TheStarg1 Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 Hi pyro people, I was wondering how the density of a given type of wood would affect the spark produced by its charcoal. I have access to some dense White Oak (about 20 rings/3 inch diameter) and other even more densely ringed woods like Vaccinium arboreum (sparkleberry), but I was wondering how much that really matters, though I would think that would be good from what I have heard about pine cones. As I understand it, the denser the wood, the less lignin it will contain, though I don't know how that would affect charcoal texture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zumber Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 As per what I have learned Light weight wood makes fast burning charcoal and it is more porous in nature Hardwood or heavyweight wood makes charcoal sparks long lasting. But ultimately its mesh size controls burn rate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheStarg1 Posted January 23 Author Share Posted January 23 Does faster mean brighter, or is that uncorrelated? Luminosity and color are my main concerns. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AustralianPyromaniac Posted January 23 Share Posted January 23 (edited) This is a great question that no one knows the answer to. There are likely multiple factors, resin content, softness, and sub-microscopic porosity being the most important I think. Lignin is possibly also a factor. I have been trying to wrap my head around this issue recently as well. 1) Woods with high resin content create better charcoal than those without, as the resin increases burn speed 2) Woods that are very soft (on the Mohs hardness scale) create better charcoal more quickly, i.e. with the same amount of milling they are powdered more finely and burn more quickly 3) Woods with pours at the sub-microscopic level allow integration of the KNO3 and Sulphur There are exceptions to these rules! Newsprint and toilet paper create great black powder charcoal which is extremely soft and easily powdered, but they contain no resin and no lignin, so these must not be critial. Grapevine makes good powder but is quite hard. Balsa makes good powder but is a hardwood with a closed poor structure. --- Hardwoods burn slowly, and because of this, HW particles are more likely to be ejected from the bulk star and burn in the atmosphere leaving a long streamer tail, which is desired if you are making a streamer star. SW charcoal tails are shorter and bushier, but also probably brighter, indicating more rapid burning. It also happens that hardwoods are dense and softwoods are less dense. This could be due to macroscopic packing factor, or molecular level differences in the carbon crystal structure. Also could be differing levels of higher-density elements like potassium and calcium. If you mix charcoal with a powerful oxidizer like ammonium perchlorate, I would expect the less dense wood to be perceived "brighter" but also burn out faster. Total luminal output from a dense wood would maybe be higher? To answer your question, I think a correlation between density and burn speed/ luminosity would exist, but it's more likely you're observing an underlying correlation, which is also correlated to density, and you would also find many outliers. --- What is your exact goal? To extrapolate these results to charcoal streamer stars? Or some other comp of producing light/ illumination like a flare? Also keep in mind we make formula based on weight not on volume, so you're still adding the same amount of carbon to the formula, the total "chemical luminal potential" is the same. Also what do you mean your concern is "colour." Another point, some comps like crysthanum of mystery contain so much charcoal the star hardly burns. They have great potential for light generation, but they burn very dimly due to the low effective burn rate. Super hard/ dense charcoal may exhibit the same properties. I hope you've appreciated these ramblings 😎 Edited January 23 by AustralianPyromaniac 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zumber Posted January 24 Share Posted January 24 10 hours ago, TheStarg1 said: Does faster mean brighter, or is that uncorrelated? Luminosity and color are my main concerns. It means it burns faster in bp. Are you takling about charcoal effects for luminousity and colour? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHNO Posted January 24 Share Posted January 24 https://pyrodata.com/chemicals/Charcoal Charcoal3.pdf Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
All10Fingers Posted January 25 Share Posted January 25 I use pinecone charcoal for my tiger tails and chrysanthemums. I also add a little to my regular willow based powder for making rockets. It still burns pretty fast, lots of sparks and a little more smoke than willow. But still plenty fast. Just had to jump in seeing someone else out there uses pine cones... I thought maybe I had a novel idea lol. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zumber Posted January 26 Share Posted January 26 (edited) Pine charcoal is useful for charcoal effect stars. For hot bp you should use fine mesh charcoal and light weight charcoal. If you want to control burn rate for charcoal effect You must change fuel to oxidizer ratio or you can increase dextrin to slow down burn rate. Edited January 26 by Zumber Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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