangerous, yes, don't do it.) However, I'm looking for a nice source that some members here use. I know there's a ton out there, but I feel asking here would get better results since I might some return customers and such. I'm just looking for basics. Quick and slow burning fuses, high and low smoke powders (no effects, just igniting with a flame, and one igniting with a plume of smoke) something that sparkles as it burns, just fun stuff to ignite from 10-15ft away. I know there're a few like minded pyros out there, so any help would be appreciated! :thanks:

 

[ElectroMagneticFreak]

Pyrotechnics was my main hobby when I was 13 to about 21 and I would love to get back into it if I had the space to work and some land to set them off.

You can make a good slow burning fuse by soaking cotton string in a solution of potassium nitrate and then letting the strings dry. They have to be pure cotton and not plastic or they will stink like plastic and won't burn well. The KNO3 is the oxidizer that allows the fuse to burn in the absence of oxygen. An even better fuse and a bit faster burning is home made black powder soaked as a slurry onto the cotton string.

You could always go to the gun store and get a container of black powder (not smokeless) and then add some iron filings to a small amount of BP for orange yellow sparks. Aluminum would make white. Magnesium would be even brighter. Another great effect (a small fireball) can be achieved by putting a small layer of black powder in something like an old film container and then covering this with coffee whitener/Creamer. You will need to light it from the bottom with a fuse through a hole in your container, and the BP will aerosolize the creamer and it will ignite into a rolling fireball like a small mushroom cloud. You need very little black powder, (just cover the bottom or twice this maybe) if you use too much it will not work as well.

A good pyrotechnics supplier is skyligher.com. They used to sell a lot of chemicals to hobbyists until the whole terrorism threat. Now they don't allow fine aluminum powders or other ingredients for "flash" powders (unless you are licenced,) but still sell many other pyro related chemicals that you can still find some great things to do with, like make BP, fountains, rockets, colored flares, colored stars, roman candles, shells launched from mortors with colored stars etc...

The hobby fireworks community is very much like the laser community in that in pyrotechnics they frown on noobs wanting to learn to make flash powder and salutes, large firecrackers etc. right away without background knowledge on safety or chemistry just like noobs with lasers that want to burn right away with a 1.8W 445nm.

A good thing to start out with is fountains or black powder rockets from homemade weaker than commercial BP. Charcoal, sulfur, potassium nitrate and then add a metal powder iron etc. for the volume of sparks that will spew from the fountains. You can also mill your own Black powder in a ball mill (which is easy to make) and it works really well with the right charcoal, thorough mixing and damnpening with water, and finally pressing. There should be some good forumlae on the internet for Bp based fountains.

Black powder is 75 percent KNO3 15 percent charcoal and 10 percent sulfur. The ratio varies whether the goal is a fast burning powder releasing a lot of gas instantly , or a slower one for rockets or even slower burning for fountains. I used to make my own charcoal which is a really fun thing to do! It is much different from what you get in your fireplace. True charcoal for pyrotechnics is wood that is heated in the absence of oxygen. You can do this by heating small chopped pieces of wood in an old paint can with holes poked in to let out the gasses over a fire. In other words the wood hasn't burned becaused there wasn't oxygen in the can, but the volatile compounds have been vaporized off leaving mostly charcoal and some organic compounds which will make your charcoal burn much better in your BP formulae than rubbing charcoal off of burnt logs. There is a technique in this to produce charcoal for the fastest burning bp. Willow is well known as an excellent wood for fast burning BP, while hardwoods are slower burning. You can always experiment with different kinds of wood or charcoal sources for fast burning or more spark producing characteristics.

Chemicals to avoid combining are chlorates and sulfur, as well as chlorates and phosphorus because of the sensitivity. This is what is in caps for cap guns. Just an example of some things never to combine because they are far too sensitve, dangerous and powerful. These are known as suicide mixtures.

One thing to remember when you are taking fireworks apart is that you do not know what harmful compounds are in them. I found out later when I had dismantled the "crackling balls" as a kid and had carried around the powder in my backpack which had spilled and had spread the dust of lead tetraoxide all over the place which is a water soluble lead compound! Also black snakes are mercury thiocyanate i believe. Green colored fireworks use Barium which is highly toxic in soluble form as well as being a heavy metal.

However if you know what your dealing with it's a great hobby. I would recommend getting some books sold at skylighter. One good one is introductory practical pyrotechnics. It has some good safe beginner projects and also lists what chemicals to always avoid mixing to avoid a dangerous situation as well as how to make and acquire the necessary tooling you will need for various projects. It's considered one of the best beginning books for someone serious about learning.

