Balsa Meal Powder Test

[LambentPyro]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EbZle_oKYus

 

Homemade Balsa charcoal, milled for about 18 hours in my HF tumbler. Don't think the Balsa charcoal was cooked 100%, had some brown batches on it.

Note: 100 grams of this meal powder half way filled a 8 oz. (I think 8 oz.) container. The charcoal in the ball mill barely fit when I was loading it.

 

 

Also, I got a new camcorder, Canon VIXIA HF G20 with a Rode Stereo VideoMic Pro! Thanks to a fellow YouTube Pyro 'hhhjjjjffff' for the recommendation!

[Mumbles]

The powder looks pretty fast. Did you use just normal balsa scraps, or that insanely fine balsa sawdust stuff that people have gotten onto.

[LambentPyro]

The powder looks pretty fast. Did you use just normal balsa scraps, or that insanely fine balsa sawdust stuff that people have gotten onto.

 

Balsa from Michaels and another local craft store called "The Hobby Lobby."

 

Also, I obtained a reasonably large piece from my shop teacher.

Edited November 29, 2013 by LambentPyro

[Bobosan]

I agree, looks very fast.

 

Did it leave much residue in the cup? When not windy, I always try samples on a sheet of white paper. If it doesn't scorch the paper, it's a good batch regardless of linear burn rate.

[LambentPyro]

I agree, looks very fast.

 

Did it leave much residue in the cup? When not windy, I always try samples on a sheet of white paper. If it doesn't scorch the paper, it's a good batch regardless of linear burn rate.

Yes, the entire inside was covered in residue.

 

What I notice about all of my BP is it always burns with a yellow smoke and has a distinct odor to it. Especially when I lift off shells, it doesn't smell like that sweet black powder smell that I got when I began pyro or even when shooting consumer.

Edited November 30, 2013 by LambentPyro

[Bobosan]

May be some of the under cooked wood cause the yellowish smoke and excess residuals. It still looked plenty fast in the vid.

 

What kind of media do you run in your mill?

[LambentPyro]

May be some of the under cooked wood cause the yellowish smoke and excess residuals. It still looked plenty fast in the vid.

 

What kind of media do you run in your mill?

Hardened Lead

[psyco_1322]

... and another local craft store called "The Hobby Lobby."

 

 

That part gave me a good chuckle. I suppose not everyone knows what a Hobby Lobby is.

 

18hrs in the mill, it better come out fast! It did look pretty snappy for mill dust.

[LambentPyro]

That part gave me a good chuckle. I suppose not everyone knows what a Hobby Lobby is.

 

18hrs in the mill, it better come out fast! It did look pretty snappy for mill dust.

 

Was not sure if it was a franchise. I've never seen it anywhere else.

 

When I took it out, it was all stuck to the bottom of the jar. There were indentations of the media on the powder actually. It looked like a mould for making media.

Edited December 1, 2013 by LambentPyro

[ddewees]

Hobby Lobby is a franchise... well, not a franchise, but is located nationwide. I believe the owner lives is Oklahoma. They also always have a 40% off coupon on their website for any single item in their store.

[Maserface]

Isn't clumpy bp generally cause by moisture in the chemicals?

[dan999ification]

Yes but it can happen to oven dried chems on long mill runs.

I have dried the kno3 and charcoal until it stops losing weight but it still clumps around the edges of the jar, not a complete ball you'd get with slight moist chems but still enough to need shaking up hourly ( which is twice ) there may be an rpm or loading issue here.

 

Nice fast bp you have, should make nice break for my crys shells and economical lift. But do you find 18hrs with balsa excessive? I used it once and milled for 3 hrs it was the best un boosted break I made.

The volume also surprised me, 4 times my willow.

 

Dan.

Edited December 1, 2013 by dan999ification

[psyco_1322]

My mill likes to clump up like that if I run it any longer than 3hrs. Makes for a PITA to get it out, and usually it's not worth trying to save. I just dump alcohol water in and slurry it all, and coat some media with it, or make a odd batch of stars or something.

[FlaMtnBkr]

I think you need to work on your charcoal making as this isn't the first time you have mentioned brown pieces of coal. I have had very few brown pieces in all the batches I have made over the years.

