I am going to be making some more Flash Powder, and there are ALOT of comps that I have heard of. My question is what are your personal experiences, What Ratios, Oxidizers, Fuels... Have proved best for yourself... I will take all of these into account when making this next batch.

I have mad some with the Standard 7:3 KCIO4, Al.
and then experimented a bit with different ratios, of KCIO4, KNO3, Mg, Al, I have heard KMnO4 is more powerful and what about S, what does that do..?

I am going to be making some more Flash Powder, and there are ALOT of comps that I have heard of. My question is what are your personal experiences, What Ratios, Oxidizers, Fuels... Have proved best for yourself... I will take all of these into account when making this next batch.

I have mad some with the Standard 7:3 KCIO4, Al.
and then experimented a bit with different ratios, of KCIO4, KNO3, Mg, Al, I have heard KMnO4 is more powerful and what about S, what does that do..?

Sulfur makes some comps more impact/friction sensitive, but generally it provides fuel for the oxidizer. I would stay away from sulfur, especially if using chlorate oxidizers.
Oh and there is no such thing as KCIO4, replace the "I" with lowercase "L" to represent potassium perchlorate.

As far as KMnO4 based FP: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTMZxN1LD2A
I wonder about its ability to initiate secondary explosives, esp. while unconfined... although I suspect weaksauce in comparison to even shitty primaries :(

I've only ever made KMnO4/Mg FP, but it was enough fun to bring me back down to LE's for a weeks entertainment at the time :P

I could never source any chlorates... Pity, KMnO4 is one hell of an annoyance... just when you think you've gotten rid of it all, all your equipment is clean, you see one little dot of purple getting bigger and bigger.

I thought I already posted this in this thread, but my favorite is misch metal/KClO3.


It self confines in sub gram amounts. I love that shit. Not smart to make more than a couple hundred mg though. In fact, I really should do some tests on it and try to determine VOD, because it just may be a high explosive.

Out of curiosity, how does one measure VOD?

As far as favorite FP comps, I've been a man of simplicity. 50/50 Mg/KNO3 works great. You're supposed to add 2-3% of something (boric acid IIRC) to inhibit moisture buildup and bad chemical reactions. Anyways, it's easy to make, works well, and is nice and bright.

I liked the

Kno3-5
Sulfur-3
Dark Aluminum-2

I always liked it cause I used it for shells. It isn't that great for just salutes.

The only way I know of to measure VoD is to have 2 fine copper wires with a very exact distance between them. You hook them up to a very exact timer that measures how long between the first and second ones break and there you go. Theres more to it like using exactly proportioned blocks of the explosive at uniform densities and exact lengths and diameters and such. The wires might be cast into a cylinder of TNT for instance with an exact distance between them.

Ish...

Any combination of KClO3, sulfur and fuel (Al, sugar, etc). The only ones I find more enjoyable than that are Nitrogen trihalides. AP is a distant third. Given that only the first would be a flashpowder, still... Needless to say I don't have many fingers left.

(I know I contributed nothing to this thread but I found this post to be extremely amusing at the time)

About 40/60 : Mg/S was a really interesting mixture that i grew to like. Definitly a flash of caliber and extreamly bright, but the cool thing about this mixture was that it's essintially almost always soundless.

KMnO4: Al:S, 80:10:10 , 60:20:20 or 42:24:34
I use fairly coarse KMnO4, 400 mesh Al atomized, non milled sulfur 95% + 5% CaCO3 (not flowers!)

I've tried to ignite KMnO4 and Al but never seemed to get it to ignite with my 3mm cannon fuse, you really need to add sulfur when your KMnO4 is as coarse as mine, I speculate it's around 50 mesh, I really should try milling it on its own someday and see if I get results like in that youtube video... but I don't fancy having to deal with airborne KMnO4 dust floating around.
I've heard about it's sensitivity with Sulfur as moisture may form H2SO3 or H2SO4 depending on circumstances and we all know what happens when that mixes with KMnO4...heptoxide!

So I did try and initiate a hypergolic reaction by using a spray bottle and misting about half a gram of 60:20:20 but it just made a purple puddle, I left the composition outside for a week before cleaning it up but I observed no ignition or partial ignition. This does not mean that it won't happen it just means that it's unlikely to happen.

I believe ''Fate'' who used to frequent this forum is also a fan of manganate VII flash, He made a thread about it here too, not to long ago and also preformed sensitivity tests with similar results as me.
I have no way in testing it's friction, electrostatic or impact sensitivity but I would speculate it is very high.
As long as you make this flash and use it within a day I doubt you'll have problems.

I also like Potassium bromate flash, powerlabs has some info on this oxidizer.