Disclaimer: Of course I would never advise anyone to try anything I have suggested, you must find out if this is legal in your area and I or others cannot be held responsible for any injury as a result of trying any of the chemistry and pyrotechnic projects. While some can be less dangerous than others, they all have the potential for some danger without all the proper precautions and do diligence!

Feel free to ask me if you have any other questions. Also I know Garoq is knowledgeable about this since he has formulated his own multicolor rockets for his rocket company and Flaminpyro would obviously be good to go to as well if he comes back on here again.

 

[daawood123]

Smoke Bombs, also can be used as a alternative for a fog machine.
read my wikihow tutorial here:How to Make a Smoke Bomb from Potassium Nitrate and Sugar

skylighter is good but a tad bit expensive, so here are a few other sites that provide some pyrotechnic stuff:

Ebay: Firework fuse,Rocket tubes
Amazon: Wide Range of pyrotechnic powders such as postassium nitrate, sulfur, magnesium strip etc
Pyro Supplies - Pyro Supplies Homepage : wide range of pyro tools, shells, fuse and tubes.
those are all the ones i know but there may be others, im not sure.

Regards

 

[bloompyle]

Wow, I don't even want to quote you because it's such a large post. That was VERY helpful. I was more interested in just sources of flash paper and flash powder to light with a laser, but with all that info, I'm a bit interested in actually getting involved with this! I will definitely have to pick up that book, thank you very much! +1

 

[daawood123]

i assume your talking about the guy who posted before me, but no matter. if you want flahspaper to light with a laser, lazerer sells some for good value, and its made specifically for lasers :**10 Sheet** 25cm x 21cm Black Flash Paper

also, gun powder, also known as black powder, is pretty much flash powder, it burns very quick, and makes a nice popping noise. as electromagneticfreak mentioned, you can make it with potassium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal, but you will need things such as a ball mill, and theres also a big risk of it exploding while your milling it.

you can also make flashpaper, but i dont remember the formula/method too well, search it on youtube, there should be plenty of vids on there

 

[jeffreythe00]

Just in case you needed some. I get my aluminum powder from this place. Aluminum Powder - Powdered Aluminum

Its very fine and id suggest if you are going to work with it to wear gloves and clothes you dont want ruined. Also this stuff is NO good to breathe so id suggest you mess with the aluminum powder either outdoors or in a well ventalated room.

This stuff is SUPER fine!

 

[lasersbee]

I'm not too positive if this goes here, but I'm asking for help, and this is the help section, so eh.

Since you asked...
Yes you are in the Wrong Section...

This is the Lasers > Tutorials, Help & Repairs Section...
Non Laser related subjects would go into the Other section.


Jerry

 

[bloompyle]

Well I was lighting the powder with lasers, so that was the kicker for me :/ Thanks for the tip.

 

[ElectroMagneticFreak]

Wow, I don't even want to quote you because it's such a large post. That was VERY helpful. I was more interested in just sources of flash paper and flash powder to light with a laser, but with all that info, I'm a bit interested in actually getting involved with this! I will definitely have to pick up that book, thank you very much! +1

Lol, I was worried I had rambled on a bit there. I started getting interested myself again just thinking about pyro stuff so I don't mind talking about it at all.

Those look like some good links, Its easier in the U.S. to get a lot of the pyro chemicals required in various projects so you are lucky! Here in Canada I had to go around to all kinds of places like pottery supply stores, metal recycling, brake repair, and farm stores, artist supply, pharmacies etc with everyone wondering what the heck I was wanting the stuff for.

Usually they were nice though after I explained I was a safe hobby experimenter and that I was not using it for anything irresponible or dangerous.

Daawood was mentioning the ball mill risk which is there but it has more to do with avoiding sparks. Black powder is not so sensitive to shock as some other pyrotechnic forumlae. You can use lead balls or I think some ceramic ones as well to avoid a spark. Also There is far less risk if you mill ball mill the mixture wet as you would and should do anyway to help incorporate the KNO3 into the charcoal to have it recrystallize into the smallest crystals possible and evenly incorporated into the charcoal.