 

Are you using a retort or a TLUD to make it? The TLUD is pretty simple to make and takes out much of the guess work. But I have mainly used a retort and it isn't too bad either. I try to make sure all pieces are similar in size (thickness probably the most important dimension). I then cook it at the edge of a fire where the can is completely in the fire but not resting on the bed of red hot coals. Cook until no more smoke comes out and a flame won't burn above the hole and then cook for an extra 5 minutes for a1 gallon can. Maybe longer for bigger retorts.

 

The pieces that come out are nice and black with some having an oil on water pearlescence sheen and easily break in two being uniform in color across the break. I break it up with a hammer and for airfloat put it in the ball mill for an hour or two which breaks it down for the most part. Sometimes there will be some small whole pieces that are hard that I toss out. The charcoal works great and I have tried many species of wood on my property. Almost all perform better than Goex when trying with the BP tester that came from an FPAG newsletter that can be found on Skylighter. 4g of Goex produces a 5 second flight according to the article and most species produced 6 or 7 second flight. One species that I still have not identified produced 9-9.5 second flights, almost twice that of the commercial BP. I need to make a new PVC 'shuttle' so I can see what balsa does. There are a couple others I also want to try including eastern red cedar pet bedding which is supposed to be on par with Paulownia. If I remember correctly black willow was 7 second so I anticipate the ERC and Paulownia will do a second or two better. The point of the tester is so people can compare their BP times (the shuttle has a specific design and weight) but I have never found others' results which would be interesting.

 

Anyways, guess I got a bit off track.

Edited December 2, 2013 by FlaMtnBkr

[LambentPyro]

I think you need to work on your charcoal making as this isn't the first time you have mentioned brown pieces of coal. I have had very few brown pieces in all the batches I have made over the years.

Are you using a retort or a TLUD to make it? The TLUD is pretty simple to make and takes out much of the guess work. But I have mainly used a retort and it isn't too bad either. I try to make sure all pieces are similar in size (thickness probably the most important dimension). I then cook it at the edge of a fire where the can is completely in the fire but not resting on the bed of red hot coals. Cook until no more smoke comes out and a flame won't burn above the hole and then cook for an extra 5 minutes for a1 gallon can. Maybe longer for bigger retorts.

The pieces that come out are nice and black with some having an oil on water pearlescence sheen and easily small in two being uniform in color across the break. I break it up with a hammer and for airfloat put it in the ball mill for an hour or two which breaks it down for the most part. Sometimes there will be some small whole pieces that are hard that I toss out. The charcoal works great and I have tried many species of wood on my property. Almost all perform better than Goex when trying with the BP tester that came from an FPAG newsletter that can be found on Skylighter. 4g of Goex produces a 5 second flight according to the article and most species produced 6 or 7 second flight. One species that I still have not identified produced 9-9.5 second flights, almost twice that of the commercial BP. I need to make a new PVC 'shuttle' so I can see what balsa does. There are a couple others I also want to try including eastern red cedar pet bedding which is supposed to be on par with Paulownia. If I remember correctly black willow was 7 second so I anticipate the ERC and Paulownia will do a second or two better. The point of the tester is so people can compare their BP times (the shuttle has a specific design and weight) but I have never found others' results which would be interesting.

Anyways, guess I got a bit off track.

I use NightHawkInLight's method. My pieces are all different. They can range from sticks to small pieces that I snap in half to try and fit as much as I can in there. Sounds interesting about the flight tests, I am looking to buy Paulownia charcoal.

[Bobosan]

FMB,

 

What is this "PVC shuttle" ?

 

I'm finally working on a newer all electronic version of a BP burn rate test trough. Perhaps the shuttle thing would do better.

[FlaMtnBkr]

It is basically like using a baseball and timing the flight and taking an average. I can't find the article right now but I'm pretty sure it used to be on Skylighter. I'm also pretty sure it is at Fireworking but my subscription ran out. I'm sure your trough with electronics would be more accurate if you can get an even amount of BP in trough from one test to the next. But let me know if you have more questions and I will find the article.

[Bobosan]

I think I know which article you're talking about. Believe it had a pic of the ball retriever (Harrys better half) and the scorched baseballs after launch testing.

 

but yeah Lambent, you should try a baseball launch with that latest powder batch in the video.

