17 replies to this topic

[pyrotrev]

Another thing you could try is impregnating the charcoal with the KNO3 - dissolve the KNO3 in the least amount of boiling water (about 1/2 the weight), add the charcoal and stir to make black soup. Allow to cool and then dry, add the other ingredients and make your stars. BTW, to make long hanging willow type stars, some types of charcoal give a longer "hang" than others - Pine is famous for this.

[megabusa]

An update.

In short - They blew blind.


I did as Arthur suggested & weighed them daily & they seemed to stay the same until I transferred them to the conservatory which is quite hot during the day. Then, the 300g batch lost about 20g which surprised me.

I normally dry stars slowly to prevent them becoming driven in, but this time they did not dry like other stars I have made, maybe the high charcoal content.

Even when the weight was stable they still did not burn well & blew blind from a 2" mine.


I think they can go back into the mill & I will adjust the ratios to give a lower fuel content & take it from there.

Thanks to all for your comments.

Phil.

[Potassium chlorate]

You should dry it slowly at first. When it doesn't lose more weight by drying in room temperature, you can dry it in the sun or in a hot room with low air humidity.

Another option is to dry it in a closed cabinet with a calcium chloride dryer. I did this with BP pucks the latest time I made BP, and the drying time was reduced from 3-4 weeks to 3-4 days.