20 replies to this topic

[GreenGenie]

hey G'G, i don't see any risk in cooking R-candy on an electric hot plate, kn03, sugar, glucose,water and a catalyst, ( Fe203),

i've personaly made a bit of it and know a few people that have made plenty of it with no trouble what so ever, also" the difference of just milling and mixing , opposed to doing it correctly , ( heating it altogether in a non stick frypan ) is tremendously so that if you are not going to heat the ingredients together , honestly " its not worth doing "

as far as your contamination, it may cost abit more but " pyrotechnics as a hobby is not cheap" i swear by stainless steel balls.
great milling times, no contamination what so ever and as safe as houses, i use 5/8" ss.

Hi Phil (is there some rule that you have to be called Phil to be a member of the society?)

I certainly intend to try the melting together method (I have even bought the frying pan). You and your friends have clearly had good experiences of doing this but I have read many accounts of this procedure giving grave warnings. kno3 and sugar burn pretty well with simple mixing. I wondered if there was some advantage to be had milling the ingredients without the safety implications of heating.

[Arthur Brown]

If it didn't burn the rockets wouldn't fly!

I did hear of someone using a spare bread making machine for doing sugar+nitrate fusion. They are a gentle enclosed heater under a metal bowl with stirrer.

[knackers]

Hi Phil (is there some rule that you have to be called Phil to be a member of the society?)

I certainly intend to try the melting together method (I have even bought the frying pan). You and your friends have clearly had good experiences of doing this but I have read many accounts of this procedure giving grave warnings. kno3 and sugar burn pretty well with simple mixing. I wondered if there was some advantage to be had milling the ingredients without the safety implications of heating.

yes there are alot of us ,very popular name 50 odd years ago but i have never come across so many until i joined ukps.
i have milled the ingredients less the catalyst ( added that later mixing by hand ) before and it burnt well, i did not press it in to a tube though, but when you melt it all together with the aid of water and a light boil it incorporates it so much more intimately and you can mould the shape/s you want and use any appropriate utensil for coreing, with the left over you can re heat and re shape again and again, each time you do this it also removes any moisture gathered during storage, i bought a purpose not stick frypan and a single element hot plate so as not to use an open flame,

sorry i don't have a link for you but Jimmy yawn has some great tutorials and information which is where i got my information from, he is definately worth checking out,
Edit:- my young son has lots of fun with it, when its ready he rolls it ( like play dough ) into 1/2" diameter sausages and cuts them to all different lengths, he tapes 1'' pieces to his skate board wheels ( without a tube) and makes mini catherine wheels and tapes them to the roof of old toy cars, ( they are solid and brittle when they have been cooked ) and can be used for many fun things " without pressing them into a cardboard tube ", they don't take fire and engulf completely like other pyrotechnic compositions, only burning from the ignition point, then burn steadily through the entire diameter until it reaches the other end

Edited by phill 63, 29 May 2009 - 11:46 PM.

[GreenGenie]

yes there are alot of us ,very popular name 50 odd years ago but i have never come across so many until i joined ukps.
i have milled the ingredients less the catalyst ( added that later mixing by hand ) before and it burnt well, i did not press it in to a tube though, but when you melt it all together with the aid of water and a light boil it incorporates it so much more intimately and you can mould the shape/s you want and use any appropriate utensil for coreing, with the left over you can re heat and re shape again and again, each time you do this it also removes any moisture gathered during storage, i bought a purpose not stick frypan and a single element hot plate so as not to use an open flame,

sorry i don't have a link for you but Jimmy yawn has some great tutorials and information which is where i got my information from, he is definately worth checking out,
Edit:- my young son has lots of fun with it, when its ready he rolls it ( like play dough ) into 1/2" diameter sausages and cuts them to all different lengths, he tapes 1'' pieces to his skate board wheels ( without a tube) and makes mini catherine wheels and tapes them to the roof of old toy cars, ( they are solid and brittle when they have been cooked ) and can be used for many fun things " without pressing them into a cardboard tube ", they don't take fire and engulf completely like other pyrotechnic compositions, only burning from the ignition point, then burn steadily through the entire diameter until it reaches the other end

Sounds like fun to me! Guess I'm going to try it out.

[dr thrust]

hi greengenie, just a thought.. its ok you dont have to answer or quote everybody's posts/ advise in this thread as its making it unnecessarily long

[fruitfulsteve]

Thanks steve

When I bought the mill it didn't occur to me that there was an alternative to lead. Material containing steel sounded wrong and dangerous to me with sparks seeming a real possibility. Ceramic does sound good but I have lead now and the advice seems to be that there is no technical reason not to use lead. Though the dirty grey milled kno3 is certainly not as 'pretty' as the unmilled white.

LEAD (i think) should be a good all round media, but if your making BP i don't think that it's that important when it comes to a little contamination. I personally use a mixture pool balls and lead media for BP, but then my BP is 'worse than rubbish'