/pyro/ - Kaboom

>>50

No, not necessarily, it just has to produce enough shock to destabilize the secondary.

>>51

I'm not sure entirely about the nitrocellulose so much as that most guns have up to this point been mechanically fired devices with no electrical components more for ruggedness. Since this basically sounds like R&D that's not as much of a concern for you I guess and it does sound like a pretty sweet idea.

Flash Powder can be binded, depending on the composition. It's not actually as sensitive as you might think, at least if you go with something like coated aluminum. They are sensitive to shock, but not as dangerous to handle as something like Azide or anything that's a genuine primary explosive as far as I've experienced. Flash is a low explosive generally speaking.

Most binded flash compositions I know of use dextrin, but the result isn't useable as a propellant generally speaking. Perhaps if you used an incendiary compound to touch of your propellant proper. That was where I was going with this, and flash powder is only a few simple modifications away from something like thermite flash or a sparkler mixture.

Just a heads up, but NC is mostly a low explosive really, I don't think it actually detonates….. And when it does deflagrate it's closer to the 3000 M/s range as far as I know.

That said, It sounds like you're doing a lot of reading on this stuff. That's good and it'll probably help set you on the right track just as much if not more than anything I have to offer.

In my opinion, the best bet would be to have something like a solar panel or a water mill feeding into a system for nitrogen fixation.

If you can get enough energy to convert nitrogen to plasma (something like 900~ joules?) than you can "fixate" the nitrogen in the air into NO2. If you can bubble this into water, it will slowly generate nitric acid.

It's a somewhat long process, but it's probably one of the best overall processes for making nitrates that you can do on the small to medium scale.

I've investigated it quite a bit and plenty of hobbyists have done it, but it does take specialty equipment.

If you want to really do something low tech, then I think you're on the right track with the farm style nitre beds. I don't know much about making nitrates or explosives out of the very very common chemicals, but nitrogen fixation was the standard method of industrial production for quite some time. It is very energy intensive, but can also be very cheap as well once setup properly.

Although, this reminds me…..

If you could get ahold of a whipped cream maker with the commercial whipped cream canisters, or even the simple grocery store whipped cream spray cans, you could maybe make a panclastite by intentionally condensing the N2O that they use in that sort of thing.

If you can get it liquid it would make very potent explosives if mixed with fine saw dust or paper, but they would be very sensitive.

Lead styphnate seems as though it would be very very hard to make without quite a solid industrial base or a way to source resorcinol.

You might be better off trying out something more like lead picrate or lead azide.

Well, I do wonder if you'll actually check back in here, but I found something that might be a bit interesting to you for your purposes.

I considered this for a while, but essentially, there do exist bacteria that are known for helping plants grow by fixating atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia or other substances.

http://www.reforest.com/#!am-120-mycorrhizal-inolculum/c1qcw

I do believe this fungus is known for doing so, but it's hard to find specifics and also honestly hard to determine how relevant this technology is to your interests.

But, if you can find a good sample of the stuff, you MIGHT be able to basically get quite literally a small explosives farm going, where you grow fungus that produces ammonia or other forms of fixed nitrogen that you can use as a leaping off point for making explosives.

>>17

nice, I think a good chapter made of "how to not lose your fingers" would be a good one, a list of what materials are considered wearable and blast proof when working with low amounts of chemicals.

>>21

Well, as a rule of thumb, you avoid wearing anything polyester or polymer like the plague while working with anything flammable or explosive. Wool or Cotton is best.

If you wear polymer, and it catches fire, then you'll get much more serious burns than with cotton or wool, because it will melt and stick to your skin.

Blast proof stuff that you can wear is hard to come by, and expensive as hell, but you can at least wear soft or hard armor, and a decent face shield, welders mask, or high quality (I recommend save phace) air shit mask. These will help save you from shrapnel, and just shrapnel, but that's better than nothing. It is theoretically possible to make your own slightly blast resistant clothing by layering two different types of foam together behind a hard armor plate, but it's probably not effective enough to be worth the trouble.

I'll go find a good list of chemical incompatibilities real quick after this…..

>>26

http://sv-safety.epfl.ch/page-94463-en.html

http://www.ilpi.com/msds/ref/incompatible.html

Off the top of my head….

Ammonium Nitrate and Chlorates

Ammonium Nitrate and untreated Aluminum

Ammonium Nitrate and Magnesium dust

Hydrogen Peroxide and organic anything, it's prone to exploding and shit.

Nitric acid and anything you'd rather not have catch fire or explode.

I'd assume you all know about bleach and what not to do with it, but just to be sure, it has all sorts of nasty problems about generating Chlorine gas or Chloramine blister agents when mixed with even simple chemicals.

