I read somewhere that:

57.5% KNO3
37.5% C12H22O11
5.00% S
(As compared to the 60:40)

Makes a "better" smoke mix......what is this "better" they speak of?

Faster?

Denser smoke?

Additionally, would the substitution of a portion of sugar with an amount of corn syrup make a more easily recastable mix or would it degrade the performance? (and what are the differences between dark and light syrup")

I don't wanna make rocket fuel (I know it takes Fe2O3, but still....) and all the sources I've come across don't give anything more substantial than "this is how you make it newb"

Would the sulfur make unwanted compounds in a recrystallization?

I'm planning on making a spherical device with a BP break charge in an attempt to make it burn more surface area faster, any tips on construction would be appreciated as well, thank you.

these are things a "noob" needs to know and they are nowhere to be found!

HELP!!!!

If your trying to make smoke chances are you want to go with a KNO3/Sugar/Wax mix and forgo the sulfur entirely. The use of sulfur is common for propellant smoke mixes. Fe2O3 isn't required for using smoke mix in rockets, but it helps... But... a great excess of sulfur might also work well... however it would stink alot and I would think the smoke would be shorter lived than with just sugar.

You basicly just want to devise a composition and situation in which imperfect combustion producing the wanted smoke is prevalent.

So like a aerial shell except the walls be smoke mix? Hmm I have had similar ideas except using crossetts or smoke comets in a canister aerial shell to quckly produce alot of smoke...

I think the biggest problem will be priming... If you have a mould and can put a nice coat of granular BP on it before casting the smoke mix into it that may work so that the smoke mix is coated in granular BP.... Imagine a pineapple grenade... inverted so that the creases are on the inside... and made of smoke mix. Or if its like smoke comets you could probably cast blobs of smoke mix into a pan with granular BP and get them coated before removing them and allowing them to cool off and "set". Or making cylindrical ones and priming one end and wrapping the rest up with gummed kraft tape or masking tape or somehting.

I'll have to think about this more.


I approve of this thread.

Best results I've ever had was 50g of normal KNO3:Sucrose 50:50, with an added 10% sodium bicarbonate, burnt inside an old can with two quite small holes cut into it.

Check http://www.frogfot.com/pyro.html#smok for the 'paraffin evaporation' method, which I really want to try at some point :)

so taking some knowledge from cooking processes, what about flattening the smoke mix between paper and allowing it to harden in thin sheets (solve the problem of hygroscopicity) while cooling, it is possible to roll it into tubes...what if you have pencils, taped around a smaller tube, to make a corrigated texture upon the flattened, rolled up mix.
example:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff134/huffraid420/smoke1.jpg
in this shitty .bmp the cylinder (brown) upon which the pencils (yellow) are taped should be no larger than you can comforatably hold a decent sized charge of BP or Flash (black)
the fuse (green) comes in at the top and enters the tube fuse.

at the bottom the fuse then goes into the break charge.

have the tube like type fuse( forgot what its called but it burns super fast) running along the corrugations to light the mix and at the bottom of the comp have that same fuse run up to a breaking charge?

another thing I thought of is to mold it into a sphere and use a bandsaw to cut it in half. hollow it out with a large bit wood drill and put flash powder inside heat the cut end up on a glass bakewar right out of a 350 oven to stick back together. have a layer of BP on the outside under wraps to ignite the exterior and a fuse at the botton to ignite the salute.
example:
http://i239.photobucket.com/albums/ff134/huffraid420/smoke2.jpg
the mix (tan) is coated in BP (black) with a fuse(green) in the top and a fuse in the bottom going to the break charge (red)


feasible ideas? or shit post?

Hmm... I really am not sure that it will work quite that well... For a burst charge I would think that you would want something that isn't too powerful. BP coated filler material as is commonly used in making aerial shells for instance. Flash is probably way to fast for good positive ignition... even with priming on the smoke mix.

Rolling a casing out of cast smokemix sheets may work... i like the idea.

The fast fuse you are talking about is quickmatch.

Make 2 hemispheres out of cast smoke mix... prime inside surface with granulated BP while it will still stick to it... Fill with filler and fuse it and all... then tape the hemis together with masking tape and put a few tight layers of that on... that may work... You could go farther and actually wrap them with gummed kraft tape, but I'm guessing you don't have that available. You can also paste it with a dilute glue/alcohol/water solution and kraft paper strips as if it was any normal aerial shell. I'd think that the hemis should be atleast 1/4" thick on smaller ones up to about 1/2" on perhaps 3" ones...

I think that just a normal canister style shell with smoke stars, comets, or rammed tubes w/smoke mix and good BP prime broke really light would be best though.

I've done the paraffin method plenty of times, and it became my stock method of making smokebombs before I read about the sodium bicarbonate method (which I've yet to try, actually).

The trick is to use a strong container that will allow the product to jet out. The pressure drop will cause cooling of the ejected product, condensing the paraffin.

The smoke output pisses all over that of plain KNO3/Sucrose, and the smoke is also heavier and less grey.