FISH Golden Glitter

[Rooster]

Blindreeper:

 

Name of composition: Fish Golden Glitter

Composition Type: Star

Creator: Troy Fish

Color/Effect: Gold/Silver Glitter

The Composition:

 

55 - Potassium Nitrate

17 - Sulfur

11 - Charcoal Airfloat

7 - Sodium Bicarbonate

5 - Aluminum, atom, spher, 400 mesh, 14 micron

5 - Dextrin

 

Any Precautions/Incompatabilities:

 

Try to use as little water as possible. I seemed to wet mine a fair bit when I rolled them but they work fine.

 

Precedure/Preparation:

 

Can be rolled (only thing I have tried) I assume they would make good pumped stars due to the low water content of pumped stars. I would be cautious of large batches of cut stars.

 

Extra:

 

This formula first appeared in an article titled ''Glitter Stars without Antimony'' in PGI Bulletin No. 24, 1981.

 

The stars have good spritzel formation as shown clearly in this picture below. A 1-2mm prime of black powder works well. They do have to be fairly large for round stars, about 10-12mm is good.

 

The movie is of a 3" shell.

 

 

 

http://www.infernolabs.co.uk/filehost/fishglitter.avi

 

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XinE895:

 

Let me just say this is an awsome effect. Really easy to make too. I wet it just like any regular star, and used regular baking soda. Then cut them into 1/4in cubes and threw then into the drying box. About 30 min later they were dry so I made a mine, and it looked great. 30g stars and 15g lift.

 

www.infernolabs.co.uk/filehost/GlitterMine.AVI

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Did you use the 400mesh spherical aluminum or a different type? I currently dont have any 400 spherical so i was wondering if it would work with other Al

 

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XinE895:

 

Yeah sorry, I forgot to include that. I used 600 mesh AL Flake from pyrohobby.com. I would like to try it with the recommended 400 mesh.

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Did you prime them at all? You didn't mention if you did.

 

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XinE895:

 

Nope no prime at all, looks like most of them lit too.

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Well I jsut made a bunch of about 10mm cut stars for mines or shells and a couple 3/4 inch comets for my star gun. I shall post pics hopefully of how they go...if it gets a little warmer out...dont feel like going outside when its 20F outside and snow on the ground.

 

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pyrohawk:

 

Thats not bad..... when I left for school this morning the thermometor on my back porch said 0 degreesF!! Though thers no snow....

 

I will make this comp. after Christmas which is when I start doing Pyrotechnics again!! (been taking a break)

 

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Frkonaleash:

 

These stars are tried and approved my FrKoNaLeaSh. Made a small mine with them. A bag mine with a diameter of about 3-4cm. Threw about 6 stars in it and it worked very nicely. I love the effect of them. Got a picture but it is just a smaller version of the mine above....almost exact look. I am gonna throw a bunch intoa 2inch canister mine to observe the effect of putting the stars higher into the air.....The bag mine was only using paper towel and not much confinenmet....still got around 15-20 feetish for such a small mine....anyway I like the stars.

 

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Blindreeper:

 

I used a willow meal prime and that failed to ignight it due to it being too fast. I didn't want to waste the whole batch so I just put a 2mm pine meal prime on. That fixed it. Also I use -325 mesh spherical Al.

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Well Christmas eve I lit off all my stuff. I had a shell and about 5 mines of fish glitter among other things. The mines worked very nicely. I didn't prime my stars at all and they all ignited or so it seemed.

 

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evilgecko:

 

Does this comp need no Boric Acid or is it assumed?

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Well you could use boric acid if you want. I've made about 4 batches of these stars using the ratio above with no boric acid. I never had any problems....and I really msut Say I love this glitter. I am just having problems with my mines but I had a very very nice one today it was a 30mm mine of Fish glitter and got about 25feet. It was the ebst among about 10 I made that weren't so good. So If anyone has a good procedure for a small (30mm mine) let me know by pm.

 

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Lil_Guppy:

 

Acually, you can't use boric acid in this composition. It contains sodium bicarbonate. If it doesn't fizz, I think that it will affect the composition. The bicarbonate is what provides the delay, without it... well... probably won't look very glittery

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Heh, Yeah I never even realized that. Well As I said above. There is no need for the boric acid because I have never had any issues with the nitrate/Al reaction. And glitter stars should be bound with as little water as possible anyway.

