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Bleser Red Magnesium


Potassiumchlorate

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Composition type: magnesium fueled red star composition

 

Creator: David Bleser

 

Colour/effect: red star, very intense in light, a little bit towards the orange

 

Composition by weight:

 

Stontium nitrate 55

Magnesium 28

Parlon 10

PVC 7

 

Incompabilites: in principle none, since this is a parlon bound composition.

 

Preparation: Bleser recommends rolling, but cutting and pumping is also possible.

 

It needs a hot prime to ignite. Pinball prime works fine for me. I have just shot a couple of test stars from a star gun this far, though.

 

The nice thing is that there are no chlorates and perchlorates in this composition. It's a very simple yet amazing composition.

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Do you need to coat the mag with dichromate or does the parlon take care of that?.

Steve

 

 

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Oh, I forgot to mention in the first post: it should be rolled/cut/pumped with acetone as a solvent. Edited by Potassiumchlorate
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You can also add some (5-7%) RedGum and bind with plain Ethanol. And adding Titanium works very well for sparks.
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Simple, but well-established structure.

Stontium nitrate - 64.4

Magnesium - 20.6

PVC - 15

NC lacquer 20%

Edited by Innuendo
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Is the magnesium protected enough, when binding with ethanol or NC laquer? And with 20% NC laquer, do you mean +20% in weight?
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Yes it is safe to bind with alcohol or NC Lacquer. It even works with SrNO3 which is slightly hygroscopic (if it contains impurities). They never smelled of ammonia.

If you use Barium Nitrate instead of Strontium Nitrate you have to add a bit more RedGum, otherwise the stars are prone to pulverize at burst. That is what I experienced with pumped stars.

Rolled stars are a bit stronger bt still not very strong.

 

I only once bound the stars with NC lacquer. I used about 20g of NC lacquer for every 100g of composition. I don't know how much NC it really contained but the lacquer was a little thicker as maple sirup.

The stars got rock hard and were more or less easily lit.

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I don't need barium nitrate for green, since I'm lucky enough to have barium chlorate. ;)

 

I have experimented with red gum and NC laquer as binders before. Red gum bound stars I never used in a shell. I had some cut Electric Magenta, about 5x5x5mm, bound with "syrupy" NC laquer. They worked fine when they were new, but after 1½ years storage I found them to have been almost destroyed by moist.

 

My strontium nitrate is a bit coarse and maybe also a bit impure, so I treat it like this: I heat it up in the oven at 225-250oC for three hours. Then I ballmill it with +1% SiO2 for one hour. Finally I put it in airtight glass jars.

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Is the magnesium protected enough, when binding with ethanol or NC laquer? And with 20% NC laquer, do you mean +20% in weight?

 

20% is the density of the binder. Usually lacquer is diluted to the desired consistencyto be able to get the dough and cut into cubes.

 

ATTENTION. When the compositions are used nitrates with aluminum or magnesiumthat such compositions can knead in water-based mixtures.The interaction of water with aluminum and magnesium is under the influence of nitrates start to allocate the gray-hydrogen which spoils the composition and smells bad.Protect such compositions can be an introduction to the formulations of boric acid per 100 grams of 1 gram of boric acid.

Edited by Innuendo
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OK, you meant the density. Good.

 

I have gotten water in some parlon bound stars before, hence my question. I even got it in rolled parlon stars, that looked perfect on the surface, like these white Mg stars, also one of Bleser's compositions. They still ignite fine when fired from a stargun, but I guess the performance is degraded a bit.

post-11329-0-04940100-1324378706_thumb.jpg

Edited by Potassiumchlorate
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I hate when stuff gets poorly transcribed around the internet. Below is the original post from Lloyd Sponnenburgh.

 

Well... you know what fencepost prime is about -- it'll light a wet fencepost in a hurricane; right?

 

Pinball prime will light a chromed ball-bearing at 1600FPS.

 

It's just --

KP - 75

C - 15

red gum - 10

Dex 1oz/lb

 

All rough; no milling.

 

That's the basic. For especially tough-to-light stuff, add your choice of --

 

1 oz / lb American Dark aluminum

1 oz / lb -325m Mg/Al or -200 for extra ''sizzle''

1 oz / lb -325m silicon powder

 

The basic mix - without metal - will light our white mag stars without any trouble. They are your basic KP/Barium Nitrate/Aluminum flash powder with a scosh' of red gum and a smidgin of dex. They roll up hard, heavy, shiny, and COLD to the touch. They're difficult to ignite with a blowtorch, but pinball prime lights 'em every time.

 

LLoyd

-----

 

ED NOTE: This is not a ''set it and forget it'' prime ... you do need to pay attention to typical priming procedures like step prime of needed, and always finish with a BP dusting.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I didn't use this composition for NYE, but I have made some test stars. 10mm pumped worked fine, so I pumped eleven 20mm and one 30mm to see how it was to pump big stars with this composition. It's pretty easy when you have just the right amount of acetone. No "stringiness" to talk about.

 

Here I have primed them with Pinball Prime+5% silicon. ;)

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Not yet. I have just tested them in my star gun. I will probably use this composition for Easter. :)
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Nice!

I will make some rolled stars ;)

Can i use another prime because i don't have silicon?Did you prime it with bp for final layer?

thanks

 

(+subscription in your channel :) )

Edited by pyrogeorge
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No, I use H3 as a burst, so I don't prime stars with BP. But if you use BP as burst, you can of course prime it with a final BP layer.

 

You could probably use magnalium or aluminium instead of silicon. Some kind of metal is probably needed for this stars.

 

Thank you for subscribing to my channel. :)

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Nice!i have metals,so i will try to make stars..

 

you can see my videos in my channel if you want;)

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