If you haven't been keeping up, (and if you care... ) I have been blogging fast and furious while the LD anode is undergoing its first real test. If you'd like, it might be worth going back about a week to catch up. This entry will be more pictures, less text. Basically, a few of the warts on one edge had broken off and fallen to the bottom of the cell. While not catastrophic, this had me concerned, as it hinted that the integrity of the anode was not what I had hoped for. A greater conc
After the preliminary microscopy photos, which will help me create some baseline images of the pristine anode surface, it was time (finally!) to actually power the darned thing, and make some perchlorate with it. From the beginning, I have worked with potassium rather than sodium salts. Those who understand the chemistry of the process know that potassium is never used in major (per)chlorate plants due to the poor solubility... they always use sodium salts, and then convert the sodium (per)ch
With the great success of the Bucket Cell Adapter, it is finally time to put the Lead Dioxide anode to the test. At last! From January 2009, the birthdate of this anode: Lead Dioxide - Plated! It was definitely a pretty serious effort, and I have had this anode (anode #2; #1 was crumbly and worthless due to Bismuth) hanging on a hook on the lab wall, waiting, saying "Use me! Uuuuse me!" every time I looked at it. I am so hopeful for it, that I think I have delayed its use because if it fal
Based upon a thread that discusses BP in general and the "CIA" BP precipitation method in particular, I decided to check the various speeds of BP, including a CIA batch carefully prepared according to the directions in Tom Perigrin's book, "Introductory Practical Pyrotechnics." All of the homemade powders were 75:15:10. The CIA powder used Skylighter commercial airfloat charcoal, which is going to slow it down. The remainder used willow charcoal from the Custom Charcoal guy. Each sample wa
In my adventures with the (per)chlorate process, I have run the gamut from a plastic cup with no lid, to the T-cell, a dual-celled beast with a pump designed to produce vast amounts of chlorate crystals in a collection chamber. The T-Cell failed spectacularly (see older blog entries for the story) due to the tenacious clogging of tubing and pipes with potassium chlorate. I have since simplified the T-Cell into the T-Cell Jr., a single (but large) cell that works in the traditional manner... po
This is going to be short and sweet.! Anyone who has created what might be called a true, "serious" (per)chlorate production cell tends to take time to make the cell durable, functional, gas tight, and above all, maintainable. 99% of the anodes available are electrically connected via a sheet metal strap, usually titanium. These are easy to create, weld, and connect to the power supply. But they suck at being maintainable and gas tight. It is easy to cut a thin slot in a similarly thin
My blog entries tend to be pretty random, all over the place, and not always directly related to traditional pyrotechnics. I figure ANY entry is better than NO entry, and it's been a while, so I thought this might interest a few specialized enthusiasts. Pyrotechnics as a hobby makes extensive use of nitrocellulose lacquer. NC lacquer starts life as dried nitrocellulose fibers dissolved in acetone or some other solvent, in varying percentages, normally 20% to 30%. The vast majority buy the N
As of lately I've been having quite a bit of fuse issues, lighting the fuse and it simply going out, etc..And this wasn't no homemade crap, commercial fuse from www.CannonFuse.com . The problem was this: Me going out on the field with a device, lighting the fuse and after a bit, nothing. This can be quite annoying when you're out with some friends and they are expecting to see something cool. So I took 2x four different 3inch pieces of fuse, one pile was the control, the other was the variable
I have always enjoyed the Passfire articles where they take a commercial shell, carefully disassemble it, and weigh or otherwise analyze the shell contents. Much can be learned by the amateur by doing this carefully, especially such things as ratios... lift to shell weight, burst weight (and type) to star weight, number and size of stars, pasting methods, etc. Further, in the last few months, I have been collecting reagents and the associated techniques to determine the compositions themselves
All info needed to turn some lame Excalibur shells into powerful, loud, huge mines will be put up before July 3rd. Well it seems that within the last few years they have completely changed the way Excalibur shells are made. I was surprised to see clay plugs when I opened one up. They used to be made with cups sets and were filled with stars, loose powder, and rice hulls. Now they are just filled with stars in some kind of burst powder, and it's packed in there SOLID!!! I'd be surprise if t
How do you make Aluminum powder? You can sand it , you can file it , you can make a machine to do it for you , or you can take a can of paint and take the pigment right out of it! Now I know there are paints that are not 100% Al but I went on the website and looked at the MSDS which states there is nothing other than Flake Aluminum - exactly what we're looking for. Not having any Aluminum to play with I've lookid into many ways of making it and this one semed easiest least labour intensive a
It's been a long time since I've done a blog entry. I know a lot of people are following the perchlorate adventure - believe it or not, I still have not tested the lead dioxide anode. It is bagged and hanging from a hook on the wall. With the arrival of summer, as any homeowner knows, there is always work to be done that gets in the way.. real work. We had a massive storm this spring that dropped a 50 foot pear tree across a neighbor's fence. Stuff like that gets in the way of life. Anywa
I'm taking ideas on small projects if you want to see some results of something. Just respond with some ideas. I'll try my best to go through with them. Construction of devices or whatever. Just shoot out some ideas. Reasonable requests are appropriated. Requests for how to build 24" lampares will be considered but likely denied.
