This forum is kind of slow lateley, thats why I'm posting this, lets get to work people.
Detonators without primary explosives have a great advantage over common blasting caps, for they are not nearly as sensitive as the weakest link in a standard detonator: the primary explosive. All primary explosives are sensitive to impact, friction and heat, meaning that there are many ways for them to explode when least desired, therefore dropping, crimping, inserting fuse, or even leaving a blasting cap in the sun can cause it to explode. Elimination of primary solves that problem.

Common blasting caps:
Typical blasting caps are usually made by enclosing primary explosive within a small steel, brass, aluminum or copper cylinder, that is sealed on one end. Fuse or electric igniter is inserted shortly before blasting, padded and crimped in place. Below is my an ascii masterpice of a more complex blasting cap - compound detonator.

____________________________________
| Secondary | Primary | Ignition |padding | fuse/cord
| Explosive | Explosive | Charge ========================
|_________|________|_______|______|__


Now there are several ways of bypassing the need for a primary charge, here are few ideas, some of them are mine while others are from related patents:

1. Use of a confined flash powder charge to initiate a sensitive secondary such as ETN or nitroglycerine.
Flash powder creates a weak shock, that might be just enough to get some of the more sensitive explosives going. I will test a mixture of KClO4 and 4000 mesh Al powder in the typical 7:3 ratio against pressed, and unpressed ETN. I would be curious about KMnO4 based flash initiation as I've heard it is more powerful than KClO4. If any of you have the means of testing this please post results. Patent# 5945627 gives some good high energy compositions.

2. Confinement of picric acid or ETN along with small amounts of fuel/oxidizer to help achieve actuall DDT. Some high explosives can deflagrate violently, and when confined and uncompressed they might undergo DDT, which would initiate same explosive but pressed within the casing. I can think of PA, NG, ETN, and MHN. For the ones of you with access to such explosives, lets see if we can have any sucess with this.

3. Creating high temperature and pressure conditions fast enough to initiate the secondary before it can decompose. Such idea is proposed in this US patent 6227116, where PETN is initiated by thermite composition, both enclosed within blasting cap. Fine mesh Fe3O4 and 4000 mesh Al is what is avaliable to me, and will be tested against PETN in a copper (for thermal conductivity) casing.

4. A more complex means of initiation with not so great reliability can be accomplished by creating device that uses a propellant charge to accelerate a projectile at an impact-sensitive secondary charge. A mini-cannon style steel tube with a fuse opening on one end, filled with black powder, used to propell a hardplated lead .22 wadcutter pellet at an open end of a bottle cap containing pressed ETN or PETN which is resting against the main charge. Based on patent 6257145...

Is someone willing to try this one? quite a bit of hassle, but still no primary assholes involved :)

5. EBW detonators, I dont have patent# but its easy to find. I wonder if camera flash circuit would give enough power to be used as its source. Otherwise you can have few 9V batteries feeding capacitor charging circuit through a voltage multiplier (not unlike coilgun power supply) to a high power pulse capacitor bank, ready to unload its energy into thin gauge gold or copper wire. Will be attempted soon.

6. Laser initiation... lets not improvise here :)

Lets expand on this list of potentially concussion-sensitive secondary explosives that can be used in above scenarios:
- ETN
- PETN
- Nitroglycerine
- Picric acid
- Mannitol Hexanitrate
- EGDN.

Please share your ideas, references, and experiences.

Fuse -> DDNP (0.5g) -> [Whatever].

Fuse -> DDNP (0.5g) -> [Whatever].

Umm... you seem like a smart guy... so please tell me how does that ^ contribute to this thread? or was my post tl/dr so you missed all that NON-PRIMARY DETONATOR nonsense ? ;)

BTW: does anyone know which non-primary explosives (if any) would initiate from high energy discharge via pulse capacitor feeding a spark gap ??

Theres a big difference between a cap going low and high order. Just because the cap does transition to detonation... doesn't mean its a very strong detonation, and that weak imput translates to a weak output.

Perhaps find some primaries that are heat sensitive, but mostly friction and shock insensitive. They are out there.

Theres a big difference between a cap going low and high order.
I agree.


