Substitute for Colophony resin

[BJV]

Hi All,

Got a question. What can I use as a substitute for Colophony resin. This is for a Blue formula containing Paris Green.

Maybe Red Gum????

BJV

[Bonny]

Hi All,

Got a question. What can I use as a substitute for Colophony resin. This is for a Blue formula containing Paris Green.

Maybe Red Gum????

BJV

 

Look for(pine)rosin, I think it's the same thing or very close. You can find it in music stores for lubing string instruments I think. A sticky, PITA to grind though.Had some once and will probably never bother with again...

[BJV]

Look for(pine)rosin, I think it's the same thing or very close. You can find it in music stores for lubing string instruments I think. A sticky, PITA to grind though.Had some once and will probably never bother with again...

 

Thanks Bonny

BJV

[usapyro]

Freeze it the in the freezer or with a dry ice/ethanol bath(if necessary) and it makes it much easier to grind. My parents are in the incense business and that's what they do with many sticky resins... They also use a chilled mortar and pestle I think.

[Peret]

According to Brock, Chertier used to melt resins and blend with salt into a hard cake, grind the cake, then dissolve out the salt. Some other substance without a bright sodium line would be preferable I think. Of course in Chertier's day there was no refrigeration, or else he may have used usa's method.

[Bonny]

Freeze it the in the freezer or with a dry ice/ethanol bath(if necessary) and it makes it much easier to grind. My parents are in the incense business and that's what they do with many sticky resins... They also use a chilled mortar and pestle I think.

 

Great idea! I use that method (freezer) for grinding shellac flakes.

[Mumbles]

It's hard to tell without seeing the formula. If it's Chlorate based lactose or shellac may work. If it's perchlorate, red gum could be a bit better suited. Another one I've always been curious about is vinsol resin. It's a modified pine resin from what I can tell. It sure smells like pine. I usually see it billed as a domestically produced red gum replacement, but I've been told it works better with chlorates than RG.

[superstring]

Try some shellac if you have it. I think red gum or vinsol will both work as well.

 

Stay Green!

[superstring]

Fuel tests, I think i'll do that in the near future.

Some evaluation of these various fuels, posting the results could be beneficial to our members.

Try some shellac if you have it. I think red gum or vinsol will both work as well.

 

Stay Green!

 

 

 

[Potassiumchlorate]

I have a kilo of colophony resin. It's in chunks, though, and I have problem with my spare drum, that I use for milling everything that is incompatible with BP. The spare drum is made of rubber and isn't made for the ballmill, and I have problems with it not milling properly.

 

Otherwise there are some blue compositions from Lancaster and Hardt that make use of colophony resin, though, one with Paris Green and one with copper oxychloride. The latter is a bit unusual, in that it contains both colophony resin, stearin and chlorowax. I don't have stearin, but I can make some from candles.

[Potassiumchlorate]

I could sieve off some colophonium with a 120 mesh sieve without milling.

 

Hardt Blue Star #3:

 

Potassium chlorate 64

Copper oxychloride 19

Colophonium 5

Chlorowax 5

Stearin 2

Dextrin 5

 

I didn't bother to shave stearin, though. I changed the composition slightly to:

 

Potassium chlorate 65

Copper oxychloride 19

Colophonium 6

Chlorowax 5

Dextrin 5

 

Now I see that by "stearin" was meant stearic acid in this composition. That I don't have anyway.

Edited February 27, 2012 by Potassiumchlorate

[Mumbles]

Stearin and stearic acid are two slightly different things in actuality. They however behave almost identically. In pyro I regularly see the two names used interchangeably. It's never been clear to me which is the right product or if they can actually be used interchangeably.

[Potassiumchlorate]

I checked the chemical list here. It says that stearic acid is "hungry" for oxygen, so it seems to be a powerful fuel, although "cool" in temperature. It's pretty common in many old blue compositions and in some green.

[50AE]

Colophony resin can be a PIT butt to work with. It becomes sticky to the touch and will make your hands very sticky if you work bare handed with it, especially in powder state. And I also discovered it dissolves in vegetable oil

[Potassiumchlorate]

Yes, I noticed that. It has a nice smell of pine, though.

[50AE]

One of the reasons I love pot.chlorate / colophony smokes - colophony vapours as smoke, very nice smell and dense smoke.

[warthog]

It is still available here at least. I know a couple of places that stock it in the USA and it isn't expensive either. I wound up with close to ten pounds of it when a buddy of mine gave me all of his "exotics" (his term) a while back. He told me he had gotten over that phase and as going to stick with modern formulae from now on. I told him I would stick with the formulae that gave me the best results and I didn't care how far back in time I had to go either.

[Potassiumchlorate]

Oh, it isn't hard to get here either. It's expensive, though, so I buy it from foreign sources.

 

When you buy shellac in the hardware stores here (expensive too, though, so I don't do that anymore either), it actually says on the box that one of the things it is used for is "firework devices". That text is probably since the 1950's or so.

[warthog]

I suppose $12/pound is pretty expensive for pine resin chunks. Not at all like the Copal Gum, another resin, I was recently seeking. That turned out to be only $2/pound. I ground it up in a mortar & pestle by freezing it first too. Worked really well, the stuff was also easy to grind to a very fine powder. It smelled a lot like pine when I ground it up, don't know what sort of tree it is from though. I should look it up but someone here likely already knows.

 

I wonder if the stuff I scrape off of my pine trees all the time would work?

Edited February 28, 2012 by warthog

[Potassiumchlorate]

That's about what it costs here too.

 

I also have lots of pine trees around where I live. I guess I could scrape off the pitch from the trees and somehow distill it.

[Mumbles]

I checked the chemical list here. It says that stearic acid is "hungry" for oxygen, so it seems to be a powerful fuel, although "cool" in temperature. It's pretty common in many old blue compositions and in some green.

 

Stearin is like the hexamine of old times. It functions in similar ways of cooling the flame and expanding the flame envelope. Some feel more comfortable using stearin with chlorate stars instead of hexamine due to the worry for hydrolysis to various methylamines (fishy odor). It also lubricates stars and can make them easier to pump.

[Potassiumchlorate]

I always thought that the greatest risk was the formation of ammonium chlorate, since hexamine is produced by reacting formaldehyde and ammonia.

 

I tried one star in my star gun, but it didn't ignite, so I lit one on the ground. At a distance of about 15 meters it seemed perfectly deep blue, but maybe that is too close, considering that it will be 10 times higher up when fired in a 5" shell.

Edited February 28, 2012 by Potassiumchlorate

[Potassiumchlorate]

Update: since I found out that my colophony resin is of the inferior light type I simply use red gum instead. Now I also have stearin granules. For a 10g test batch I simply mix everything with a wooden spoon first (crushing the stearin granules with the spoon while mixing), then screen it three times through a 120 mesh sieve, spray 1g of water/alcohol on it and make pumped stars.

 

Thus the changed composition is:

 

Potassium chlorate 64

Copper oxychloride 19

Chlorowax 5

Red gum 5

Stearin 2

Dextrin 5

 

Chlorowax is very interesting. It doesn't burn very easily mixed with potassium chlorate only, but once it does, the burning is fierceful and the smell of chlorine is very strong. My very unscientific opinion is that this is a very good chlorine donor.

Edited May 3, 2012 by Potassiumchlorate

[Potassiumchlorate]

Tested one on the ground and one in my stargun. No video. The star on the ground burned surprisingly hot. The gravel where I burned it was very hot afterwards, almost as when burning a metallic star. Some black residue, not much. The one shot from the stargun burned with a bright blue flame.