This is going to be a long and rather dry blog entry, but I believe it to be important for those seeking the electrolytic production of potassium perchlorate, producing a product clean enough to be called "Pyro Ready." At last, a real victory in this challenging task - taking perchlorate from a cell, and ridding it of remaining potassium chloride and chlorate. No batch of perchlorate can be considered pure until it is rid of ALL detectable chlorate. Chlorate remnants render the entire batch
I still had a bit of work to do on the electronic hydraulic pressure gauge system, and the result, I think, is worth a blog entry. If you haven't read the background on this thing, read my entry on the 9th of April for the whole story. Any gauge for hydraulic pressure is going to suck and be a pain to use if it is not convenient. With the transducer in its current disk-shaped form, it was going to be very difficult to utilize. I decided, then, to encase the transducer in two massive blocks
Ok so i finally got arounf to buying some KCl and getting some quality electrodes for my KClO3 cell =]. This is my first "real" cell that worked. The body was a RubberMaid container capable of holding 800ml. I used roughly 200g of KCl nd 600 ml of H2O. I made the container airtight using some of this goey stuff which has held up to everything I've put it through. The electrodes were 3/4" apart with 5V 14A running through them for 3 days . At the end of the run there was anice
This is going to be the last blog devoted to purely an electronic venture. This is an amateur pyrotechnic forum, not an electronics site! But fortunately, everything I've made so far has a solid use in pyrotechnics. For years, I've been envious of those who have what I would call a "deluxe" hydraulic press. My rockets have been inconsistent because I have nothing to go on, in terms of pressure, other than "that feels about right." Like so many others. I've got ove of the exceptionally chea
One of the challenges in an amateur lab is the control of apparati like solenoid valves, pumps, etc, down to the second or less. The T-cell, when operating, requires large and regular dosages of HCl to keep the pH in the optimum range, as close to 6.8 as you can make it. The first thought is to use a pH controller to do the job. The simplest controllers are those sold to the aquarium market. When the pH reaches a setpoint, the controller turns on a simple outlet. Plugged into that outlet i
Being involved in Boy Scouts and Pyro, a friend of mine that runs some "Indian" type of ceromonies asked me of a favor. He was needing a magical camp fire that pretty much started itself. I commited and said I could work something up that should suit the need. The previous way of this was that some nut ran a big o piece of copper wire down a cut out of cardboard 6" or so long. It was then lined with match heads down the piece of copper and then this was covered by dripping wax all over it.
It has been a while since the last blog entry, but it has not been wasted time. Much of it was spent researching the type of data collection I wanted to attempt, and the remainder of that was gathering the necessary components, much of them from eBay, although I was forced to buy a few items new. One of the things I learned was that with data collection, it is not the analog to digital conversion that is difficult or expensive; rather, it is the art known as "Signal Conditioning" that was the
Nothing. I was sick all freaking week. Had things planned to do, friends to see, shells to shoot. Nope. I had some flu from hell. It started as just a stiff body, then I got a fever, the stiffness went away and I ended up with a splitting head ache, followed by a quick spreading rash that felt like a bad sun burn. Then it was time to go back to school and I magically got really good feeling. Figures. On the other hand, now that I'm better feeling; Might put up some pics and a quick h
Anhydrous acetic acid often referred to as glacial acetic acid or ethanolic acid is a useful acid that is found in vinegar. Glacial acetic acid (GAA) can be made by oxidizing ethanol with a mixture of potassium dichromate and sulfuric acid (also known as chromic acid) but it is much easier to make it by distillation of an acetate salt and an acid. Sodium acetate is used as a source of acetate ions because it is cheap and easy to make. Sulfuric acid is used as a source of hydrogen ions because it
First, a postscript from the previous blog entry, where I attempted to clean perc with Sodium Bisulfite, a reducing agent... following some suggestions from Tentacles and others, I proceeded a bit more methodically and was rewarded with success - perc that tests as clean as my commercial stuff! It simply required an acidic environment to liberate the SO3 gas, which dissolved immediately into solution, and reduced the stray chlorate. Future cleanups will use potassium metabisulfite so as to avo