Just because the cap does transition to detonation... doesn't mean its a very strong detonation, and that weak imput translates to a weak output.


Pressure from deflagration ripping apart the blasting cap casing... is not DDT. Like you said that would be a low order explosion. DDT means that whatever energetic exceeds deflagration velocity to match the speed of that energetic's low density VoD, and in turn providing the same shockwave as would be achieved by primary initiation of that low density (uncompressed) explosive. Pressure and heat plays its initiation role before the casing bursts from overpressurizing.


Perhaps find some primaries that are heat sensitive, but mostly friction and shock insensitive. They are out there.

Well, silver acetylide is my primary of choice, and azo-clathrates seem like ideal primaries for those with the means, but that is not the point of this thread! I was hoping to get you people to start experimenting with other means of initiation. Does anyone here ever does anything new/out of the ordinary ? or is it all about blowing shit up the old and tried way without any chances for a innovative discovery. (this is not directed at you asilent, but the rest of the people who might read this thread).

Well, silver acetylide is my primary of choice, and azo-clathrates seem like ideal primaries for those with the means, but that is not the point of this thread! I was hoping to get you people to start experimenting with other means of initiation. Does anyone here ever does anything new/out of the ordinary ? or is it all about blowing shit up the old and tried way without any chances for a innovative discovery. (this is not directed at you asilent, but the rest of the people who might read this thread).

you act like no one has ever tried this before. there's no reliable or viable means other than primaries, short of a WELL CONSTRUCTED ebw cap w/ booster, to detonate secondaries. primaries suck and are sensitive for a reason... and rightfully so there ain't no perfect primary... even a workable primary like ag2c2.agno3 has it's problem (not overly sensitive to shock, but sensitive to light and decomposes into contact with organic compounds). they're like the crazy ex-girlfriend you can't stay away of, you can't REALLY get your freak on without her so you gotta keep going back.

I agree.
Does anyone here ever does anything new/out of the ordinary ? or is it all about blowing shit up the old and tried way without any chances for a innovative discovery.


hurm well yes that about sums it up .. i have lost about the last 2 1/2 years of my life on bb to the same repetative threads and comments i bet you i could reply to almost every thread on here without actually writeing anything simply copying and pasting previous posts i have made....


about 1 out of every 120 threads is new and is not exactly new but more a altered version of a prior thread..

you must remember if you actually want to advance as much as i hate to say this but e/w / acp would be better

hurm well yes that about sums it up .. i have lost about the last 2 1/2 years of my life on bb to the same repetative threads and comments i bet you i could reply to almost every thread on here without actually writeing anything simply copying and pasting previous posts i have made....


about 1 out of every 120 threads is new and is not exactly new but more a altered version of a prior thread..

you must remember if you actually want to advance as much as i hate to say this but e/w / acp would be better

Well, I'm sure that with people such as anyone who posted in this thread so far, we can raise the bar bit, it's just a matter of thinking of something unusuall, geting enough motivation to go out there and do it, and document every step... I'm sure that if just a handful of people from here start working on some projects and posts results here we could have some valuable information... unlike threads about flash powder... Lets, for example, take 2 explosives you have access to and test them against each other, sand crush, witness plate penetration, shit compare the craters ffs if there is no other means. If 5 peoplestarted testing their HEs, casted vs plasticized, ratios in binary, ANFO vs APAN vs ammonal, ETN vs PETN, PA vs TNT, MEKP vs HMTD, etc etc. Im sure anyone could get either a sand sifter, some aluminum/steel plates, block of lead, or even an yellow pages book for a witness :) At very least, we can blow shit up and post videos.

whats e/w ? i know of a few well known forums, such as:
APC is good for LE/rocketry but poor on HE so i never bothered becoming a member...

rsci has probably the best information there but i dont post there because of the flying banhammers everywhere (ex. they fucking ban a senior member with +1000 posts for misspeling something wtfgtfobbq? )

scimad is decent but you cant discuss "testing" of your explosives freely, which sucks.

so whats e/w anyways ?

