meal + other prime = all my stars? Prime help

[Skycastlefish]

I'm looking to have a two prime workstation, where all my stars are primed with either prime #1 or prime #2. For the next year or so I'm satisfied with working solely with charcoal streamers, charcoal/Ti streamers, Ralph's glitter, Yankie purple, emerald green and ruby red. The obvious two prime candidates are meal (or green) and the veline super prime. Meal should be fine for the BP based stars, but what prime will cover the purps, greens, and reds? I don't want to use potassium dichromate. Can I just leave it out of the super prime? What function does it have in the first place? Most importantly, please help me find two primes that will light all of the above stars - BP prime plus one other.

Thanks guys,

[Cookieman]

I'm looking to have a two prime workstation, where all my stars are primed with either prime #1 or prime #2. For the next year or so I'm satisfied with working solely with charcoal streamers, charcoal/Ti streamers, Ralph's glitter, Yankie purple, emerald green and ruby red. The obvious two prime candidates are meal (or green) and the veline super prime. Meal should be fine for the BP based stars, but what prime will cover the purps, greens, and reds? I don't want to use potassium dichromate. Can I just leave it out of the super prime? What function does it have in the first place? Most importantly, please help me find two primes that will light all of the above stars - BP prime plus one other.

Thanks guys,

 

 

Skycastlefish,

 

The Veline super prime works well as a hot prime for any metalic fueled stars. I use the meal that I have left over when screening my pulverone and add 5% Mag/al. to it.

[optimus]

I don't want to use potassium dichromate. Can I just leave it out of the super prime? What function does it have in the first place? Most importantly, please help me find two primes that will light all of the above stars - BP prime plus one other.

Thanks guys,

 

Have a look at this one from Pax, in my experience it works just as well as the proper veline prime, no issues with it so far (haven't tried it with AP strobes or other particularly stubborn stars yet though). I've tried it subbing the Al for Silicon and that also worked fine.

 

Name: Veline style

Source: Pax

Potassium Perchlorate 62

Charcoal Airfloat 22

Magnalium, granular, -200 mesh 7

Dextrin 4

Aluminum, flake, dark, American dark. -325 mesh 3

Copper(II) Oxide, black 2

[Bonny]

Have a look at this one from Pax, in my experience it works just as well as the proper veline prime, no issues with it so far (haven't tried it with AP strobes or other particularly stubborn stars yet though). I've tried it subbing the Al for Silicon and that also worked fine.

 

Name: Veline style

Source: Pax

Potassium Perchlorate 62

Charcoal Airfloat 22

Magnalium, granular, -200 mesh 7

Dextrin 4

Aluminum, flake, dark, American dark. -325 mesh 3

Copper(II) Oxide, black 2

 

 

I use this prime all the time, with a final layer of BP over top and it works great. As suggested by Optimus a few years ago, you can also try adding a few% wood meal (I use sawdust) to "fluff it up" a bit.

[optimus]

I use this prime all the time, with a final layer of BP over top and it works great. As suggested by Optimus a few years ago, you can also try adding a few% wood meal (I use sawdust) to "fluff it up" a bit.

 

Goog call Bonny - increasing the 'fuzziness' of the prime certainly helps with ignition. I use this as my standard prime for all KP stars these days.

[portfire]

I've used the Veline style prime a few times and the only time it failed was on some silver streamer stars, though it did still light around 95% of them. I used 60# MDF dust to fluff them up

 

I'd say 80-90% meal and 20-10% Si should work for most priming needs, though IMO the meal needs to be slow.

Edited July 26, 2010 by portfire

[Mumbles]

I've been taking to using Lloyd S.' pinball prime with silicon. I slurry prime with this and green meal over the top. My priming had greatly improved ignition. If I am in a hurry I can use the RG in the pinball prime to coat the stars. It works very well, and dries in a few hours in the drying box.

[portfire]

Have you got the formula on hand Mumbles? I've got another 6" in the pipe-line and going to boost it with whistle. I want to make sure everything lights! As I'm sure you've seen the way I paste my shells (5 hour, 20 layers) Dont like using flash but want a hard break and not blowing the stars blind!

[Mumbles]

Perchlorate - 75

Charcoal - 15

Red Gum - 10

Dextrin - 6.25

Silicon/Aluminum/MgAl - 6.25

 

You can use pretty much any hot burning material for the last component. Generally I take 7.5% of it by mass of the stars, and mix it with an equal weight of 4% Gum Arabic solution or alcohol to make a slurry. With so much liquid it becomes homogeneous pretty quick. I add the stars and stir it by hand until everything is well coated. I then add green meal until no more will pick up. I typically spray with a little gum arabic to the surface to pick up anything extra. It drys very hard and solid, and lights pretty easily.

 

For harder to light stars I'd probably coat more pinball prime on first, then make another slurry and use it to adhere the BP.

[hst45]

"Fencepost" prime is worth a try. It requires a couple of things that you might not have in your chemistry set, but nothing hard to get or particularly toxic. The formula that I have for it is:

 

65 KNO3

12 Charcoal, airfloat

10 Sulfur

5 Diatomatious earth

5 Silicon

3 Charcoal, spruce

 

I don't know if this is the official version, but give it a try. I've found this to work well on the metal fueled stars like ruby red and emerald green.

[Skycastlefish]

Man, you guys always come through! @Mumbles, just to be sure, when you say "Silicon/Aluminum/MgAl - 6.25 --You can use pretty much any hot burning material for the last component" you do mean to choose which one you want to use, right? AKA use 6.25 MgAl OR 6.25 Al OR Silicon, not combining them?

[Mumbles]

Yes, choose one. You could probably use a mixture, but I don't see much point in that. I use silicon personally.

 

This just came up on passfire too actually. Someone recommended a step prime with a metalized scratch meal (simply screened, not milled BP). A 50:50 mix then straight meal. A friend of mine recommends 15% 50:50 step prime, then 15% green meal using 5% gum arabic soln to bind/slurry. This has never failed for me either. It seems like whenever I step prime I jinx myself though, and over wet it, so I have to use what I set aside to get it back to a cutable consistency.

[jwitt]

Mumbles- great priming method! I must try that in a few weeks- I had a problem getting lots of prime to stick to my kclo4 color stars.

 

We'll see just how good fencepost is this weekend- I have fairly thin layer under a thin layer of BP prime, but the shells are softly broken.

[Peret]

I tried using silicon in Veline prime when I had some green stars that were quite slow starting and I didn't like the bright white flash of the prime with MgAl. Now I use it for priming everything. 5% in meal powder seems to work as well as more complicated formulae, for everything except barium nitrate stars. I have so much trouble with them that I'm considering trying thermite.

[Karlos]

Guys, how Japanese making practically invisible priming in peony shells? I know that typical BP produce visible light and tail, or not?

http://www.youtube.com/user/butario#p/u/58/yIkrfhVMF0w

Please educated users(freakydutchman, pyromanLTU, mumbles,.. etc), reply!

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

If you watch really close you can see some prime burning. This video is taken pretty dark as well.

Of course it's more beautiful to see the colors close after the break, they prime so well that they always need only 1mm thick prime. Sometimes for blinkers a little bit more. KP primes produce quite some light as well, color of the potassium spectrum, pinkish. They mostly prime with a BP prime with additions. The relay is nice as well, the color stars closes your pupils so you can't notice the relay which you normally would see.