Whistle mix solvent

[DJPork]

Hey again peopleses. Sorry for the recent bombardment of questions, but I've spent the last 15 mins unsuccesfully looking for the answer to my question, so I figured it would be easier to ask here. Sorry.

 

My question is: can any other solvent (I have acetone and isopropyl alcohol... Are they suitable?) I can use to melt petroleum jelly for whistle rockets other than toulone (spelling?).

 

Thanks .

[Pretty green flame]

Lacquer thinner (Naphta + Xylene) is another good choice. Acetone and IPA don't disolve vaseline as far as I know.

[DJPork]

Or, alternitavely, is it possible to make the propellant without a solvent? Simply by mixing it very well?

[Pretty green flame]

Or, alternitavely, is it possible to make the propellant without a solvent? Simply by mixing it very well?

It is possible yes. To be honest i don't know exactly why the caseline is in the in the first place, my best guess would be that it makes loading the rocket cleaner and the fuel easier to compact.

[DJPork]

Really? So it's possible to just use whistle mix (same formula as burst charge) as rocket fuel?

[NightHawkInLight]

Really? So it's possible to just use whistle mix (same formula as burst charge) as rocket fuel?

Why do you think it's called whistle mix?

It's the fuel used in whistle rockets.

[DJPork]

Why do you think it's called whistle mix?

 

...Because I'm an idiot?

 

That's basically it... Pyroguide having 2 pages for whistle mix (this, and this) threw me off a little... Thought I needed the Fe2O3 and petroleum jelly for it to be used in rockets, otherwise it would be too fast and just cato on me. Just thought wistle burst charge was just another burst charge between FP and H3 that was called so because of its similarities to whistle mix as used in rockets.

 

*Kicks self in face for second time today*.

 

but nah, that's cool... I have some whistle mix sitting in my room. Time to make some whistlers. Then revision for physics exam... .

[Mumbles]

Well, the iron oxide (or any other transition metal really) are there to speed up the burn rate. It also has some influence on the pitch and tone of the whistle sound. The vaseline is said to be in there for a few reasons. One is for better compaction, another is for a slight water resistance of the finished grain. Some say it is in there as plegamatizer (spelling is off I know). This gives the grains a bit of a liquid property to help them resist shock.

[DJPork]

Hahah... That was quite a spectacular CATO. Thankfully I was at the other end of a field.

 

It was only 3/4" by 3 1/2" packed with sodium benzoate/KClO4... but god... That was LOUD. I'm thinking I won't try that again any time soon. All I'm using is a... Can't remember what they're called at this time of night, some type of man-powered clamp thingy instead of a hydraulic press. It's obviously not pressing it enough. Reckon vaseline would help or should I just forget a but untill/if I get a press? Also, can I just mix in the vaseline without toloune (spelling?)?

 

On a completely unrelated note, I'm totally out of KNO3 . Man... I went through that 3kg bag fast.

[crazyboy25]

im actually making a tutorial for whistle mix and whistle rockets (should be up soon) anyway i use lacquer thinner its cheap and avalable although i have heard of naptha and toluene being used

 

 

and no i doubt you can just mix in the vaseline.

[Gottagotomoz]

I use lacquer thinner as it is available at almost all hardware/paint stores. Anyways, I have tried using KCLO4 + Sodium Benz. powdered and screened in a stationary whistle that was pressed with a one ton arbor press, and the most I could get it to do was hiss violently. I tried the method on pyroguide.com but I talked to Al beforehand and he gave me some ratios.

 

I used (for a 50 gram batch)

35g KCLO4

15g Sodium Benzoate

+1% Fe2O3

1.5g Petroleum Jelly (melted in a beaker)

15mL of Lacquer thinner.

 

Getting the KCLO4 and Sodium Benzoate as fine possible will really increase the performance. Also, be sure to mix the KCLO4, Benz, and Iron Oxide very thoroughly before hand. I used a zip-loc bag to mix them. When you've added the mix to the solvent, and spread it out to dry make sure that it is indeed dry. The grains shouldn't really smell like lacquer thinner anymore, as it all should have evaporated. You don't want to be pressing wet mix and have your rocket CATO.

 

Anyways, I have found that this method really increases the performance of the mix.

[hst45]

Hahah...  That was quite a spectacular CATO.