 

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al93535:

 

Man, this sure is an excellent effect! I tried ten stars in a starmine and wow! Although I don't think they all lit up, unless most broke into smaller pieces. I tried to add as little water as possible, so they may have been weak. Very very cool effect though! I will be making many more of these!

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Yeah its pretty cool how nice of an effect it is for such a simple comp. It uses BP chems some Al and some baking soda. It's deffinitely an addicting comp. I plan on making half or a full kilo of these stars some time this week. They are a relatively cheap star.

 

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al93535:

 

Deffinately, the only real cost for me is the aluminum, but at $11 per lb for 325 its not bad. How do you make yours, cut, rolled? I am going to make these cores for some stars. So if I lightly spayed the core and rolled, and another light spray and rolled, that wouldn't get them too wet would it? I love this comp/effect more then colored ones!! Absolutely stunning!

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

Well I have made them cut and I have taken the cut stars and then rolled them into spheres by hand. I didn't find any difference so I just cut them for ease of making them. The water isn't really too big of a deal because I have overwetted the comp before and didn't have any affect on the star itself. Also check your pm's.

 

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Lil_Guppy:

 

Actually, I think I am going to have to retract my above statement. According to my composition database, D1 glitter was originally listed with boric acid added into the wetting solution, so maybe it is ok to use small amounts of boric acid in bicarbonate glitter compositions such as Troy Fish's and Robert Winokur's.

 

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[Rooster]

rooster:

 

Never dry these stars in the sun! I dried them in the sun/shade outside, it wasn't too hot wither. Now I have a 1KG batch of driven-in stars. It really sucks, I was looking forward to these...

 

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alany:

 

That's interesting, you shouldn't have too many problems with bicarbonate glitters getting driven-in. It suggests you used too much water moistening them in the first place or have milled the composition excessively.

 

I use 5% or less when dampening much mixtures, typically 3% and pump them hard. I don't like cutting glitters, it takes too much water to make them workable. I did once prepare a batch of cut Winokur #24 stars with agressive oven drying and they worked fairly well - would I do it again? Probably not.

 

I generally sun dry my D1 stars, but they are fairly dry before the sun hits them. I prepare them in the evening and let them dry indoors in a warm place, generally around 60% relative humidity or less and 25 C or more. Six to eight hours later when the sun comes up they get a gentle warming in direct early morning sun for a few hours then back into the normal indoor drying conditions. Generally one day of such treatment is sufficient for 3/8" pumped stars, but two or three is better and a week or more for larger comets up to 1" or so.

 

You could probably accelerate the process with more agressive sun drying if you wanted, but I strongly discourage putting just prepared stars straight into the sun. Sun drying overly damp stars can make them crack from uneven drying, which in my experence is more common than being driven-in unless finely milled composition is rolled onto damp cores.

 

Sodium Bicarbonate glitters in particular are quite hygroscopic, especially if your chemicals are slightly impure, chlorides in your nitrate for example. Did you leave them out in a cool damp evening when it got below the dew point? I've seen this happen to a friends D1 glitter which is quite similar to Fish glitter.

 

I've always wondered about Sodium Nitrate production in such mixtures, but Shimizu says it doesn't happen to an appreciable degree. An experiment with Potassium Bicarbonate would be instructive but the glitter would be very different.

 

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rooster:

 

Come to think of it, I did mill the composition sans Al for an hour. It is better in glitters just to sieve the finely milled ingredients together, instead of milling them together, right?

 

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alany:

 

I guess it depends on how fine an hour makes the composition with your mill. I tend to mill mine briefly too, starting with somewhat coarse materials, the KNO3 in particular it is just straight out of the coffee mill.

 

It still feels a little bit gritty between the fingers and seems to work fine. Then again, I've ball milled the crap out of it to something like the spherical aluminium if not finer and it still "works", but the tail is *much* shorter and less impressive.

 

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rooster:

 

It was flour-fine. My mill is very effective. Maybe I should just mill the components for a shorter time then, and not mill them together? I will try again tomorrow, hopefully with a bit coarser ingredients I will get better results.

 

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alany:

 

You can probably save the driven-in batch, they will dry eventually but it might take months. Force drying them can't make things any worse, cautiously try drying some in the toaster oven at 120 C for a few hours.