you act like no one has ever tried this before.
And by "this" you mean?? I already stated in my original post that the ideas were based on published patents, that i even referenced, therefore someone has tried it before, with success... my question is have YOU tried any of these ideas? If so please share your experiences, otherwise keep watching me "act" through the internet ;)

there's no reliable or viable means other than primaries, short of a WELL CONSTRUCTED ebw cap w/ booster, to detonate secondaries.
And that is complete bullshit, the pyrotechnical charge in non-primary detonators patent had 100% success, why dont you read up instead of being so close-minded. I will try to reproduce their results even for the fact that im running out of scrap silver.


primaries suck and are sensitive for a reason... and rightfully so there ain't no perfect primary... even a workable primary like ag2c2.agno3 has it's problem (not overly sensitive to shock, but sensitive to light and decomposes into contact with organic compounds). they're like the crazy ex-girlfriend you can't stay away of, you can't REALLY get your freak on without her so you gotta keep going back.
lulz... Agreed... but fuck that whore, I will get my freak on without that crazy bitch.

i don't think you understand thou i honestly can say i have done this a few times including trying to compete and a few other things that would generate traffic .. but nothing really ...

I would be curious about KMnO4 based flash initiation as I've heard it is more powerful than KClO4.

I can only comment on the KMnO4 question. In my experience flash formulated from KMnO4+Al+S is very powerful. I've been cautioned that it can ignite spontaneously but it's never happened to me. I could never get KMnO4+Al to ignite using a common match. When I added the S it ignited easily, with a loud "pop" even when completely unconfined. The addition of S is no secret; the few times I've seen mention of KMnO4 flash it always contained a small percentage of Sulpher, which lowers the temperature of ignition. Those mentions always carried the disclaimer that this particular formaulation can be quite dangerous.

Blasting coper, gold, staniles steel,cekas, Cr-Ni or Al wires with enough energy from capacitor bank - if it's big enough and have good voltage/resistance ratio is a good method of creating primary explosion. .. The overheated wire explodes, and that exploson is enough, even more than enough to set more sensitive-NG,PETN, manithol hexanitrate of - if your capacitor bank and voltage to which you fill it are large enough. I had litlle rearanged fotoflash capacitor bank- it were 1000 microfarad capacitor on 450 volts, and blasting wire with it - in confined or semyconfined space had bring piece of PETN detcord to detonation. If we inspect closely what happend with the wire we can not see any significant difference from detonation of small primary charge. Point here is how to start things - HE-s going, and it works flawlesly if you have enough microfarads and volts. A frend of mine had capacitor of only 300 microfarads, but on 1000 volts, it was shooting about the same as .22 blank. Such wire explosions create temperature add pressure shocks - plasma shocks- strong enough to activate PETN det cord- I had seen that. And why not? Only source of energi was electric- not chemical energy from primary.Heat was authentical-even higher. Pressure was authentical-no doubt. And a speed at which things were happening maybe even greater than with some week primary.
And- that also I saw and tried- Igniting (or detonating) PETN detcord work witb metal-air filled firecrackers. Austrian made Pirat class II was working. In a caedboard tube was a litlle metal powder which exploded when ignited from BP fuse pressed in one side of the tube, with match had on it,for ease of ignition - amusment pirotechnic - and a cardboard cork on other side. Chamber was mainly empty.I took it out that cork and insert end of detcord. It was only that small amount of metal powder and no oxidizer(except air) in firecracker. Was it filled with finely powdered Mg or Zr I never tested. And it was working so reliable that those firecrackers I used to save real caps. Only, for last Christmans I found that they started to fill them with BP. Pity!

Just because the cap does transition to detonation... doesn't mean its a very strong detonation, and that weak imput translates to a weak output.
Pressure from deflagration ripping apart the blasting cap casing... is not DDT. Like you said that would be a low order explosion. DDT means that whatever energetic exceeds deflagration velocity to match the speed of that energetic's low density VoD, and in turn providing the same shockwave as would be achieved by primary initiation of that low density (uncompressed) explosive. Pressure and heat plays its initiation role before the casing bursts from overpressurizing.