That was pretty much my experience with my first attempt at whistle rockets too. Made up a batch of benz/perc with 1% Fe2O3, mixed in acetone, then melted vaseline, kneeded it well, pressed it through a 20 mesh screen, let it dry for a couple of days, pressed it into a 1/2" tube using a hand clamp and my homemade brass tooling, lit the fuse, and created a wonderful shower of cardboard confetti all over the snow for a 20 foot radius. I think I'll stick with whistle as a break in my round shells, and leave whistle rockets to cplmac and the others who's rockets skills are above my pay grade.

[asilentbob]

Laquer thinner is meant to NOT evaporate quickly, making it a POOR choice for a solvent. It may take months for your whistle to fully dry. Also it will be off formula if you shoot a rocket with propellant that isn't fully dry, it will be like adding some percent of fuel from the solvent. If your using petroleum jelly too, then it will likely make the laquer thinner take even longer to dry. It forms azeotropes with the other solvents, and it itself forms an azotrope since its more than one chemical solvent. So instead of having like 3%-5% petroleum jelly, its like having 8% or so when its not dry.

 

I much better choice of solvent would be acetone and a good choice of binder for use with acetone would be parafin wax. Not only does it evaporate very fast so that you can have a dry batch of whistle in mere hours instead of days, weeks, or months, but it "de-clumps" potassium perchlorate and sodium benzoate very well. Fire hazard is greater, but this isn't a problem if you know what you are doing.

 

Dan McMurry has a tutorial on passfire on this. I watched him make a batch at the PGI convention. It works very well. Very fast method.

[Gottagotomoz]

Laquer thinner is meant to NOT evaporate quickly, making it a POOR choice for a solvent. It may take months for your whistle to fully dry. Also it will be off formula if you shoot a rocket with propellant that isn't fully dry, it will be like adding some percent of fuel from the solvent. If your using petroleum jelly too, then it will likely make the laquer thinner take even longer to dry. It forms azeotropes with the other solvents, and it itself forms an azotrope since its more than one chemical solvent. So instead of having like 3%-5% petroleum jelly, its like having 8% or so when its not dry.

Hmm, Interesting. When I used lacquer thinner and petroleum jelly, it was dry (to touch anyway) the very next day. Because touch isn't a great way of seeing how dry something is, I pressed a whistle with the mix and the improvements made were huge. With what you have told me I will probably use acetone from now on, but I just thought i'd let you know that lacquer thinner does indeed work for this purpose anyway.

[Mumbles]

I don't know if I'd go as far as using acetone. In my opinion it evaporates WAAAAY too fast for our applications. I'd be dry before you could push it through the screen. I made the mistake of trying to bind shellac stars with acetone once, not easy or fun to do. Perhaps MEK or MIpK could work, if they can be found. Dan actually uses "Naphtha", which is often found as mineral spirits or VM&P Naphtha. The normal solvent of choice is white gas, which contains a high portion of Hexanes I do believe. These will evaporate slower than naphtha. Any of the solvents will be dry in less than a day or so if placed outdoors in a nice breeze though on a warm day or in a drying box.

[Gottagotomoz]

Cool, I actually have some naphtha laying around. I'll have to check that out. Are you using a solvent with the petroleum jelly, or without it? And, my whistle mix didn't come out as a thin paste, more like chunks of whistle mix. It's probably because I didn't use that much solvent, but even still it worked for my purposes, and I actually found it quite convenient that my whistle mix was just large chunks, as apposed to small grains, similar to pulverone.

[asilentbob]

He used acetone. I was there talking to him about it. FrankRizzo was there watching him make that batch too if i remember correctly. His old method, as was on passfire before the '07 PGI, used naphtha and petroleum jelly yes... but his improved method that he said he was going to put on passfire used acetone and parafin wax. The staring materials were pre-ball milled and screened or course. But i can't recall him screening the final product. The water on in a stock pot was brought to boiling from propane, then the fire was cut out and the bowl was pot on it and stabilized with his wire clamps, then stirred every couple minutes as the acetone boiled away to the point that it would be fine to leave it drying away by itself with out stirring it to prevent larger than normal crystals and crust forming at the surface of the acetone against the bowl. He crushed the mix with the back of the mixing spoon when it was pretty close to dry too, so it was mostly fine enough for use as is IIRC. I would imagine that he would have put up his improved version on passfire by now.

 

Passfire... Thats what i need for xmas...

[Mumbles]

Still uses Naphtha on passfire. I am looking at it as I type. I had always heard that acetone gives hard granules once it dries as it's slightly polar nature dissolve one of the products, the benzoate/salicyliate presumably.

 

I think I was thinking of another proceedure when talking about the end screening. I don't see anything about it either, but a coarse screen, would certainly help break up any lumps toward the end.

