Phenolic Resin

[braddsn]

Hey fellas, just wanted to share my experience with phenolic resin so that maybe it will benefit others. I ordered some phenolic resin from Widmann over at ctpyro. It arrived quickly and exactly as advertised. I threw it in the blender and ground it down to powder. It grinds very easily, probably 30 seconds in the blender. Then I ball milled it for 15 minutes, and it was airfloat. Very simple, quick, and smells good to boot!! It is a 1:1 perfect replacement for red gum, at HALF the price delivered. Personally, I go through a lot of chems and I try to save money when I can. I usually order 30 lbs of red gum at a time, so a savings of 50% is substantial. I noticed 2 things when testing the stars that I made with the phenolic. 1) The stars were easier to light, and 2) They seemed to burn brighter. So to summarize, it is far superior to red gum, and half the price delivered to your door. For those of you who use a lot of chems, I would highly recommend switching over. I am never looking back! Also note: I am still binding with dextrin, not the phenolic.

[PIL]

Phenolic resin isn't as sticky an as dextrin when wet,which makes it an excellent binder in star rolling .In small batches (100g), the stars can still be rolled smoothly and perfectly using spray and sprinkle method, while dextrin stars clump and raspberry quite often.The phenolic star rolling process is much quicker and easier to handle.

It has to be mentioned that the prime layer should be dextrin bound because the resin sharply decreases the spark sensitivity of BP. Priming the phenolic stars with the Toro method is recommended to avoid flaking off.

Edited September 29, 2016 by PIL

[Merlin]

Thanks for posting this. I have a huge bag of phenolic resin and for two years wondered what it is used for! To bad I just ordered more red gum.

Mine is in crystalline form but I can fix that. Being large crystals and being a resin I thought it would be a sticky mess to grind down. If one were to bind with it would the solvent be acetone or alcohol?

[Carbon796]

Alcohol is generally used.

[JOPETES]

uffff, the phenolic resin is a matter which I have devoted much effort and testing to uncover the secrets of the Chinese in their formulas because of the ease with which light their colorful stars at high speeds using a single layer of primer. I searched here in Spain and could only get one type of phenolic resin of novolac type, this resin was soluble in water and also in alcohol which eleminaba dextrin in the formulas, replaced it by the acroides resin and could see that indeed the stars light up much better, ie have a flash point lower than with resin acroides. The phenolic resin decomposes at a lower temperature than acroides the resin, but had a problem with it and it was that stars burn faster than normal but retained the color and brightness as with acroides resin and finally abandoned the research because I could not find the suitable phenolic resin for fireworks and finally all formulas are designed pDF acroides resin, in my opinion one of the best commercial resins.

an observation that I have seen is that the priming layer using Chinese safely contains phenolic resin possibly total or partial replacement of sulfur. if any of you have the occasion to scratch with a cutter priming layer a star of Chinese color, you can see that smelled strongly of phenolic resin.

In short, there are many types of phenolic resins in the commercial market, but not all apply for pyrotechnics, it's just a matter of finding the right. The Chinese are not stupid, they know very well what they do, I know many formulas of Chinese colors with phenolic resin replacing the acroides resin and mean in this post if anyone in this forum has managed to successfully replace the phenolic resin by acroides resin is in luck.

Joseph

[MadMat]

Thanks for the info! I have been trying to keep my chemical inventory to a minimum for simplicity, so I have overlooked phenolic resin. time for me to rethink that. I especially like the idea of easier to light stars.

[Merlin]

I would suggest ordering from the same supplier Braddsn. See first post. There is more than one specie of "phenolic resin".

[Maserface]

Very true, not all phenolic resins are the same! I tested two different materials a while back, both "phenolic resin". The results I got were surprising!

 

The composition in the video is identical, except for the type of resin.

 

 

"jims resin" refers to the phenolic resin that Jim Widdmann sells at ctpyro.com

[mabuse00]

@JOPETES:

Did you by chance test the nitroparis stuff?

[JOPETES]

@JOPETES:

Did you by chance test the nitroparis stuff?

yes, I have tried some of their products and are of very good quality, they are suppliers of many factories fireworks in Spain. when I began my research on the phenolic resin did not exist 10 years ago that I know any phenolic resin supplier in Spain and to my knowledge no fireworks factory phenolic resin used, has always been a great unknown here. Now for some time now Nitroparis sells phenolic resin and surely is because some fireworks factories are used instead of the acroides resin. Unfortunately I abandoned this pyro hobby 8 years ago.

