64 replies to this topic

[CCH Concepts]

heres my current chem list, what suggestions have you got.

Potassium Chloate
Potassium Perchloate
Potassium Nitrate
Ammonium Nitrate
Stronium Nitrate
Barium Nitrate


Barium carbonate
Stronium carbonate


aluminium powder
mangalinium powder
zinc powder
titanium flake

parlon

drexin
red gum
nitro lacquer

think thats everything. lol

[pyromaniac303]

Is this a list of what you currently have, or would like to put on order?

If you havent yet ordered, I wouldnt bother with the potassium chlorate at this stage, make sure you get used to safely handling perchlorate based colour comps and can work cleanly before you ever attempt to use chlorate. Also ammonium nitrate is not all that useful in pyrotechnics, and is quite incriminating as it was used by several b*mb makers.

Looks a fairly complete list, and I already know you have charcoal and sulfur. Do you have willow charcoal though? That might be another worthwhile acquisition as your BP will improve a huge amount with decent charcoal.

[CCH Concepts]

knew i would forget something. lol

yer sulphur and air float.

these are the chems i have. i brought a job lot of small amount a while ago, thats where the ammoinium nitrate came from. ive only got about 10g of it though. the chlorate was mainly brought for smoke, but i found it way to quick and i have stuff with pot nitrate.

[Arthur Brown]

I'd strongly suggest that you buy some real books!

Weingart, Lancaster, Shimizu, Tom Perigrin, and several others wrote good reliable books on the finer points of fireworks their compositions and procedures. In reality a whole year spent reading good reliable books could save you time money and risk.

As people discover each year, pyro is best learned from others and their mistakes, Trial and error is a poor method of practising pyro.

[CCH Concepts]

I'd strongly suggest that you buy some real books!

Weingart, Lancaster, Shimizu, Tom Perigrin, and several others wrote good reliable books on the finer points of fireworks their compositions and procedures. In reality a whole year spent reading good reliable books could save you time money and risk.

As people discover each year, pyro is best learned from others and their mistakes, Trial and error is a poor method of practising pyro.

hense my posts here. i wish to learn from memeber experience and mistakes. im asking for tried and tested forulations, with methods. tell me the dangers, tell me what to be carful off and im more than happy to read aswell.

[Arthur Brown]

The value of books by respected authors is that they are usually the life's work of someone at the TOP of the profession, hence that have much more info than the odd bit of hearsay.

[a_bab]

Could you for Christ sakes check a bit your spelling? It hurts my eyes to read your postings, and I'm sure other's too. A wrong letter in a formula could be the difference from something not ignitable to a disaster.

[CCH Concepts]

im dyslexic, sorry if reading hurts your eyes, ever thought of glasses.

[digger]

im dyslexic, sorry if reading hurts your eyes, ever thought of glasses.

So am I, that is why I use the spell checker and give it a quick read through or two!!

[CCH Concepts]

sorry a lot of my posts are done on my phone and i make a lot of typo's and cant check it. saying that there a lot that aren't done on my phone, so point taken.

[CCH Concepts]

any chance of getting back to the topic

Edited by CCH Concepts, 28 August 2009 - 09:48 AM.

[CCH Concepts]

made my first star.

strontium carbonate 15%
potassium perchlorate 55%
parlon 15%
magnalium 6%
red gum 9%

im still waiting for my parlon, so i used 30% strontium carbonate.

ive only tried them wet, but they burned well and was a very nice red. cant wait to see how good they are with parlon.

im still not getting much lift from my bp. im milling some over night. the previous batch had only been milled for 4 or 5 hours.

[digger]

So you have tried the Veline red then?

I am surprised it was a good red without the chlorine donor. I tried it once with PVC powder instead of Parlon and it turned out more of an orange/red.

The Veline system is a very good starting point for your colour stars. The colour mixes are good, but all of the primary colours can be bettered once you get some experience (although they are still good in their own right for a few reasons such as ease of ignition).

If you want a great red then maybe try the independence red

Strontium Nitrate 50
Magnalium, granular, -200 mesh 18
Parlon 16
Red Gum 10
Dextrin 5

[CCH Concepts]

whats acheived by using two binders, red gum and dextrin.
do you wet it with ethonal or water?

and when i read a formulie and its states everything in % and then +4 dextrin. does this mean 4%?

[digger]

Dextrin is the binder not the red gum.

Red gum is the fuel in this case. It has a low ignition temperature so helps with ensuring the formula takes fire.

Yes red gum can be used as a binder when using alcohol as the solvent. However I always use water based systems as you don't end up with flammable vapours floating around when drying your stars.

When using Dextrin I use 90% water 10% alcohol when starting to roll the stars, as soon as they are 3mm or so I switch 100% water. The alcohol initially acts as a wetting agent and reduces surface tension so the stars don't stick together, however it does reduce the binding power of Dextrin.

The +4 means add a further 4% Dextrin so the full formula adds up to 104%. Basically the formula is the 100% and the Dextrin is just there as an additional binder.