Willow Alternatives [Beware 56K]

[BPinthemorning]

ok, my balsa charcoal is so light, i can put a huge lump on my scale and it dosnt even register. (my scale is 600g max, .01 acuracy) should i compress it to get a reading then break it back up for the actual milling? any ideas?

[Tweetybird88]

what do you mean by compress? I just use a big bowl because it is some of the lightest stuff I've used.

[psyco_1322]

Does anyone use there bp for lifting without corning it? I recently made some real fast bp from newspaper charcoal and its by far the fastest ive every made. But its still weak without corning, and can barely lob a shell. Soon as a get the money im gonna try balsa just to see how good it is.

[pudidotdk]

Without corning? How about granulating?

Meal won't work well as lift.

[psyco_1322]

Well yes with granulating it after corning. Ya meals not going to lift much. But after corning its usually broken up into smaller pieces if it had dextrin in it when it was pressed.

 

Oh and nice 3" tut on pyroguide pudi!

[mormanman]

Is there a special comp for newspaper?

I tried it using the comp. someone told me was correct and conformed on the green man.

The ratio I used was

Kno3 75

C 15

S 10

 

But here is where I don't understand I granulated it and my granulated pine goes faster. The ratio I used for my pine was (I haven't tried the one above yet for pine b/c I thought this one was right)

Kno3 75

C 10

S 15

[psyco_1322]

Never tryed pine before. The meal was exceptionally fast this time compared to other batches I made. Pine might burn faster with that ratio. Ive used a lift specific ratio and the one someone posted for their nozzleless balsa bp rockets. Dont remember who it was, sorry. Its around here somewhere.

[tentacles]

psyco: granulating after corning? they're sort of the same thing, corning is the term we use to describe the process of smashing a puck of pressed BP into bits.. by granulating we generally mean making pulverone, wetting the meal and pressing it through a screen.

 

also, you don't use dextrin when you press powder into pucks, when i tried pressing some BP i had made up for prime (with 4% dex), it would not compress enough and was spongy - it would compress down, and then expand back out some.. I ended up smashing up the puck some and using it for shell filler

[mormanman]

Never tryed pine before. The meal was exceptionally fast this time compared to other batches I made. Pine might burn faster with that ratio. Ive used a lift specific ratio and the one someone posted for their nozzleless balsa bp rockets. Dont remember who it was, sorry. Its around here somewhere.

Some do you happen to have that ratio?

[prodigal_sun]

Just thought I would mention for those living in the southeast that florida maple makes a great charcoal. I just finished testing some pressed and corned bp I made from it. I used a 60 gram dummy can with 6 grams of lift and got a 7.56 second flight time.

[psyco_1322]

Never tryed pine before.  The meal was exceptionally fast this time compared to other batches I made.  Pine might burn faster with that ratio.  Ive used a lift specific ratio and the one someone posted for their nozzleless balsa bp rockets.  Dont remember who it was, sorry.  Its around here somewhere.

Some do you happen to have that ratio?

Ok that was a bit confusing but I take it you want the lift specific ratio.

Here it is. This is the PGI's Lift-specific powder ratios.

KNO3 - 74

Charcoal - 14

Sulfur - 12

[mormanman]

Yeah I guess. I don't know but don't worry I just wanted a ratio for newspaper and I'll try it.

[crazyboy25]

do you know if camphor is any good i got alot and it definatly has some oil due to its strong but pleasant scent i was just wondering if it is better than hardwood airfloat from firefox. we have two plum trees but they are my dads prized trees maybe when he prunes them.

[psyco_1322]

The newspaper ration is the same one thats should be in the bp thread as listed by someone as their formula for their nozzleless bp rockets. Look it up cause im no doing it for you.

[mormanman]

Ok Ok. I was just wondering if you used a different ratio. But It makes some fast quick match.

 

Um. Will a Pear tree make good charcoal?

[Mumbles]

In general, fruit trees are said to make fairly decent BP. The only way to find out is to try though.

 

Tell us how the plum tree charcoal turns out if you can manage to gather some cuttings. I've only heard one other amateur account of it, and he said it was rather poor.

 

As far as using camphor in place of the charcoal, you can try it, but don't get your hopes up.

[andyboy]

I've only heard one other amateur account of it, and he said it was rather poor.

Mumbles, is your memory failing you

 

I used to make plum charcoal BP and it outperformed any other charcoal I've ever tried. Although I'm going to cook up a batch of willow to mix with my slightly old batch of plum to get a lot more charcoal. I think I should get more consistent burnrates making one large batch and making loads of BP (in smaller batches due to the capacity of my ball-mill) wich I will mix together before corning it.

 

The main thing I'm striving for now is consistency, I got feed up with having one fast batch of BP (meaning one fast batch of blackmatch, lift, rockets CATO-ing, you name it) and then getting a slow batch of BP meaning I would have to restest everything before I could use it. It will be even more important when I start making my own visco, if I ever get around to building the machine.

 

CONSISTENCY will be my guide from now on, I want repetable results and not some half-assed guesswork. Enough ranting from me, plum is a really worth-while charcoal, and as always don't overcook it.

[Mumbles]

Oh, so you just assume everything is about you huh?

 

 

I could have sworn you said that it was good, but not the fastest charcoal to ever grace the earth. I have read through all 1066 posts of yours on the old board, by way of the search button, and you indeed are correct. You did get great results from it. And yes, many a malted barley beverage has been poured down my gullet as of late.

 

Also I found this. I just had to share because I thought it was hilarious

 

And so it came to pass.

 

Andyboy the Bloated went up the mountain and came down again, carrying many, many sticks of plum-tree. He gazed upon the gathered crowd with a wicked little lear and said: a retort, my kingdom for a retort!!!

[mormanman]

Hey. Does anyone know about pecan? I've got some and turning it in to charcoal as we speak and I don't want to get my hopes up.

[hst45]

My experiance has been that charcoal from faster-growing trees, eg. balsa, poplar ,willow, white pine, seem to make FASTER BP than slower growing trees, all other things being equal. This flies in the face of a couple of centuries of reports that grapevine charcoal, an obvious slow-growing wood, is the gold-standard in charcoal. Who the fuck knows.

 

If you make your charcoal properly and don't either under-cook it or turn it to ash, I beleive that damned near anything that grows can be made into good fuel for BP. Your report on peacn will be added to the datebase, and the debate of the centuries continues........

[mormanman]

Ok. Well I have another question. Can you over cook charcoal? Mine whenever I took it out of the cooker there were coals and I could see them begin to engulf the charcoal so I put some water on it. Will this effect the charcoal performance? I'm drying it and thats why I ask.

[frogy]

When cooking charcoal... Ash is considered over cooking...

 

When you cook charcoal with a retort then open it right afterwards there will be embers...

 

You want to cover the can completely so no air can get in for a few hours or so until the embers die off... With hardwoods waiting time is longer...

[mormanman]

Oh. Ok. So water won't effect the performance of the BP.

[asilentbob]

Your going to want to dry your charcoal before storing it and then measuring it out for BP and things though so as to be more accurate... ie instead of having 100g charcoal where 5g of it is really water... you will have 100g of charcoal where some crazy small amount of it is water... like <1mg.

[mormanman]

Huh. All of its wet. I don't know how to be more specific. I'm just wondering what it will do to the BP.