[Mumbles]

The baseball thing is different than the PVC "shuttle" or "dongle". I finally found the articles to this thing. It was in one of the skylighter blog entries instead of the newsletter archive.

 

Baseball: http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/how-to-make/high-powered-black-powder.asp

 

FPAG article: http://skylighterpromos.s3.amazonaws.com/Polverone.pdf which was linked to from this blog entry http://blog.skylighter.com/fireworks/2013/05/is-this-a-breakthrough-in-black-powder-making.html

 

Ned's Article: http://www.pyrobin.com/files/pvc%20bp%20tester%20pdf.pdf

[LambentPyro]

The baseball thing is different than the PVC "shuttle" or "dongle". I finally found the articles to this thing. It was in one of the skylighter blog entries instead of the newsletter archive.

 

Baseball: http://www.skylighter.com/fireworks/how-to-make/high-powered-black-powder.asp

 

FPAG article: http://skylighterpromos.s3.amazonaws.com/Polverone.pdf which was linked to from this blog entry http://blog.skylighter.com/fireworks/2013/05/is-this-a-breakthrough-in-black-powder-making.html

 

Ned's Article: http://www.pyrobin.com/files/pvc%20bp%20tester%20pdf.pdf

Chris, I discovered two important key things in a couple of those links.

 

FPAG loathes Haifa, just as I thought why too, it contains Phosphate additives for agricultural purposes. Most of us are not farmers. Some have no issue with it, some are skeptical (including me).

 

In Skylighter's article about making high performance powder, it states that Accroides/Denatured made the hottest BP, and was used the most little to lift a 3" shell up to 300'. I've recently purchased a small container of Denatured, so I can experiment with that.

 

In FPAG's article, it also stated something about KNO3 recrystalization. This seemed more popular of an issue for Black Match than for Granulated powder. Since crystals grow over time and not by force by a slow process of evaporation, drying BP right after it's made seems ideal. This concept is valid because these following processes indicate so: the Copper Sulfate crystals (common), grain sizes on Igneous rock when it cools from the molten Magma, extrusive rock tends to have small crystals and grain sizes because it cools much faster than Intrusive where it cools much more slowly and is under immense pressure. Even the production of Diamond is a great example. When Carbon is buried in extreme heat areas beneath the surface of the Earth, this immense heat and pressure it undergoes melts the Carbon and then the millions of years it takes to cool off, crystalizes the Carbon to form Diamond. I know I went somewhat off-topic, but it is still relevant to the pulverone powder situation.

Edited December 3, 2013 by LambentPyro

[Maserface]

there are about a million "best" bp charcoals, personally, I use eastern red cedar for lift/burst, and white pine for pretty much everything else, but thats only because its readily available to me.

 

On fireworking, there are a bunch of different comparable data posts that suggest some charcoal might be good as lift but not as good as something else for rocket thrust.

 

as for the Haifa, gotta get that tech grade shi*, its clean and makes great BP

[Bobosan]

Thanks for those links Mumbles. Another interesting way to test BP and one that all can build alike.

 

The assistant in the Skylighter article was Ned's, not Harrys.

[FlaMtnBkr]

I am a member of FPAG and can tell you a lot of people use Haifa greenhouse grade including myself. I have wondered if that was a typo or if it was non greenhouse grade. Need to ask Jason sometime. Not in that article but some other members tested 7 or 8 different nitrates including some tech grade (Skylighter?) and Haifa GG came out on top.

 

All I know is that using just about any home made charcoal and Haifa GG produces BP as good as or better than Goex and that is good enough for me.

[coalman]

I wonder if the problem with the undercooked balsa is that the wood being very low density becomes an insulator? How thick are the pieces?

[LambentPyro]

I wonder if the problem with the undercooked balsa is that the wood being very low density becomes an insulator? How thick are the pieces?

They all varied. They had no average thickness. However it seemed the very very thin pieces were the ones that were mostly undercooked (not mostly undercooked, but were the ones that were undercooked the most).

 

How do you know if the KNO3 is greenhouse-grade or not? My Haifa KNO3 always had a very strong odor. Sort of an ammonia smell?? Not sure how to describe it.

Edited December 3, 2013 by LambentPyro