Random Thread #1

[maximusg]

Nice Shells man!

[Draco_Aster]

Yah, I laughed my head off when I saw that shell go off in the mortar. "OH MY GOD!".

 

Memphistos - Yah, its soo funny seeing foreigners eat vegemite. Especially Japanese. And yes, that is the BEST way to eat vegemite, none of that margarine crap. Plasticine I say!

 

Is anybody here into home distilling? I have just started making a 14L reflux still with a 1.5m column using steel wool as packing. I hope to get around 95% purity. Maybe later even attatch my dads vacuum pump for higher purity

 

EDIT: Man its been a while since I've posted

[TheSidewinder]

d4j0n,

 

if liquid is oozing out when you pump the star, you have too much wetting agent in the mix. Reduce the total alcohol/water by 10% and try again.

 

I always seem to overwet if I don't get it right on the first try. That's why I often keep a scoop of dry comp in reserve.

 

And the others are right, reduce the alcohol percentage. It deactivates the dextrin. I'd try it with only 10% alcohol, or even 5%.

 

M

 

P.S. NICE shells, PyroJoe. And nice to have a hot audience, eh?

[hst45]

Draco Aster, i have a small distillation rig that I made a couple of years ago. It sounds like you're into making a rig about the same size as mine.

 

My usual run is a wash of 10# of sugar in 4 gallons of water fermented with distillers yeast for about 10 days. Add to this the "heads" and "tails" from previous runs, and i net about 2 quarts of "white dog" alcohol.

 

I don't have a hydromometer to measure the strength of the final product, but for a fun trick try dropping an ice cube into it!

 

CRAP! i tried adding a JPG picture of my rig, but I can't get it to go. Watching me trying to do anything with a computer is like watching a fish try to juggle; fucking pathetic! If you feel like helping an idiot (me) to upload a JPG and/or a small movie, let me know and I'll send the pictures along.

[ULTRABUF]

Great shells Pyrojoe! About how much lift did you use for the 3 inchers?

[PyroJoe]

10 grams each. I used 12 grams for my 3 inch cans, but they weighed about 3 times as much and fit quite tight. I used 35 grams for my 4 inchers. That explosion in the mortar was pretty intense! You can see what it did to the ABS pipe and the mortar rack. We were pretty close, but luckily not close enough to get hurt.

[_DB_]

But you were close enough to get scared shitless I'll bet.

[maximusg]

BTW Joe, what comp was that magnesium green? Was it nitrate based?

[PyroJoe]

It uses barium nitrate. Here is the comp:

 

Bleser Mg #8

55 Barium nitrate

18 325 mesh magnesium

15 PVC

12 Parlon

 

Bind with PVC primer. Which contains Acetone, MEK, and THF. Prime with light coat of meal powder.

 

It is a good bright green! My camera didn't capture the color very well on any of my shells

[_Po_]

A friend and I did a bit of distillation, Draco. A 40L plastic tub with a heap of sugar, water, apple juice, potatoes, tomato paste, beer yeast and cooking yeast. We loosely taped the lid on and sat it under the back steps at a friend's place for a couple of weeks. (At this point it might be obvious we had no idea what we were doing.) My friend insisted on the tomato paste...don't know why.

 

After the couple of weeks we took the lid off (after I accidentally put my foot through the lid into the brew) and there was a heap of red shit in there that was obviously somewhat alcoholic.

 

After that I coiled up my copper pipe and drilled a hole in a cork and poked it all in my 2L erlenmeyer flask. I sat the half full flask on the stove, rested the coil on the bench with a fan blowing on it and had a bottle collecting the alcohol at the bottom.

 

There was a pretty good constant drip and sometimes a flow. I can't remember what we estimated, but I think it was that the brew would be about 10% alcohol, so we'd collect 20% of the distillate to make up for the water coming out with it. We usually stopped it before that because it was just distilling water before the 20% mark.

 

After a few afternoons of distilling we had about 1.5L of alcohol that was over 50% (flame and taste tested them). It caught alight with a flame very easily and the 50% vodka my friend had took a bit to get going. I think the tub of crap is still there.

 

We left the bottles of stuff at the friend's place which was a bad idea. I think there's only one 335ml bottle left now - if that. I really didn't want them drinking it because our preparation wasn't really what you'd call sanitary. I even told them not to drink it because they might die. All the drunk flies floating in it and dirt and my foot and the dog that wanted to get in the tub...Luckily flies don't evapourate though. It must be safe to drink though, one girl got absolutely pissed from it and woke up fine in the morning, no hangover, AND still alive.

 

I miss the good old days...Those friends have moved away now. One to the UK and one about 1500km South. I know the people who live there now, but they aren't as cool. They'd probably let us do it again, but not with as much fun involved.

 

 

Funny part is at the time we were doing this I didn't drink. The most booze I'd had was a sip of champagne. Hahaha...Just something to waste time I guess.

[_DB_]

I was just browsing through some old pictures on my computer and stumbled across this beauty - Look! It's the early morning sky!

