Originally posted by zanes
well today i built three fountains (using Big g's method) except kno3 was replaced with pottasium permanganate (garden direct order not come yet) :flames:
1st. Burnt very hot, with lots of roaring flames. no sparks
2nd. Used same mixture as first, but with more ironfilings. same result.
3rd. got loo roll. Used all of my mixture, packed it in. lit with blow torch (had run out of fuse:)) Lots of sparks, but no particular direction.
hypothesis: I don't think 1+2 got hot enough to produce sparks. 3 worked because of alot of heat.
can barium chloride be used for anything?
[Edited on 15-6-2003 by zanes]
Zanes ? very kind of you to call something the ?BigG? method ? but unfortunately I am very much a student of the art. Nothing of what I wrote here is my original idea, but studies of masters in the field. As British you can at least pride yourself in the knowledge that one of the great firework builders of modern times is British himself (I refer to Rev. Ron Lancaster of Kimbolton Fireworks)
Back to your problem ? and I opened new topic for this as we really far from the original Topic.
Since your third attempt did produce sparks, we have to assume that the problem was with your process and not with the materials. Metal powders do take lots of energy to ignite. Since in your third attempt you had lots of sparks, there was probably enough heat to ignite the iron. However, you don?t need to have a lot of the material to create lots of heat. By surrounding the iron flake tightly with the BP type composition you can create enough heat to ignite it.
When building fountains, fill the fountain half a spoon at a time, and then consolidate the composition using rammer and a dowel to make sure it is tightly packed. A good swing from you hip should be enough. Continue filling and compacting until you are about an inch from the end.
Now ? you really should not light your fountain with match or blowtorch, but using a fuse. So insert a fuse, pour some more composition and compact the last bit of composition locking the fuse inside it.
Hopefully this should get you the effect you want.
Last works of advise. Fountains generate better sparks with larger flake metal (so anything between 40-200 mesh and even smaller mash for titanium). Iron dust/fillings are around 300# and therefore will not generate generous sparks ? so set expectation for this composition lower.
BigG
P.S. Don?t try this with anything except BP-type compositions! Don?t try this on any composition containing titanium! Those can ignite/explode on impact.
[Edited on 15-6-2003 by BigG]