The best flash powder

[lacrima97]

Well Mumbles, I took some of the purple flash and filled the ends of some rockets up with them, and still no color. More of a red than anything. Oh well, where it lacks color, it makes up in bang.

[Grizzly]

well the only flash powder i made is KNO3/MgAl/S in ratios of 50/30/20 and 40/30/30 in both ratios they seem the same also 50/20/30 works but i found that more MgAl works better and makes a strong POOF when lit unconfined, this stuff is obviously more better then a KNO3/Al/S mix but i dunno if better then KNO3/Mg. although this flash powder burns faster then KNO3/Al/S it still needs good confinement. S is required in this mix but the KNO3/MgAl works without it but burns slow in all the ratios i tested.

[hst45]

Grizzly. I don't know where to start.

 

First of all. I hate to bitch, but I'm having a bad day and I need to vent.

 

1) PLEASE learn some of the conventions of the English language: i.e. Capitalize letters at the start of a sentance, Capitalize the word "I" when you're speaking in the first person, avoid run-on sentences, and USE PARAGRAPH BREAKS (I sound like NBK). I'm not an English major, but it just makes the posts a bitch to read if you have to decipher the post to get the meaning.

 

2) You're obviously new to flash, and therefor your asking questions. That's fine; that's what the Forum is here for. But please do some basic resaerch first. Example, if you're new to a particular family of compounds, work with the safest first, and only in small quantaties. You're mixing a chlorate with Sulfur, and ANY cursury study of the literature will tell you that this has the potential to turn ugly.

 

Why don't you try a safe (relatively) mix of KCl04 and Al in about a 2-to-1 mixture? Mix just one gram off this and see is you like the effect. You can damned-near eye ball this if you don't have a scace. Mix one volume of perchlorate with about the same volume of aluminum, and unless your aluminum sucks, this will probably give you the flash you're looking for. Add a little containment and you have a fine salute. And always be careful when you scale-up en experiment, unintended consequences can and will occur.

 

Mumbles, I'm sorry for jumping in here. Mia Culpa

[Grizzly]

hmmmm i didint say KClO3 i said KNO3, how am i mixing chlorate with suflur when im using KNO3

[hxcpyro]

hmmm best flash?

 

I use pottasium cholrate with 2 micron magnesium I got off ebay.

[DeAdFX]

Yesterday I made a mixture of 14/6/(+1 green Iron Oxide) Ammonium Nitrate and Magnesium to see how it would compare against a mix of AN and Mg. With the addition of Iron oxide the mix doesn't "burn at a stable rate". I dumped 10 grams of the mix in a home made tube and ignited the flash with a fuse. The flash mix oscillated between burning and not bruning for 5 times before it ran out of fuel and stopped burning completly. I believe to much Iron oxide was added in or I did not do a good enough job of compacting the powder. Prehaps I stumbled upon a really shit strobe flash.

 

The Iron Oxide was made with NaOH/HCl/Steel wool. The mixture had a small amount of NaCl contaiment(small salt crystals scattered amongst the Iron Oxide).

[lacrima97]

I don't believe that was Iron Oxide, possibly iron chloride or iron hydroxide.

[hst45]

Grizzly, I apologize for my misread. You're right, i'm wrong; you did say KNO3.

[Mumbles]

The green color I have found out is a ligand(complex salt). If it was green, it wasn't dry by the way. Drying the precipitate results in it turning orange.

[Grizzly]

does anyone know if KNO3/Mg is better then KNO3/MgAl/S? ive only used KNO3/MgAl/S

[ltf]

Has any one of you tried flash powders with AN? I want to make a blue flash from AN/Mg/PVC do you think it'll work? and can I do something to prevent detonation?

[justanotherpyro]

I think if your going to try and get a blue then ammonium perchlorate/metal and a chlorine donor may work. I have a absoloutely no idea if it really would, just a thought.

[ltf]

I don't know where you live, but not in any country you can get cheap oxidizers other than KMnO4.

 

I give you a comparison:

In my country KMnO4 cost about 6.7 $ a kilo, and KClO3 cost 44$ a kilo. and I'm not even talking about KClO4 who costs about 80$ a kilo.

No one can ship this oxidizers to my country so this is my prices. and from money limitations I just can't afford them.

 

The only other cheap oxidizer I can get is KNO3 wich xosts me about 0.9$ a kilo (dirt cheap), but if you want loud report - this oxidizers won't be any good.

 

To conclude, using KMnO4 isn't always being kewl or lazy.

It's the same thing with perchlorate in our country..

I can only get KNO3, KMnO4, NH4NO3, Ba(NO3)2 and Sr(NO3)2

I'm asking if it's safe mostly, about the blue I can find out on my own by making this flash...

