zAZO9a Posted March 11, 2013 Posted March 11, 2013 i have 30-60 mesh glitter aluminum at least thats what was advertised.will it work in d-1?. im using a 1/4 star pump for small shells. an answer before i start would be nice lol..but ill give it a try anyways. who knows
Mumbles Posted March 11, 2013 Posted March 11, 2013 I suspect that the aluminum will be too coarse and have too long of a hangtime for D1 in small shells. The larger the particles in a glitter composition, the longer the delay before the tail will flash. If this delay becomes too long, it can result in significant fall out. I'd suggest starting with a 200 or 325 mesh aluminum. Adding in small amounts of coarser Al, charcoal, or even KNO3 can be an interesting way to tune the delay time. It's definitely easy to overdo it and rain down a lot of flaming or glowing fallout.
zAZO9a Posted March 12, 2013 Posted March 12, 2013 thanks mumbles your advice is always welcome i havent pumped them yet ...more snow.. it would interest me to know what i can use it for though...hcs does have an advertising scheme going..lol..
zAZO9a Posted March 12, 2013 Posted March 12, 2013 my bad its 30-80 mesh i dont know if that really makes a difference
Oinikis Posted March 16, 2013 Posted March 16, 2013 i have used brightflake painting aluminium, cut them, and i was very satisfied with them, it left nice bright tail, whitch twinkled. but due to bightflake Al the stars looked silver.
zAZO9a Posted March 18, 2013 Posted March 18, 2013 that doesnt sound all that disappointing of an outcome lol..but im using the glitter al from hcs. i looked it back up .it has mesh sizes from 30 msh all the way up to 325. i screened out the course stuff and screen sliced them.i was kinda shocked that it was actually that simple..they worked pretty well.but they burn to quick.and leave a very small tail.pretty.. but could be better.they were sliced into 1/4 in cubes which may also be to small even for a 1.5 shell.so ill go up a size or two maybe 3/8 and try tweaking it a little .there to go with some of my parlon starsso im gonna try with tt too
AirCowPeacock Posted March 19, 2013 Posted March 19, 2013 I suggest cut 3/16" tailed stars for a 1.5" shell, and 1/8" for color.
zAZO9a Posted March 19, 2013 Posted March 19, 2013 thanks.. that sounds simpler.. and sounds better than sittin round trying to tweak a comp for weeks ill try that first. sounds hopefull...soon as it quits raining..lol
BlastFromThePast Posted April 6, 2013 Posted April 6, 2013 I'm bummed that I messed up my first batch of D1. I made 100g of comp, wet it with like 6 or 7% solvent, hand pumped 3 and then gave up because of how meticulous it was. I let those 3 dry and 2 hours later I lit one off and it was absolutely awesome. So then I decided to go back and pump all of the rest of the comp which took me an hour to do. I had to re-wet it again because it had dried out. Now I have 130 1/4" D1 that burn mediocre at best by comparison to those first 3. What's weird to me though is that when I burned the first 3, they burned completely. All of the ones that I pumped later on leave residue. Why could this be happening?
Mumbles Posted April 8, 2013 Posted April 8, 2013 Don't be so sure the batch is ruined yet. Wait for them to completely dry, and test fire some. A lot of stars burn very differently in the air, particularly those designed to leave a tail. Residue is quite common with these types of stars too, especially when only partly dry. D1 tends to be kind of slaggy in my opinion. It is of course possible that sitting around wet in a pile could have cause some deleterious effects, especially with something containing basic ingredients. It's not all that likely you would have noticed it with a 100g batch, but heating up or the presence of hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg) or ammonia are all characteristic of an unwanted reaction.
TritonPyro Posted April 8, 2013 Posted April 8, 2013 For all the glitter effects with fine mesh aluminium has anyone tried magnesium? I realise it is used in flash and flare compositions, but is there any other safe use for it?
BlastFromThePast Posted April 8, 2013 Posted April 8, 2013 Don't be so sure the batch is ruined yet. Wait for them to completely dry, and test fire some. A lot of stars burn very differently in the air, particularly those designed to leave a tail. Residue is quite common with these types of stars too, especially when only partly dry. D1 tends to be kind of slaggy in my opinion. It is of course possible that sitting around wet in a pile could have cause some deleterious effects, especially with something containing basic ingredients. It's not all that likely you would have noticed it with a 100g batch, but heating up or the presence of hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg) or ammonia are all characteristic of an unwanted reaction. They definitely needed to dry. They work very well now, only leaving a miniscule amount of slag residue. There's one thing I've noticed though. When I did a ground test for one of them, I got caught in the smoke cloud and inhaled a little by accident, but when I inhaled, the smoke irritated my nose and I felt a burning sensation. When I burn BP, the smoke is not irritating at all. Is this the hydrogen sulfide you were referring to?