Sorry, when I posted above... a long time ago... I assumed you meant like flash + somewhat sensitive yet not primary explosive as a cap. The flash frys the other explosive which burns and together they reach some velocity not quite the same as DDT... Ish... It can still detonate yes... but your not getting as much out... its a lower speed detonation, yet still faster than the speed of sound through the substance... Oh, low vs high density while important, has nothing to do with the definition of DDT. DDT is simply a transition from deflagration to detonation in whatever substance be it solid, liquid, or gas. Detonation is simply surface "decomposition" through the substance (be it solid, liquid, or gas) faster than the speed that sound travels through that substance. Trying to detonate NG with flash alone and with a proper primary alone should afford different results. As should proper primary + booster. NG in particular has some quirks about not always detonating with quite the force it should IIRC. This difference isn't like LE and HE... its like HE not detonating with the force it should because the imput means happen to be too weak in some cases.

4000 mesh? When you get past around 600 mesh its best to start using micron ranges as one would be extremely hard pressed to find an actual 4000 mesh screen... let alone 3000 or 2000 mesh one. Also don't forget particle shape. If the patents just cite mesh... then damn thats just became a huge micron range.

70:30 while often used anytime flash is called for isn't necessarily ideal for this situation. What are you going for? Excess oxidizer, excess fuel, or balanced? Carefully consider the merits of each.


BB is a slow forum. Topics on all sorts of things come and go. People have discussed other means of initiation on MANY occasions... Weather it be exploding wires, flash or pre-heating than the shock from flash, sensitization with whatever chemical or chemicals then shock from flash, spark gap stuff, primaries of all kinds, mixtures of primaries of all kinds, sensitized eutectic shit, NC and other binded primaries, secondaries that happen to be particularly sensitive enough to heat to used as primaries, fireworks modified in such a way as to be useable as crude weak caps, etc.... and this is just BB... initiation has been discussed in MUCH more depth at RS, SMDB, etc... Hell some of the time a thread here will start with someone asking if some means of initiation is viable and someone will just post links to threads at RS or SMDB where it has already be discussed at length. Then someone will say, damn, yeah thats a cool idea. Then the thread will die.

You must consider that most of the people here don't get much time to really mess with HE anymore for whatever reason, or if they do get the chance they turn it down due to improper enviroment concerns, paranoia, lack of time, money, supplies, motivation, etc.

I've tried to get people experimenting in the past to get simple methods down for heat sensitive primaries from OTC material, and it just doesn't really work. Especially when you find out that someone at SMDB already did a good amount of experimenting on it and concluded that the patent they were going from was too vague or some proprietary catalyst or important step was excluded.

You fuckers should learn about something called PARAGRAPHS.

Blasting coper, gold, staniles steel,cekas, Cr-Ni or Al wires with enough energy from capacitor bank - if it's big enough and have good voltage/resistance ratio is a good method of creating primary explosion. .. The overheated wire explodes, and that exploson is enough, even more than enough to set more sensitive-NG,PETN, manithol hexanitrate of - if your capacitor bank and voltage to which you fill it are large enough. I had litlle rearanged fotoflash capacitor bank- it were 1000 microfarad capacitor on 450 volts, and blasting wire with it - in confined or semyconfined space had bring piece of PETN detcord to detonation. If we inspect closely what happend with the wire we can not see any significant difference from detonation of small primary charge. Point here is how to start things - HE-s going, and it works flawlesly if you have enough microfarads and volts. A frend of mine had capacitor of only 300 microfarads, but on 1000 volts, it was shooting about the same as .22 blank. Such wire explosions create temperature add pressure shocks - plasma shocks- strong enough to activate PETN det cord- I had seen that. And why not? Only source of energi was electric- not chemical energy from primary.Heat was authentical-even higher. Pressure was authentical-no doubt. And a speed at which things were happening maybe even greater than with some week primary.
And- that also I saw and tried- Igniting (or detonating) PETN detcord work witb metal-air filled firecrackers. Austrian made Pirat class II was working. In a caedboard tube was a litlle metal powder which exploded when ignited from BP fuse pressed in one side of the tube, with match had on it,for ease of ignition - amusment pirotechnic - and a cardboard cork on other side. Chamber was mainly empty.I took it out that cork and insert end of detcord. It was only that small amount of metal powder and no oxidizer(except air) in firecracker. Was it filled with finely powdered Mg or Zr I never tested. And it was working so reliable that those firecrackers I used to save real caps. Only, for last Christmans I found that they started to fill them with BP. Pity!