 

You can always break them up, grate them through a screen a few times and re-pump/roll/cut them again.

 

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rooster:

 

I found out the stars were not driven in, just ballmilled for too long sans Al.

 

Here are my new rolled fish glitter stars, and these work like they are supposed to:

 

 

 

Stay tuned in the aerial shells thread for a shell of these!

 

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quest:

 

What Al have you used for this?

I used 325- mash Al and whan I put a little water and mixed, all the mixture became silvery, and they look silvery even now after drying.

 

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Frkonaleash1010:

 

I use 600mesh flake and they look almost exactly like roosters when I rolled some around dragons eggs cores (manually). Even cut stars appear same color just a little rougher. Perhaps you added too much water?

 

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i.k88s.f.u:

 

I used 325 mash Al and i got the silver color too but after BP coating my stars look just like Rooster's

 

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Piroman2:

 

Do somebody from us have photo al atomzied 325 mesh?

I could see it..

 

ps sorry for my english

 

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rooster:

 

I took a pic of the different aluminium powders I have. Since it is not really on topic, I will only post a link. Feel free to start a new thread about different Al powders in the pyrotechnics section. The only old one I could find was about Al from paint.

 

http://www.infernolabs.co.uk/filehost/aluminiums.JPG

 

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_Po_:

 

Just to revive some interest, here's a video of a 1" mine I fired the other night with Fish Glitter stars.

 

http://www.geocities.com/look_another_free...glitter.mpg br>

They're amazing stars.

 

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[aa92td]

Here is a movie of my FGG stars-

http://s7.photobucket.com/albums/y277/AgwA...ent=FGGmine.flv

 

sorry about the lame video but does stars are amaizing.

i made them cut.

 

Sorry about my English.

[hashashan]

wow man.. pretty nice. for some reason when ive tried to make this composition my stars didnt even ignite. and i dont mean that they have burnt lame they just didnt ignite with anything. not even with magnesium.

any one has an idea what could have caused it?

[aa92td]

Try to use as little water as possible , i use alcohol /water 50 50. and dont put there boric acid cause its may react with the sodium becarbonate , and al the glitter effect will be lost.

 

BTW - when i light my stars on the ground they burn pretty lame. so if you made them test them with star gun.

 

 

Sorry about my English

[hashashan]

i did use a 50/50 ratio and i didnt use boric acid. also its not that they didnt burn nicely they just didnt ignite at all. they just became really hot from all my attempts to ignite them.

do you think this composition will work the same way if the binder is NC?

[aa92td]

ammmm what is your aluminium size?

and you should grind all (i use coffe grinder) the chemicals before you use them.

i grind each chemical alone and then all together few times.

[hashashan]

well the aluminium size i have no idea. i guess its the same as yours unless you bought it elsewhere (400 mesh i guess).

and i grinded everything pretty well. but hell with it ill try it once again maybe i fu*%ed somwthing up

[aa92td]

ok , Good luck and put here pictures and movie of your stars.

 

BTW you bought you aluminum from Chen shmuel?

(we are from the same country)

[pa_pyro]

These stars look really nice if you add 7 parts of low mesh magnesium. It adds crackling and some nice sparks.

[Yankie]

ARGH this is so frustrating, thers about 4-5 links to a video of these stars and none of them work, does anyone have a link that works? youtube link even, this happens all the time its so annoying, want wait till the new server thingo is up and running as it has a video host.

[MilkyJoe]

thers about 4-5 links to a video of these stars and none of them work

 

Thats what happens when you dig up threads from 2 years ago

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=m8qqCs_9chc

 

The last one has the less layers kraft. 10mm pumped stars in a 2" sperical shell.

 

For a 4" I would use 12 to 15mm stars with not to many layers pasted.

I didn't use a prime, they lit quite easy.

[FrKoNaLeaSh1010]

This effect is extremely similar to D1 glitter although I prefer the Fish glitter. If you search on youtube for D1 glitter a bunch of videos will come up and give u the general glitter picture. This is by far my favorite cheap star.

[flying fish]

From what I've seen fish Glitter seems to be a more dense and faster glitter compared to D1. I also prefer the fish glitter. I have been using Winokur 22, but I think I will try this one next. I don't much mind if my Antimony collects dust if the Bicarb in higher percentages seems to do the trick even better!