Question on smoke bombs?

[Fuzzpluskc]

Ok so I'm kinda new to this whole pyro thing. (Been making smoke bombs for a decade or so, some sparklers along the way, flash for some-well we won't get into that.) For the record I'm 40 and the safety supervisor/enviromental director at a hospital. Yes, research and try to take any applicable precautions.

 

Recently I had a neighbor ask if I could mix a smoke bomb (std. KNO3 and sugar mix) with something that would make it sparkle as it burns.

 

Would adding something like (120-325 mesh 20 micron) to the mix add any effect? Or would this be akin to trying to make a really bad flash comp at high temp. The end goal I'm trying to achieve is a lot of smoke with a unique/beautiful flame.

 

I'm a huge fan of all of my body parts and would like to keep them in tact. Plus my wife has promised to kick me square in the jewels if I blow up the shed.

 

Any ideas or advise would be greatly appreciated.

[OldMarine]

I tried adding titanium to the mix but the comp's so slaggy and ashy that none of the metal came out of the tube and it made it burn rather than smoke.

[Baldor]

Maybe the solution is adding smoke to a gerb instead of adding sparks to a smoke bomb? Or just the ingenuous solution.... Attach a gerb to the bomb and fire both together. :-)

[Arthur]

The problem is that "smoke" is basically from incomplete combustion or from sublimation of a dye. SO anything that makes lots of heat -like burning metal grains- will help to completely combust the smoke.

 

A conical fountain can be made with metal particles for sparks and will have some smoke but nothing like a "smoke pellet" With most smokes the shape of the flame space is critical to good smoke production -if the space is too open then the flame takes in too much atmospheric oxygen and burns too cleanly.

[Baldor]

Why not a concentric construction? Build a gerb. Surround it with newspaper impregnated with KNO3 and sugar, or your preferred smoking mixture, and finish like any other smoke bomb.

[Mumbles]

By virtue of design, smoke bombs don't burn very fast or very vigorously. This makes it hard for them to eject sparks. If something was going to work, it'd be titanium. Other metals would probably be consumed by the mixture. Also working against you is the fact that sparks will be obscured by the dense smoke most likely.

 

There are some smoke mixtures based on KNO3, C, and S as well. They do tend to be pretty sulfur heavy, and the smoke is quite irritating however. Something like this might be a bit more likely to throw sparks with metals or a coarse charcoal additive.

[OldMarine]

If you want something impressive with smoke just put some strobe pots just behind it or in front of it with a shield to reflect it back on the smoke. I do a hundred foot line of that at our Independence Day shindig every year as a warmer upper.

[Fuzzpluskc]

Thanks for all the ideas. Gives me some thoughts to try this upcoming weekend.

 

I really like Old Marine's idea of the strobe pots.

 

Appreciate it.

Thanks for all the ideas. Gives me some thoughts to try this upcoming weekend.

 

I really like Old Marine's idea of the strobe pots.

 

Appreciate it.

[PyrofireM100]

I think you can add magnesium powder to make smoke bomb bright, but it burn faster with magnesium

[OldMarine]

Mag burns too hot and will kill the effect. Smoke is reliant on being over fueled but requires a lower temp to provide incomplete combustion. Magnesium in a mix with KNO3 or AP gets the mix too hot for good smoke production but Mg alone with just a bit of thermite to ignite it does produce good smoke if you could see it without being completely blinded!

[Arthur]

HOT smokes tend to be white and tend to be a metal burning in a high chlorine environment making lots of ultra fine metal chloride particles -called smoke!

 

Cool smokes are made by heat subliming a suitable dye. Most dyes burn if overheated so the "heating" is gentle and usually by a non stoichemetric chlorate and sugar mix with possible coolers and gas makers such as significant carbonates or bicarbonates (among several possibilities)

 

Trying to make a cool, coloured smoke with a metal fuel will be hard (to impossible) -The burning metal will overheat the dye reducing -possibly to zero- any colour effect.

[OldMarine]

Arthur said what I was trying to say!