before I get ripped on for even creating this situation, I know it's dumb/dangerous. upon reflection I probably should not have made so much of this shit.

I just loaded a "cap" per se made up of 18g of AP, probably packed to ~60% (educated guess) of chemical density in PVC and it will be ignited by the heavy duty slow burning fuse stickin out.

I have about 85g of AP left. It's been drying in air and I crumble the little sugar clump type things whenever they show up, so its a very fine powder but probably not 100% dry.

What is my best plan of action? I'm pretty sure I want to mix it with either AN or PN... given the cap I'll be using, which of the 2 chemicals and what ratio to AP do you guys recommend? I've seen like 10 parts AP to 90 parts AN on other threads, but that was for if using a 3g cap I beleive. What would be best for my apparently stupid large cap?

Given I mix the ideal ratio that someone gives me in answer to my question above, could I set off any ANFO with this? I don't want to set off a lot, but enough to know that something chemically significant happened when it goes off, and enough to get a good drunk rise outa some of my friends who have been hassling me to show em a good boom lol.

Thanks a lot for the assistance.
-Jon

If this is your first HE, we can probably all see why you made such a big cap, because you want to be sure it works. Smaller caps are not "better", but it should be <3g. The big cap will be fine.
Just crush your AN (if prills) and mix 1-1 with the AP. Then put your cap in the middle of it and light it.
I'm still not sure why anyone would need 100g of AP...

i preffer a 50:50 or a 60 40 an to ap thou some like to lean towards higher ap amounts to assure proper detonation i also like a 1:10 ratio of ap to an not for a cap but just kinda of like a more stable booster and then use a fairly small cap if mixed thourly generally produces decent results :) thou your right generally speaking i would not reccomend synths over 10 to 15 grams even that much is very dangerous to say the least and honestly should never be stored so please exercise extreme cation especially breaking up any lumps generally i like to do this when the ap is damp with a small plastic spoon gentally though with proper stiring and temprature control you can avoid lumps i also generally wash my ap well to remove trace acid with a 5% bicarb solutions then well 2 times with distilled water then once with iso alchol which will dry really quick rather then damp ap

or invest in a cheap hand pump vacum distilation kit

there like 35 bucks from onlince science mall :) and are a good reliable company from the US which also ships up north to canada very quickly :)

cheers,
warweed

ps be safe dude you can get away with larger synths generally thou think of it like this is saftey oooor time .. if i had to choose i would rather have a 5-10 gram batch go off then a 80 gram batch ... and if i did make such a large amount i would keep it in dark cool locations in small seperate piles ...

also heard storeing it under alchol in film canisters for short periods of time works ok but still storing of organic peroxides still again not safe

thanks a lot for the helpful replies guys.

I did nuetralize the acidity of my batch with dissolved baking soda, and if its not nuetral its slightly basic instead of acidic from not fully washing the bicarb off one of the filtrations. I do have a vac filter setup (rigged up a faucet aspirator/air ejector to fit with my garden hose... nice cause it does its thing without me messing with it and it offers a really good range of suction) which I use with these sorta-premium coffee filters, and it works 10-fold better than the buchner filter discs cause you can just lift the coffee filter out when its full. spread the batch out into many of these filters which I then set on folded paper towels in plastic bowls to absorb the moisture, and I just diaper-turned the AP in the filter to expose new material to the absorbant material.

With these APAN mixes,
a) do you just diaper-mix the AP and the pre-baked and pre-powdered AN? and
b) what kind of density am I safe with packing them to? Obviously the more AP there is the less you can pack it, right? I would be loading it in a PVC tube, so doesn't that help reduce dangerous friction?

AP was the first HE I made... about 4 years ago, inspired by my dad making flash powder salutes. Shortly after I made a few little batches of that I did some NC which went just fine, and then NG which was kinda rough ...lame and improper noob setup + trying to synth my HNO3 in vessel with H2SO4 and NH4NO3, ended up with about 8g yield of mystery combo of NG and the gunky precipitate that comes from synthing HNO3 in vessel.... All this pyro stuff has been in my closet for the last 2-3 years cause I've just been to busy with school to tinker with it (and my roomates get a bit uneasy about it lol).

A lab supply shop I've since learned of stocks a good variety of chemicals prepared by an in-house chemist (which i've been told means a reduction in sketchy paper trails. is this true?). My dream shopping list currently includes 70% nitric (highest conc they sell), 98% sulfuric, calcium carbide, silver nitrate, and a decent buret (to produce a good steady glycerin drip for nitrating). The guy who owns the place (and is always working) is a phd chemist so he knows his shit... Will I get called out/banned from the store if I go in there and buy all this shit at once? I could probably squeek by with getting each one on a separate day and trip with different small talk about what it was for, but the place is over a half hour drive from me so I can't really just drop in multiple times like i'm goin to the gas station. I don't want to risk bad terms with him cause he's a truly good and knowledgable guy and my only source for unusual chems in a 100+ mile radius of me. The only one on there that I could do without buying is the sulfuric, which i've boiled from battery topoff solution from autozone (no actual problems, but took a while and was a hassle)


thanks for any additional help (=
-Jon

bump? main thing i need to know is about loading the APAN... how tight can i do this? or should i not try to load it any tighter than gravity does?

Best not.

with apan i usally give it a little bit of pressure with a loose ram just enough so the powder lightly holds it's shape and in theory could be turned upside down without any or little loss of power but what i would suggest is if you use a fuse or a ematch put the in half way then pour power in press very lightly then add a bit mroe to top off then wad with toilet paper and press the wad down with a bit more force this will press your powder a bit more evenly and will hold it all in ... then plug by what ever means

cool thanks warweed. i did do a similar thing when putting my cap together... I capped 1 end of the pvc and it already had the fuse in it, then filled it to near full on the otehr end, and put down a piece of TP and then a circular piece of plywood that fit the ID of the tube well. then i put on the other endcap which had a screw started in it, and after the endcap was tightly in place, i slowly cranked the screw down, putting tension on the wood circular piece until I felt some resistance to the force I was applying. Once I could hear actual friction inside of the thing, I JB-weld casted the screw in place and its good to go.

seems to have worked out really well and allows me to apply the more precise and steady last minute pressure, so I may try to do it again with the APAN.

thanks again
-Jon