13 replies to this topic

[fruitfulsteve]

I'm making a little batch of BP and for some reason started to ponder whether soaking the charcoal in solution of hot KNO3 or even dilute nitric acid would make the final product any better/faster.

I'm sure someone somewhere would have tried this.

[pyrotechnist]

thats just the same as the CIA method, accept for the nitric acid option but the first of soaking a hot KNO3 solution into charcoal is just CIA precipitation method.

[Vic]

The only time I use a hot solution is when I'm making blackmatch to get KN03 well soaked into the string, I have never been that successful with the CIA method for BP.
But there are some that swear by it and for charcoal streamers.

[pyrotechnist]

I always find I need to over fuel the mix when making BP with CIA method due to fine charcoal leaking out with the alcohol when filtering.

[Potassium chlorate]

I made CIA BP once. A 2" dummy went about 5 meters with it. A 2" shell with 10% of the shell weight in ballmilled, compressed and corned BP goes about 50 meters or more. As long as you have a ball mill the choice is very simple in my humble opinion.

[rocketpro]

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Edited by rocketpro, 06 August 2010 - 10:06 AM.

[phildunford]

Guess for some people CIA is the only way, but seems very wasteful of alcohol... Ball mills rule!

But yes, charcoal is the key to fast BP, you can use pretty much any old rubbish for KNO3 & S (within reason) but charcoal has to be right...

[pyrotrev]

Impregnating the charcoal with KNO3 can have benefits in some pulverone making procedures. I tend to follow the procedure Shimizu gives where you mix the rough KNO3 and charcoal, add enough boiling water to make thick black soup and keep just below boiling for an hour or so. Then dry this out and ball mill with sulphur in the normal way. Depending on what binder you use it might add 10...15% to the power for equivalent milling time.

[Potassium chlorate]

I finish my milling off with 15-20 minutes of wet milling with 5% of the BP weight in alcohol/water 25/75. No binder is required.

But maybe the best method of all would be to wet mill from the start.

[pyrotechnist]

CIA works for me perfectly fine like I said above I just need to over fuel the mix due to large losses of charcoal. As long as you use the correct charcoal, I now have my two favourites, and follow the procedure correctly you can make pretty darn powerful BP. I personally dont have a ball mill and if I did would be a bit wary of using it for grinding a live composition. Balsa BP doesn't need ball milling to make it fast as just mixing coarse material together produces lightening fast BP that beets ball milled straight off the bat.

If using CIA try a formula like so:

70
20
10

so you get less of a fuel loss or just add 3 or more grams of charcoal to the original mix. Both the charcoal and sulphur need to be very fine and well incorporated beforehand.

[MDH]

I wouldn't recommend balsa for lifting shells. Or even bursting them. Last new years I used all balsa - what a waste of stars. About 60% of my effects blew blind which was a massive failure. Fast powders are not always the best - when it comes to anything besides salutes, stick to scotch pine.

Edited by MDH, 12 June 2010 - 08:17 PM.

[Potassium chlorate]

Like I said in another thread: I use BBQ charcoal that is a mix of birch, alder and willow. Extremely cheap and works excellent.

Though making charcoal is a very old Swedish tradition, so maybe it's superior to foreign charcoal, I have no idea.

[shellbreak]

why bother with cia, ballmills and exotic charcoals...if you're making any shell over 4 inch diameter just screen the fine ingredients together wet with water and granulate it to 4-10 mesh work just fine for lift and burst.. you just need a bit more of it .bp ingredients are pretty cheap anyway why waste time with complicated time consuming processing.?

[pyrotechnist]

I do see some point to what your saying ShellBreak as I have stipulated similar in the past about why people consider competing with black powder in speed. My worst black powder to date lifted a nice 2" shell pretty darn high with a small overload of powder and enough compression. Dam I even accidental made a brocade mix that burnt faster than the above said black powder it was that crap though this brocade does burn seriously fast! so much so they kinda of move themselves.