Coating Cotton Seed

[BJV]

Hi All,

What's the best way to coat Cotton Seed for burst.

Toro method or wetting the cotton seed and add dry

BP?

BJV

[Potassiumchlorate]

I put them in a plastic container, spray on water, pour on H3, put on the lid, shake, spray on some more water, put more H3 on etc.

[warthog]

I did my cotton seed the same way as I do my rice hulls and they came out perfect.mm Soaked the cotton seeds, drain excess water then put the BP on them in increments while agitating

(either shaking them up in a plastic container or now I use my star roller).

Edited June 25, 2012 by warthog

[BJV]

Potassiumchlorate and warthog Thanks for your

input. I am building a couple of 12" round shells and

I need quite a bit of burst. Just looking for the easiest way.

BJV

[Mumbles]

I tried the way warthog mentioned and for me it was way too wet. I guess I didn't get enough water out of them. I've read the Japanese use a sort of toro method where they wet the seeds with BP paste, and then coat with powder. The one person I know who's tried this said it ended up as a clump of burst and kind of a mess. It's probably better to err on the side of not enough BP paste it sounds like. You can always add more. I've had the best luck with spraying and stirring in the burst. I don't have a star roller, so it's all arm powered for me. I start spraying until they begin to stick to my gloved hands, and then start adding in burst powder. One thing I have found is that my composition coats much better if at the end I give it a few extra sprays of water and stir it around for a while. In my mind it helps it to adhere better, and form a nice solid layer of burst. I do this with all my bursts now, and I've been getting much more resilient grains lately.

[BJV]

I tried the way warthog mentioned and for me it was way too wet. I guess I didn't get enough water out of them. I've read the Japanese use a sort of toro method where they wet the seeds with BP paste, and then coat with powder. The one person I know who's tried this said it ended up as a clump of burst and kind of a mess. It's probably better to err on the side of not enough BP paste it sounds like. You can always add more. I've had the best luck with spraying and stirring in the burst. I don't have a star roller, so it's all arm powered for me. I start spraying until they begin to stick to my gloved hands, and then start adding in burst powder. One thing I have found is that my composition coats much better if at the end I give it a few extra sprays of water and stir it around for a while. In my mind it helps it to adhere better, and form a nice solid layer of burst. I do this with all my bursts now, and I've been getting much more resilient grains lately.

 

Thanks Mumbles,

I did see the toro method talk about on Passfire but no particulars. I am only going to make about 6 lbs. total.

I have some good hot BP I just made. For these 12" shell I going to use 1:1.

Anyway thanks for the help.

BJV

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

Make a paste from 50% of the blackpowder, put in the dry cottonseeds and stir with your hands. After all the cotton seeds are coated black throw them in a starroller and add the other 50% blackpowder. Then stir them with your hands and let the roller turn at 20 RPM or even less. Not too long, because the seeds tend to mesh into eachother.

[Potassiumchlorate]

Make a paste from 50% of the blackpowder, put in the dry cottonseeds and stir with your hands. After all the cotton seeds are coated black throw them in a starroller and add the other 50% blackpowder. Then stir them with your hands and let the roller turn at 20 RPM or even less. Not too long, because the seeds tend to mesh into eachother.

 

Great! I'll try this one the next time I coat seeds. I use yours by the way.

[Potassiumchlorate]

Update: with H3 I use an even simpler method. I weigh up cotton seeds and H3 1:1. Then I mix the H3 with water and the tiniest amount of alcohol, until it becomes a thick slurry. I mix it by hand (with gloves) with the cotton seeds. Dry on newspaper

[pyrojig]

Potassiumchlorate :

What method do you use ( if you dont mind me asking ) to make your H-3. I have made many batches, and tried several diff. methods ( except coating on hulls/ cottonseed. ) . I have tried H3 screen mixed , diapered , and bag mixing(both chems milled to a fine powder separately) .. Binders with red gum , NC, dextrin, or w/o binder and riced. All where not reactive like hot bp as claimed in Shimizu. I understand the principle that the pressure curve is more of a "spike "when confined v.s. bp. Open burning makes bp look more powerful.

 

*Also a nice note: Hardt claims(for H-3) that the power is less reliant on the charcoal used,but bp on the other hand needs reactive charcoal to be hot.

 

Is there a gain in speed/power with the coating on a medium like hulls/ seed?

[Potassiumchlorate]

I simply sieve it through a 40 mesh kitchen strainer until it is homogenous. As a binder I use 2% SGRS. I use airfloat willow charcoal. I have tried with grapevine too, but it seems more powerful with willow.

 

Yes, it's absolutely better to coat on hulls or seeds. A 6" or 8" would be very heavy and much more expensive with corned H3.

[pyrojig]

Thank you . I will Give the Rice hulls H-3 bound with sgrs a run and see if it makes a good diff in power/speed.

Not sure that I would use H-3 in shells bigger than 4", according to Dr Shimizu's claim to it making too hard of a burst(in larger shells).