Well look at that, 1000mF @450V is not that much after all, (I have a 5x 1500mF @ 550V pulse caps, from my high school coilgun project. Yea they let me bring it in after all these school shootings...) but apparently much less gives satisfactory results.

I'm suprised to hear that a FP firecracker had successfully initiated PETN, good news though.

Sorry, when I posted above... a long time ago... I assumed you meant like flash + somewhat sensitive yet not primary explosive as a cap. The flash frys the other explosive which burns and together they reach some velocity not quite the same as DDT... Ish... It can still detonate yes... but your not getting as much out... its a lower speed detonation, yet still faster than the speed of sound through the substance...

I understand the importance of the VoD of the primary used, as low VoD primary (<3000m/s) will not utilize the maximum achievable VoD of certain explosives (regardless of density), and low VoD initiation has the greates negative influence on explosives that do not self sustain their own detonation unless there is enough of it (as in the aspect of critical diameter in case of detcord), PETN/ETN and some others do not suffer significantly from such initiation, since the detonation propagation accelerates itself even in small quantities, (reason why compound caps give better results), to achieve close to maximum VoD possible at that particular density.

Oh, low vs high density while important, has nothing to do with the definition of DDT. DDT is simply a transition from deflagration to detonation in whatever substance be it solid, liquid, or gas. Detonation is simply surface "decomposition" through the substance (be it solid, liquid, or gas) faster than the speed that sound travels through that substance. Trying to detonate NG with flash alone and with a proper primary alone should afford different results. As should proper primary + booster. NG in particular has some quirks about not always detonating with quite the force it should IIRC. This difference isn't like LE and HE... its like HE not detonating with the force it should because the imput means happen to be too weak in some cases.

While I agree with the "NG not giving its full potential under weak initiation" statement, the density of materials that do DDT has severe influence over its ability to DDT (too pressed might deflagrate too slow in certain situations, while not enough density might cause to deflagration without detonation in other cases, depends on the explosive on hand). AP, while a bad example, burns in small quantity while unpressed, but if pressed enough or plasticized, or molten (or cast, suicide i know), will detonate in the same small quantity.


BB is a slow forum. Topics on all sorts of things come and go. People have discussed other means of initiation on MANY occasions... Weather it be exploding wires, flash or pre-heating than the shock from flash, sensitization with whatever chemical or chemicals then shock from flash, spark gap stuff, primaries of all kinds, mixtures of primaries of all kinds, sensitized eutectic shit, NC and other binded primaries, secondaries that happen to be particularly sensitive enough to heat to used as primaries, fireworks modified in such a way as to be useable as crude weak caps, etc.... and this is just BB... initiation has been discussed in MUCH more depth at RS, SMDB, etc... Hell some of the time a thread here will start with someone asking if some means of initiation is viable and someone will just post links to threads at RS or SMDB where it has already be discussed at length. Then someone will say, damn, yeah thats a cool idea. Then the thread will die.

Well, there is no reason why we couldn't expand on their (RS/SM) ideas.


You must consider that most of the people here don't get much time to really mess with HE anymore for whatever reason, or if they do get the chance they turn it down due to improper enviroment concerns, paranoia, lack of time, money, supplies, motivation, etc.

I've tried to get people experimenting in the past to get simple methods down for heat sensitive primaries from OTC material, and it just doesn't really work. Especially when you find out that someone at SMDB already did a good amount of experimenting on it and concluded that the patent they were going from was too vague or some proprietary catalyst or important step was excluded.

Although I totally see where are you comming from, there is no reason to give up :) regardless of the vets from those forums, we can still push the concepts further, it just takes some work.

Besides, when was the last time you seen someone from these forums shoot a paintball gun with ldpe paintball shells filled with mekp or chlorate+sulfur :D

Lol, while the paint balls are a novel idea, RS is again way ahead.