If your purpose was not to have a fast burning black powder you could grind the charcoal and sulfur separately (the fuel) and then combine with the KNO3 (Oxidizer) without mixing together in the ball mill. Another good book sykylighter or Amazon might have is black powder methods and manufacture. There are a lot of techniques in there and one is with just boiling water on top of the ingredients and sturring /grinding the wet mixture and then precipiation with cold alcohal to recrystallize the KNO3 into the charcoal and into a smaller crystal size. Some techniques work better than others, I think the previous is called the CIA technique.

Flash powder is something you would never ball mill, best only to do in the smallest quantities by rolling back and forth on a sheet of paper as the sole method of mixing. There's lots of stuff to learn if you want to get into pyrotechnics, it's a very fun hobby! :beer:

 

[daawood123]

yeah, i meant that, sparks are things to avoid, which is why you shoud never use things like coffee grinders in pyrotechnics, there was a incident when some guy was milling black powder, he left the ball mill on overnight (which you would normally do) inside his garage, next day he came in, and the mill had exploded, bits of shrapnel were embedded in the wall etc
not trying to put you off or anything
and like the guy above me said, for more sensitive mixtures just put it on a newspaper and keep moving the sides up so it falls on top of itself, if you know what i mean.

 

[JLSE]

Chemicals to avoid combining are chlorates and sulfur, as well as chlorates and phosphorus because of the sensitivity. This is what is in caps for cap guns. Just an example of some things never to combine because they are far too sensitve, dangerous and powerful. These are known as suicide mixtures.

Very sound advice.. Perchlorate is the more desired oxidizer as it offers a bit more stability
over chlorate. The problem with taking apart any fireworks is that the mixtures in say something
like blackcats still use chlorate AL and sulfur. Not only is P. Chlorate and AL a sensitive mix,
adding sulfur makes it even more so.

TO the OP, before you even start with anything, be sure to do some deep reading and
know what you are doing. There are several videos on youtube of young gents who dove
in without being 100%, and now have various injuries to show for it.

I use a few different compounds for my videos, but never mix more than a gram.
Flash powders require very little confinement to explode, and if enough is mixed,
the weight of the powder on itself can be enough to cause an explosion. You
dont have to be making 'm-80's' or the like to get hurt.

Not to scare you but here are a few clips to just give a dose of reality, and maybe
put the seriousness of what small amounts can do if handled incorrectly. Even static
can set of mixes like a chlorate flash powder, or 'armstrongs' mix mentioned above..





Something that should not be taken lightly.

 

[ARG]

Wow

Thanks for the PSA Wannaburn, that is some really scary stuff there...

 

[rocket689]

There are a bunch of good databases of pyrotechnics knowledge on the intrawebz.

I like to use:
Main Page - PyroGuide

Pyro Universe

APC Forum

 

[JLSE]

Wow

Thanks for the PSA Wannaburn, that is some really scary stuff there...

When I was young I was far more reckless, now that ive gained some wisdom, its scary what
could of been..I cant imagine going through life with a hand looking like that..

 

[rocket689]

When I was young I was far more reckless, now that ive gained some wisdom, its scary what
could of been..I cant imagine going through life with a hand looking like that..

X2 on that thought, Wannaburn..

I had a pile of powder go off next to my hand when I was much younger (and dumber)
I couldn't move it for hours, but it was ok past that.
I have thought back on that many times and realized how lucky I really was.

Just like lasers, and even more so, pyrotechnics requires due diligence in safety precautions.

 

[JLSE]

I know what you mean, I have had my close calls, even had a large flame wrap around my face and head
from something with KCLO3. Definitely on my top ten stupidest things ive done lol.

With the addition of the internet, I see kids 12-14 making stuff, and lacking respect
for it. Have seen videos of drain cleaner and AL foil in a plastic bottle violently explode
in a kids face etc. Some just have no clue until they learn the hard way.

Some are lucky and dont lose all that much, others lose their vision, fingers, hands,
and some cases life.

Not to say pyrotechnics cannot be a safe fun hobby, but the OP should keep in mind
there are severe hazards.

Another thing to keep in mind, local laws.. There is another video if I can find, will post
of a guy who blew his forearm off, up to the elbow. Once he got out of the hospital
he then had to deal with the charges the cops laid for doing something completely illegal in
his state.

Ordering chems can also land you in trouble.

If the OP is looking for something simple, there is a flash powder that may or may not
be available to him without a license. Google 'pyropak 2 part airburst'

It makes a nice bright flash and is very stable. This is what I used in my video of the 3.5W
445. Even though its stable, its still dangerous, wear goggles and work with small amounts.