 

sorry about the English

ltf

[DeAdFX]

Has any one of you tried flash powders with AN? I want to make a blue flash from AN/Mg/PVC do you think it'll work? and can I do something to prevent detonation?

If you initate the mixture using a blasting cap then yes the mix will detonate but if you burn the mixture using a butane/propane torch then no.

 

 

By the way you will need copper compound preferably the oxide in order to have a blue flame. You could also make a propellant out of that mixture if you dissolve the PVC using methylene chloride...

 

I wish I had access to Ammonium Nitrate. THe only stuff that I can buy is the expensive 25 dollar a pound reagent stuff. Woohoo time to over price a chemical by 5,000%.

[optimus]

I think if your going to try and get a blue then ammonium perchlorate/metal and a chlorine donor may work. I have a absoloutely no idea if it really would, just a thought.

I think he's talking about the Nitrate, not the Perchlorate. And trying to make a decent blue flame fuelled with Mg is an exercise in futility - the Mg will raise the temperature way to high. There are a few blue flash formulas on the PFP. Another option is to granulate a fast burning AP star composition. It will act much like flash, and give a really good, saturated colour.

[ltf]

granulate AP? I hope you don't mean TATP? it's to risky..

I tried to make AN/Mg/sugar (6/2/2) it burnt like KNO3/sugar and really bright...

today I'll try AN/Mg/PVC in the same ratios.

I'm also going to do some experiments for AN/Mg/sugar/catalyst as a rocket propellant.

Sorry about the English.

ltf

[_DB_]

I'm pretty sure that he was refering to Ammonium Perchlorate, not Acetone Peroxide.

[optimus]

Sorry for using abbreviations, but I thought it was generally understood than when talking about fireworks, AP refers to Ammonium Perchlorate, as Acetone Peroxide has no use in fireworks. Who ever heard of an Acetone Peroxide star composition anyway

 

I've granulated the following composition and used it as blue flash - it worked wonderfully.

 

Ammonium Perchlorate 70

Copper Oxide 30

Red Gum 15

 

Not a huge amount of light output, and I'm not sure how good it would loot at altitude, but it's extremely vivid and well saturated.

[TheSidewinder]

Sorry for using abbreviations, but I thought it was generally understood than when talking about fireworks, AP refers to Ammonium Perchlorate, as Acetone Peroxide has no use in fireworks.

I had this exact same discussion here months ago, Optimus.

 

But yes, in pyrotechnics (and Amateur/Model Rocketry) AP means Ammonium Perchlorate and NOTHING else.

 

And I suspect that in chemistry, few people refer to Acetone Peroxide as just "AP", unless they are in an industry that uses it.

 

All I know is that I *never* heard "AP" used even once in my High School or College Chemistry courses.

 

My original observation was that all posters should give the full name, in parentheses at the first point in their message that they use it, of any abbreviation that has more than one common meaning. AP is just one example, but it's the one example that had real relevance to ME.

 

M

[ltf]

Oh I'm sorry! just my mother language isn't English, I'm from Israel, and in the israely pyrotechnic forum we're using almost only AP for TATP because we can't get Ammonium Perchlorate in israel.

I thought about it and I realy can't lite anything rite now because of the situation in my country.

Sorry about the English.

ltf

[PyroMel]

flash powder i use potassium chlorate alminum and sluphur.

 

The rest of your post was so amazingly stupid I deleted it. Use proper grammer as well.

- al93535

[lacrima97]

I have been working and testing many many powders lately in 2g increments to see which did best in my opinion as far as sound and brightness go. Basically It's a simple 60/20/20 K Perchlorate/2 Micron Al/500 Mesh Mg mix. I find that it works extremely well, and its about the best thing I'm using now. I may up the oxygen a little I'm not sure, still doing a little testing.

[Grizzly]

I have been working and testing many many powders lately in 2g increments to see which did best in my opinion as far as sound and brightness go. Basically It's a simple 60/20/20 K Perchlorate/2 Micron Al/500 Mesh Mg mix. I find that it works extremely well, and its about the best thing I'm using now. I may up the oxygen a little I'm not sure, still doing a little testing.

does this make a nice bright flash with alot of light output? u got any videos of it????

[DeAdFX]

On the forth of July I made a mixture semi similar to what lacrima97 described but was initiated unconfined(no loud report). The brightness is the equivalent to staring at the sun. There was a huge circle optical illusion in the center of my vision[think of the flash bulb on a camera]. I can't comment on light output. The optical illusion skewed my vision so I can't say if the neighborhood was lit up for a moment.

 

Potassium Chlorate 7 grams -- Aluminum Powder 3 grams [10 micron] --Magnesium strips .6 grams

[lacrima97]

Well, the mix I mentioned above was extremely loud, and if you looked directly at the flash, you couldn't see anything whatsoever if your eyes were already adjusted to the night. Everything was just a flat black, with a little detail around the edges of your focused vision.