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Granulating Fp with water and dextrin


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Posted

Hi!

 

Usually when you granulate fp you do it with NC. why not with water and dextrin. Does anybody have some practise with that?

It would be safe pushing it through screen wet then wet from NC!

What would hapen with AL german dark when is wet, any reaction?

 

thanks!

Posted

There is a style of small salute called a rosette, which uses a flash mixture granulated with wheat paste. Some members here know more about them.

Posted

It's possible to granulate flash with water and dextrin. Due to the extremely fine nature of the aluminum I'd use something else though. Any attack on the metal will probably represent a significant portion of the actual particle. The coating on the aluminum can make wetting it a pain as well. You'd be best off adding a little water to help break the surface tension. Much like with rosette composition which was just mentioned, using a thin wheat paste would also help to give it some wet strength. Dextrin would also tame things to some degree, where as NC is energetic enough not to really have much of an effect.

 

Is there any particular reason you would like to granulate it? If you want something in between the dex/water and NC lacquer, you may want to try red gum, polyvinyl butyral, or phenolic wetted with alcohol.

Posted

The reason i would reather granulate it with water and dextrin is that there is no nc stink when drying and working with it.

I was more asking because of safety(water and al reaction?)

And on the end is cheaper.

Posted
I would use a small amount of water so i would make a ball of FP and push it through screen.
Posted

Why do you want to granulate it in the first place? I see no benefit myself with standard flash but multiple down sides.

 

Making a boom is not hard and granulating flash powder is not necessary and significantly increases the amount of handling and the time it is exposed which just further increases the danger of working with flash.

Posted

Not to make salut. For a buster, if it is in dust is too strong!

If you granulate it, it is a different story. If you add in 4" shell 6g of Fp, stars go blind, so to light them you can add lets say 3g, but you dont get enaugh good break and to weak bang( i use just 3 bp:1 huls ratio). but you can put 15g of granulated Fp and you get a nice break, good bang and stars dont go blind. If you light granulated Fp on ground not closed it's just burning until it's not in a closed place.

 

That's why i use granulated... and i dont like to work with NC, for opinion is safer to work with water wet FP.

Posted

I have to say, for the use you have in mind, it might be more worth your time to consider other ways of improving the break charge or pasting. Are you trying to save money on BP? It's unfortunate if that is the case because the first thing I would try is increasing the ratio of BP to hulls.

Posted

If you find straight 70/30 flash to energetic try slow flash, had great success with it.

Also it's cheaper to make and allot safer.

Posted

I have to say, for the use you have in mind, it might be more worth your time to consider other ways of improving the break charge or pasting. Are you trying to save money on BP? It's unfortunate if that is the case because the first thing I would try is increasing the ratio of BP to hulls.

 

I would use more bp, but for now i was limited with small ball mill and trying to build 5inch plus you need lots of it. Vaccalluzzo fireworks use similar technice and i would like to find similar but different one.. why.. thats a diffirent story :)

Posted
Zan than your way to go is to build or buy a bigger mill. A mill that can process 1 lb of bp in a run cost about 150 $ shipped and ready to go.
Posted

Try making the right amount of ingredients for your project before you start working in the product. Adding flash where none is needed is a poor substitute for BP.

Posted

It doesn't seem safe to granulate flash. For one thing the small flake aluminum is prone to reacting with water. Also mixing water into flash would surely involve stirring, not something you want to do with flash.

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