I remember it was a school morning back in the winter and I had just awoken and went outside to let the dog in. I saw this sight and though, "I must photograph this work of nature's art!" Actually I didn't think that since I was still in a sleepy haze, but I knew it would make a nice picture.

[lacrima97]

I was just browsing through some old pictures on my computer and stumbled across this beauty - Look! It's the early morning sky!

I remember it was a school morning back in the winter and I had just awoken and went outside to let the dog in. I saw this sight and though, "I must photograph this work of nature's art!" Actually I didn't think that since I was still in a sleepy haze, but I knew it would make a nice picture.

I don't know why I think this, maybe its the type of tree, but I swear that that pic was taken in the south, me thinking this because thats how my trees look, and I am in the south as well, so are you in the south? (USA)

[_DB_]

Good eye there! I do kind of live in south or the "Mid-South", not deep south or Mid-West. So I just go by what the local news channel calls the area.

[optimus]

I have some stars which I pumped with a cavity for some prime. The stars are organic-fuelled KP/AP violet. I made a paste of KP/Red gum/Silicon with NC Laq, applied it genorously into and above the cavity, then dipped the prime in BP grains to ensure ignition. I'm a little concerned about the AP/nitrate reaction occuring when the stars are inside a device, with some of the grains touching the stars...

Can anyone tell me if they will store for any amount of time? Or will they be fine?

[Mumbles]

If you are worried about the AN forming put a barrier between the burst and the stars. Tissue paper confining the burst for spherical, and a paper canule for canister shells. This will prevent the reaction to the point where it really is a non issue. As long as everything is dry, even if they were touching there would be very minimal AN formation. If it were wet, it would probably form a bit more. Anyway, even if it does form, the real problem is water absorbtion from the atmosphere. After the burst is added, the shell is usually sealed soon after, whether the shell be glued, taped, or pasted. Even a simple line of tape around the middle hemisphere would be just fine if you were going to put off pasting a round shell for a while.

[joe609]

Anyone here into amateur gunsmithing?

[optimus]

Thanks Mumbles - they're actually in some mines at the moment, and there is a disc and tissue between the stars and lift. I was concerned about AN forming where the grains sticking out of the prime would brush up against the other stars, but it sounds like this shouldn't be an issue. The mines are pretty well sealed, and they're being shot about 3 weeks from now.

[BigBang]

You will be fine as you used NC as your binder. No water gives you no reaction (noticable atleast.) Just keep them in a dry place. Out of curiosity, how many did you pump and what size are they? For the fourth, I pumped all of my stars and it too a very long time. I only pumped about 3 pounds or so. It did take a very, very long time, but they turned out very nice. Here is a little over a pound of 1/2" akwapo stars. That took all of the NBA finals to pump. My pump is just a pice of PVC, a dowel, and a screw, but works amazingly well. I believe the stars shown are chryssanthemum of mystery, which is my favorite of the C series. I have found that compositions with a very high charcoal content, are harder to pump than say, something with little to none.

[Givat]

My new ballmill, I only took picture of the jar:

http://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183809943545.jpghttp://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183810904827.jpg

http://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183811807621.jpghttp://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183811631828.jpg

http://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183810676431.jpghttp://hozt.net/thumb/20060720183810429230.jpg

 

 

Just want to brag a little

[Mumbles]

Wow, I think you're reading my mind there. That is basically my exact design. I'm only planning to use 2 lift bars and probably 3 bars outside to hold the end disks on. Basically, I need to up the outer diameter a bit to get the rpm a bit lower.

[_DB_]

How much BP do you think you could make with that jar at one time?

 

My rip-off United Nuclear ball mill will only make a maximum of 200 grams at one time, and that usually takes about 10 hours of mill time to burn decently. I think I need to upgrade soon.

[Givat]

How much BP do you think you could make with that jar at one time?

 

My rip-off United Nuclear ball mill will only make a maximum of 200 grams at one time, and that usually takes about 10 hours of mill time to burn decently. I think I need to upgrade soon.

1 kilo of BP at a time. with pine charcoal. and 5 Hours are enogh for my ballmill.

 

BTW, the jar is water proof and I just "meal water" to clean the medias, very comfortable thing.

 

And mumbles, I made my last jar with only 2 lift bars and you could hear in the sound of the ballmill it uses 2 lift bars. Now you hear relatively homogenous sound of milling.

[optimus]

Bought some extention tubes for my camera recently, and have been getting 'up close and personal' with various things:

 

Mmmmm... beer

 

Some polverone

 

Some 1/2" stars

Looks like I need to ballmill my chems a little more - look at the chunks!

 

Purple fire

This is a tiny 2mm grain of the above stars burning. Check out the crazy bubbles forming on the surface...

 

Next project will be capturing some glitter spritzels and branching iron sparks in detail... Any other ideas for other things to zoom in on?

[_DB_]

You should take pictures like that of pyro-related things and have people guess at what they are.

 

In Biology a few years back we used to look at some science magazine once a week that had a section of extremely close-up photos, and the object was to try and guess what was in the photograph. I always though it was fun.

[Givat]

optimus, what are those stars? what the comp?

 

They look like "dirt" stars.