 

José

[CrossOut]

do you guys add anything to your phenolic resin / alc solution? The reason i ask is when i roll my stars in my large roller, all of the solvent flashes off too quickly so when adding comp it seems to make the stars grow unevenly. additionally the solution will make comp cake the walls of my roller making it a waste of alcohol and a pain in the ass to clean.

[OldMarine]

Phenolic resin cross linked by hexamine and heat treated makes for comets that can be used the same day. There are several current threads on FW on the subject.

I'm just starting comets but that's the direction I'm heading for larger comets.

Edited September 30, 2016 by OldMarine

[pyrokid]

do you guys add anything to your phenolic resin / alc solution? The reason i ask is when i roll my stars in my large roller, all of the solvent flashes off too quickly so when adding comp it seems to make the stars grow unevenly. additionally the solution will make comp cake the walls of my roller making it a waste of alcohol and a pain in the ass to clean.

I was under the impression that straight alcohol was used as the solvent and phenolic resin is present only in the star composition, in a manner analogous to the water-dextrin binding system.

[CrossOut]

that way would work as well however you would end up using much more phenolic resin than is necessary. Instead i just mix a phenolic resin / alcohol solution and spray it onto my stars as i coat however i have the fore mentioned issues. i may look into changing my method and try that out once for the sake of saving my rollers.. i suppose the resin is a lot cheaper than the alcohol. however at the time i think i my preferred method is toro with SRGS.

 

i heard about the hexamine mix as well as a hexamine / PVB mix which people boast great results.. unfortunately neither methods really solve issue of the solvent flashing away while rolling. i guess im jsut trying to see what experiences other people have when rolling with phenolic resin as a binder.

[dagabu]

Flashing will increase in hot conditions but will slow down when it gets cooler but then condensation becomes an issue as you approach the dew point. That said, spraying the resin from a spray bottle may not be the way to go as a water based binder may give you better overall results depending on your relative humidity etc.

 

For comets and many other pumped comps, the resin/hex combo is an amazing option.

[pyrojig]

I believe that I have both phenolic resins . I have yet to do a side by side comparison. I was told that some of this may be not pyrofriendly resin ., One user claimed it was a fire retardant for that matter . the other performed quite well for stars ( Widdmanns stuff) Not sure if the stuff from Cracker was any good.

[Maserface]

Yea, the video I linked above is side by side testing of crackers resin vs Jims

[pyrojig]

I was afraid of that ......dang it... . I have 10-15 # of that stuff( non pyro) and it seems like there has to be a use for it .....I hope. Guess I could cast resin with it if all else fails.

Im bummed, i only have a couple #s left of the good stuff.

[Maserface]

I've thought maybe it could be used to cast nose cones or something, but yea it sucks

[pyrojig]

ever hear of folks using Urea/formald powder glues to bind anything pyro? I have heard of the resorcinal resin being a very good one.

[BlueComet24]

1) The stars were easier to light, and 2) They seemed to burn brighter.

 

Were the stars brighter as in more vividly colored, more illuminating, or both? I'm wondering if phenolic resin would wash out something like pihko kp #2.

[NeighborJ]

Jig, isn't urea/formaldihide what they use to make hexamine? If so, I believe it can be used as a hardening agent. I believe several people here use this method along with heat to cure their stars.

[Mumbles]

Not exactly. Hexamine is formed from ammonia and formaldehyde. Heating urea and formaldehyde together makes something different, though the actual reaction is similar. In esscence it sort of cross-links itself. Trying to use it in place of hexamine probably wouldn't work. Hexamine decomposes into formaldehyde and ammonia, which is what actually cross links phenolic resin. Heating up Urea/formaldehyde resin would not decompose it back into it's parent constituents. If you just heated urea and formaldehyde on it's own with phenolic it probably would work, but not after they're pre-polymerized.

[pyrojig]

In a couple formulations I found resorcinal used to make a solid composite fuel for hummers and other spinning devices. I was more so interested in seeing if the urea/Formald glue would work as a binder in a similar manner . ( with out acting as a fire-retardant ) or interfering in the burn rate too much.

[braddsn]

Bluecomet, let me try to explain what I meant: with the phenolic.. the light output seems to be increased, and the colors seem richer (more vivid). Does that make sense? I have yet to send a shell up with any stars containing the phenolic, right now I am rolling about 30kg of cores. But once I finish my cores, I will start on my 3 inch shells and the testing will begin. My hopes are that I can break the shells even harder than before. I decided to continue to bind with dextrin because it is simple, cheap, and works great.