Edited December 26, 2012 by pyrojig

[Potassiumchlorate]

Nah, at least in 6" it is OK. I have made one 8" with it, and that failed, but that probably had other causes than the burst charge, or at least the burst charge alone wasn't too blame. With a strong binder and pinball prime with silicon it shouldn't be a problem.

[pyrojig]

Just one question on the coating of rice hulls with H3.

 

I tried to make a batch of H3 coated hulls and it seem that a excess of water is needed to get them to stick with 5% dextrin as a binder. IM sure that the SGRS will be better, but I had to see if Dex could pull it off. My drying mass of H3 hulls looks like only 2/3 stuck and the other is going to flake off when it is dry. BP hulls never seems to be a prob, but this H3 seems to not want to stick at all. The charcoal was paulownia and both chems where milled with a coffee grinder individually . I was seeing if a suitable H3 burst could be made with little work ( v.s. milling it in my large mill) .

 

This got me thinking, I know when I have purified kclo3 in the past from electrolysis, I had to use very very hot water to get it into solution, and even then it was a PITA . Maybe A hot solution of kclo3 in water mixed with your charcoal and dextrin/SGRS to make a toro paste may be the best approach to a reactive intimate H3/hulls. Just throwing that out there as a thought. Love to hear your feed back/ experience .

[Potassiumchlorate]

Yes, you make a slurry with it and then mix it with gloves on in a container.

 

I found out now that H3 shouldn't be packed too hard in a shell - that's why my Bleser Aqua had such a weak burst on New Years Eve. It should be like when making a firecracker with granulated BP - a bit loose.

[Mumbles]

Intuition tells me that the boiling solution to make a toro paste will not work all that well. At 100C, 100g of water can dissolve about 56g of potassium chlorate, which will get you around 75g of H3 total. Even cold, this sounds fairly thin. I suppose if you added it slowly in stages with dry powder it could be made to work. I've never tried to make burst charges by a toro-like method, so perhaps someone who has could give you a better answer.

 

Does this batch of potassium chlorate by any chance have anticake in it? I've heard of that causing issues.

 

I've actually never had much of a problem coating rice hulls with H3 and dextrin. BP always coats easier for me, but that's probably due to milling into a well consolidated powder vs. screened into a fluffy mass, and the lower quantity of low density charcoal. H3 usually just required a few extra sprays of water and some extra rolling and stirring by hand.

[Potassiumchlorate]

I just use room temperature water. As you can see in my videos, my bursts are usually very powerful. My problem is rather to get the shape of the flower better, although that Bleser Aqua shell was probably damaged somehow.

[pyrojig]

No anti cake. It is a batch of recrystallized kclo3. I would try the approach of torro and alternating dry comp if I used my star roller. Im sure your correct Mumbles, Even at 100* it still will make a thin paste. The logic here would only to be ingratiating kclo3 deeper into the pores of the charcoal ( and making a paste would get better adhesion to the hulls or other medium being coated.).

This is more-so a thought at the moment , not something Im going to try ( do to the added effort). I may consider it for a future project /test, but I figured I'd throw it out there for others input.

I know from the writings of Shimizu, he claims that a pile of h-3 unconfined should react like flash ( self-confining) I however have never experienced it to be even as hot as bp, ,much less flash.

[Mumbles]

My experiences with H3 mirror yours unconfined. It certainly gets the job done when in a shell though. With generic airfloat charcoal, it can be used up to 6" for me. I made the mistake of using milled black willow once. Now that stuff probably would behave more similar to flash. Geez, I just about turned a batch of 3" shells into salutes with that stuff.

[pyroguy1030]

Hello,

I don't have any cotton seed, but I've heard of people using rice crispies cereal. Has anyone tried this? Just wanted to know if this works before I go ahead and try.

[AirCowPeacock]

I don't want to discourage you from being active in this forum. But, a question like this should be asked by creating a new thread in the Newbie section. Don't worry, no matter where you ask your question, it will be answered peomptly.

[psyco_1322]

Hello,

I don't have any cotton seed, but I've heard of people using rice crispies cereal. Has anyone tried this? Just wanted to know if this works before I go ahead and try.

 

If you can't get rice hulls, which are not that hard to come by, you can use rice crispies. I've even seen coated Cheerio's, but that would be more suited for larger shells. Just make sure you don't buy anything sugar coated or sweetened, the bp will never dry. No need to buy name brand, generic is just fine. Also do't get puffed rice, it swells when coating and shrinks when drying and has a tendency to flake off the bp after shrinking.

[dynomike1]

Y'all must have good access to cotton seed i'm seeing $12.00 a pound, anyway what is the ratio for cotton seed and BP. When i go back to work i will probably get to sweep some off the floor.

[mikeee]

You will want to locate a custom animal feed blender.

They purchase full bales of the cotton seed.

Freight is the issue with getting this product.

You will need to plan ahead and purchase when you find a supplier that gets in a load.

[Mumbles]

Shimizu recommends somewhere between 1.3:1 and 1:1 compositon:cotton seed.