Potassiumchlorate Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 Ulrich Bretscher's homepage The BP section is very interesting. Mumbles complained about me insisting on using % instead of parts, but I actually use Bretscher's composition for BP and did so even before knowing about the man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
drthrust Posted November 18, 2011 Share Posted November 18, 2011 thanx very interesting, i also enjoyed the watches page how did you find it? ill post the link in the "useful websites" thread on the ukps forums Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Potassiumchlorate Posted November 18, 2011 Author Share Posted November 18, 2011 Oh, I was just browsing some forums about BP etc. Switzerland - nice place. One of the few countries in Europe where they still have some kind of democracy. They and the Czech Republic. They almost have American gun laws, and you are allowed to make your own BP without any sissy license. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 It's not that I care about percent or parts. Percent is more convenient in several ways. It was more that you insisted on making things add to 100 by substituting parts instead of adjusting the total formula. I will agree though that one of the biggest hindrances in making new formulas is that there's only 100 percent in any given formula. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peret Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 Good find! I found this site a long time ago, but forgot where it was and lost it. I bookmarked it this time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Potassiumchlorate Posted November 19, 2011 Author Share Posted November 19, 2011 (edited) It's not that I care about percent or parts. Percent is more convenient in several ways. It was more that you insisted on making things add to 100 by substituting parts instead of adjusting the total formula. I will agree though that one of the biggest hindrances in making new formulas is that there's only 100 percent in any given formula. Well, I asked a question in a stupid way, and you in turn responded quite harshly. I didn't mean that you could substitute any chemical in any composition at random, just whether you could take 2 or 3% charcoal from H3 for the binder, since the binder is a fuel too and the fuel value is higher for "hot" types of charcoal. But never mind. Read Bretscher's page. Aside from the practical and strictly scientific things on the page he has a theory that BP was invented in Europe or at least not in China, which usually is the contemporary belief. The "traditional" belief in Europe was that a German monk, Berthold Schwarz, discovered BP by incident and was killed by it. That's a misbelief too, though. And BP wasn't called BP (Schwarzpulver in German and a similar name in my own language) until the late 19 Century, when smokeless powder was invented, so the name Schwarz has nothing to do with the powder. And speaking of charcoal: note that really good homemade BP with willow even beats Swiss commercial BP, which is the best commercial BP on the planet. Edited November 19, 2011 by Potassiumchlorate Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asilentbob Posted November 19, 2011 Share Posted November 19, 2011 I'm not sure I follow what you mean when you say that the fuel value is higher for fast hot charcoals. I would think that a slow resinous pine or a dense ironwood charcoal would have a higher fuel value than a fast fluffy balsa, poplar, paulownia, etc... Perhaps you should reconsider your definition of fuel value. Really I'm not sure why you asked your question. Bottom line is, you can do anything to any composition you want, so long as it still functions the way you want it to whats the big deal? Pyrotechnics is NOT an exact science. Don't have so much trust or faith in a compositions formula. Its simply the way one person does it that seems to work ok from their point of view. With so much variability in altitude, composition of the atmosphere at whatever altitude and area, quality of chemicals, effectiveness of integration, variation in charcoal, etc... there is no perfect composition for a BP/lift/effect/etc... Commercial BP is going for consistency and repeatability batch to batch, as they should be. How fast it can be has never been their primary goal, so its kinda futile to argue which manufacturers powder is faster. It would be more appropriate to argue which manufacturers powder today is as closely identical as their powder years ago when their plant started up as possible. Anyone can make faster powder than the commercial stuff, but maintaining that consistently for many years without significant variation in performance is a different matter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Potassiumchlorate Posted November 19, 2011 Author Share Posted November 19, 2011 Oh...Idon't mean fuel value...I mean very reactive charcoal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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