[asilentbob]

Hmm. I don't know. He let me press a few with his press, and i can't remember what the mix felt like, so no tellin.

[psyco_1322]

Dan gave me a passfire print out of the method he was using for his whistle, but I forgot it there. I do remember that he let it set around in the acetone/wax mix for awhile-overnight I think, but not sure. He about had it all flash off in that SS bowl he was drying it in.

 

I made a batch using acetone and vaseline, had to kinda work in the vaseline and let it set for a bit, then let it evap and them worked it around some more. I think ill get some camping fuel to desolve vaseline adn wax into.

 

What about mineral oil? I think thats what Bill and Randy where using to make there whistle, I bought some to use in place of the wax/vaseline in Thames bp rocket fuel but it didnt have the same characteristics as waxed fuel did. It seemed to crumble more easy.

 

So has anyone used minerial oil?

[psyco_1322]

OK how about a mixed catalyst for whistle. 50:50 Fe2O3:CuO? Burn better, worse, whistle on crack?

[FrankRizzo]

He used acetone. I was there talking to him about it. FrankRizzo was there watching him make that batch too if i remember correctly. His old method, as was on passfire before the '07 PGI, used naphtha and petroleum jelly yes... but his improved method that he said he was going to put on passfire used acetone and parafin wax. The staring materials were pre-ball milled and screened or course. But i can't recall him screening the final product. The water on in a stock pot was brought to boiling from propane, then the fire was cut out and the bowl was pot on it and stabilized with his wire clamps, then stirred every couple minutes as the acetone boiled away to the point that it would be fine to leave it drying away by itself with out stirring it to prevent larger than normal crystals and crust forming at the surface of the acetone against the bowl. He crushed the mix with the back of the mixing spoon when it was pretty close to dry too, so it was mostly fine enough for use as is IIRC. I would imagine that he would have put up his improved version on passfire by now.

 

Passfire... Thats what i need for xmas...

Yep, I was there with ya, and he's most definitely using acetone now. His line-of-though was the azeotrope situation you described, and how that might be affecting the whistle comp more-so than the quality of the perchlorate used. The salicylate also fully dissolves in the acetone, so you get a more homogeneous mix.

 

I saw a few of the rockets he made with that fuel, and they worked great.

[psyco_1322]

Ya but you come out with hard lumps of whistle after the acetone evaps out. His Passfire tut for it kinda edges toward not using acetone because of that. I been going over it a few times lately. But yah I do remember him using acetone at the convention.

 

Wow! That was a bunch of restated, usless info.

[cplmac]

Green Flame in my experience you are right, the vaseline does not really dissolve in acetone. It might if you let it sit long enough, but I just melt the vaseline and pour it into the comp. I'm a big fan of acetone as the "solvent", I can press a rocket in less than two hours with complete confidence that it is dry. And if I happen to add to much acetone (happens all the time) I can just take the bag outside and open it up for a couple minutes and it dries up nicely. I don't believe that perchlorate or benze/sali dissolve in acetone either. To be honest, I'm not a hundred percent sure why the acetone is needed. I do know that I have had a lot of success with it so I'm not fixing it. As for the whistle "lumping up" when the acetone dries, get the comp the consistancy of play-doh and then rice it. If it starts to get lumpy or to dry, just add more acetone and knead it in by hand for a minute or so. The stuff is VERY forgiving and easy to work with. Just make sure you are outside or have a respirator or excellent ventillation. Acetone headaches SUCK and are very easy to get. My buddy uses wax instead of vaseline and his whistles are excellent and he swears by it, so if you wanted to go the wax route I would definitely vouch for it.

 

On the CATO from earlier in the thread, you should be able to press a .75" whistle without to much trouble. The core should be 3/8"x1" or so. If the mix was wet it's unlikely that it would CATO, just burn longer possibly with no whistle sound at all and low power. It would be like using diesel in a gas engine. If somehow you didn't press it hard enough, by a lot, that could cause a CATO. I press most of my whistle rockets at a loading pressure of 3500 or so, just over a third of the "standard" loading pressure for whistle, and mine generally work well.

[DJPork]

I used a clamp to press my whistle rockets..

 

I tried another whistle rocket and this time I had the opposite problem, it didn't even take off, just kinda burned with more of a hissing sound than anything else.

 

Aw well.. Kinda lost interest in whistle rockets - when you're paying £7.50 for 200gs of KClO4, it's just way too expensive to use on anything other than burst charge.