BlastFromThePast Posted April 9, 2013 Posted April 9, 2013 How come my rolled D1's came out lookin' like this?
BPgorilla Posted April 10, 2013 Posted April 10, 2013 How come my rolled D1's came out lookin' like this? wow, did you roll them too wet?
dan999ification Posted April 10, 2013 Posted April 10, 2013 We call them rasberrys, caused by Uneven wetting( and high point loading) I left a comment in the gallery But can't see it Now.It won't matter much with glitter, only shells where symmetry is important as the raspberry can change course. It's easy to fix though.Don't worry they will take fire better with this surface. Dan.
BlastFromThePast Posted April 10, 2013 Posted April 10, 2013 Yeah, I figured they would light well due to their shape. I think they look kind of cool But I think the problem came from the fact that I was litterally rolling all of the stars you see there in one of the HF mill jars. hahah it was over flowing a little not to mention they were riding up the side of the wall alot and it was hard to get my hand in there well enough to spray only on the stars. I'm gonna build a better star roller in the future but it was a good learning experience.
zAZO9a Posted May 6, 2013 Posted May 6, 2013 is there a particular size these have to be to look right ..mine are 1/4 ...small..havent shell tested them yet but.. pretty star out of a gun..but the tail isnt as prominent as i would like any ideas. i used a mixture of red stem willow and commercial hwd airfloat.maybe some of my 36 mesh char????
BlastFromThePast Posted May 9, 2013 Posted May 9, 2013 Depends on what size shell you're looking to make them for. I've used 1/4" in a 2" ball shell and they looked alright. I don't know what the correct sizing would be for larger shells but there is definitely a proportion factor there. Also, I find the tails are greatly hindered when I ball mill it, even more than 15 minutes of so.
bigbuck Posted July 28, 2016 Posted July 28, 2016 so I read back in this post that you DO NOT have to wet comp with boric acid added to solvent??? I actually rolled some of these with boric acid and if I recall just water they looked alright, no real wow factor, so do you just use 75/25 water/alch mix for solvent? would like some clarification on this as I am going to give it a go tmrw, thanks for an help
Mumbles Posted July 28, 2016 Posted July 28, 2016 Boric acid is not always necessary. In fact I tend to only use it with compositions I've had trouble with. These are typically formulas containing aluminum, particularly flake varieties, and highly basic burn rate modifiers, like sodium oxalate. I've never really had much trouble with just nitrate and aluminum, or that combination in the presence of something like barium carbonate or sodium bicarbonate. In all likelihood D1 is fine on it's own, but it's almost impossible to say for certain. Smaller batches tend to have less issues as well. That said, there's nothing wrong with adding it just to be safe. You can add it as a powder to your composition. In this case +1-2% by mass is typical. Alternatively, you can pre-dissolve it in your wetting solvent. I'm not sure how alcohol would affect the solubility. Boric acid is not overly soluble in water to begin with. You can only get 3-6% w/w depending on the exact form of the boric acid. There is some concern over the compatibility between MgAl and boric acid. I honestly don't know the answer to if it is a real problem. I can say that heating these compositions in a dry box has caused issues for me in the past. I can't say for certain if it was just the heat, or if the boric acid in combination. I don't use boric acid with any MgAl glitters however. Boric acid and magnesium itself do react. The reaction is slow at room temperature, but accelerated at higher temperatures.
bigbuck Posted July 28, 2016 Posted July 28, 2016 thanks for clearing that up, so you mentioned comps containing flake aluminum, would boric acid apply to comps such as firefly?
Mumbles Posted July 29, 2016 Posted July 29, 2016 I meant a fine flake more specifically. Anything finer than 100 mesh maybe? I've made a lot of firefly and firefly like compositions and never once had a problem without boric acid. I used a +30 mesh cut of Eckhart 41813 almost exclusively.
bigbuck Posted August 6, 2016 Posted August 6, 2016 anyone ever made neds N1 glitter with alcoa 120 from HCS ??? only alum I have at the moment
dynomike1 Posted January 28, 2017 Posted January 28, 2017 This is kinda old, but i have a question. Has anyone used Alcoa 120 in D-1 or N-1?
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