Bumping with a little thing of my own. More of a little factoid than anything really.

Generally speaking, explosives work by the action of producing pressure via the rapid change from a solid or liquid state into a gaseous state of matter. Azides are a good example of this, being primarily composed of nitrogen gas trapped into a solid form.

An interesting exception to this, however, is flash powder and explosive thermite mixtures. Rather than chemically generating extreme gas volume, I am of the understanding that they generate a massive amount of heat capable of greatly exciting both the air around them and the air intermingled into the space between the particles of the fuel and oxidizer. Most flash powders generate little to no "new" gasses; the vast majority of their explosive power comes solely from their ability to super heat pockets of whatever atmosphere they are in.

I usually use thick walled cardboard tubes, occasionally empty pill bottles.

They're stiff enough to provide some confinement, but don't throw shrapnel like metal does.

There are a few sites you can find that will sell you such casings, such as the following:

http://www.pyrodirect.com/Category/Fireworks_Paper_Tubes

http://www.cannonfuse.com/store/pc/Paper-Fireworks-Tubes-c11.htm

http://www.skylighter.com/mall/product-details.asp?id=2483

It's probably easier than maker your own stuff and they're also pretty cheap. You can also buy plugs and professional grade fuse from most places like this, which is much nicer than trying to make your own.

Allright, here we go, I'm going to describe an ETN synth I did with this level of equipment for you lot. I will warn you that I am leaving off the post production purification steps, which involve dissolving your product in a LOT of warm-ish alcohol, either methanol, ethanol, or isopropyl. If you don't do this properly to recrystallize your ETN and neutralize it, your ETN batch will begin to "rot" from left over acid. writeup in a few hours.

>>56

>>55

It's separated into Oxidizers, Fuels, Reagents, and Misc, basically.

I could go restructure it I guess, haha.

>Potassium Nitrate alternative source

KNO3 can be bought as spectracide brand stump remover from places like Lowe's, just don't buy a shit ton of it all at once, it looks suspicious as fuck.

>>58

Yep.

>>58

You could just piss on a giant pile of hay for a year and extract the nitrates out of it

>>34

Which chlorate do you recommend? Potassium? And should I buy off ebay or find a shop? for reference I can't even find potassium nitrate in products in shops because the government is so scared.

>>36

Well, you may be able to get ammonium nitrate from the water based cold packs, but that's a bit more difficult….

Match heads are potassium chlorate and chlorate is very soluble in water. You can dissolve it off and then dry it slowly for a decent yield. Even when it stops dissolving directly into a water solution it will still peel off very easy wet.

So yes, to clarify, Potassium Chlorate is a good choice for your initial oxidizer. Normally I'd reccomend something like black powder which uses safer to handle nitrates, but if you can't get at it there's no point.

You should definitely read up on the potency of chlorate first however; it's potent enough to turn lint into an incendiary.

Outside of pen and paper calculations is there a way to test the conflagration of slower burning explosives like Cordite?

>>44

Yes, but it takes either highly specialized equipment, or a lot of confusing physics, AFAIK.

>>18

Dear god. I forgot the most important rules of all:

WEAR MOTHERFUCKING EYE PROTECTION.

If you don't know the properties of something, either read up on them, or assume it's deadly poison, highly flammable, and melts on contact with most non-inert substances, ok?

Some basic safety stuff I use.

I'm still a scrub and I mostly screw around with heavily washed glass jars, or simple commercial powder components.

I may finally be getting some real glassware soon however.

http://www.uline.com/BL_693/Respirator-Cartridges-Filters

http://www.uline.com/BL_992/3M-6000-Reusable-Respirators

I reccomend at least considering a mask, especially if you work with aluminum powder, any acids, or things that might produce vapors.

So basically everything.

I once worked with some KNO3 without a mask, and accidentally inhaled a tiny amount of dust. Fuck did it feel awful.

Another thing worth doing is getting a small box of nitrile gloves. Wear them when you work with chemicals, no matter how gentle, and strip them using the "sterile" method.

That's basically where you grab the palm of one glove and peel it off till it's inside out, then use the inside to pinch the other glove at the wrist and quickly peel it off.

At least, that's how I do it, I'm sure there's a better way to do it.

>>5

second man here can't get the pdf? Maybe because I'm on a mobile?

>>6

>>7

Nope, third here, can't seem to crack it open.

Odd. It was working earlier for me, maybe it was taken down?

>>6

>>7

>>8

OP here, try this link it should work

http://krystallnacht.com/lib/Chemistry/A%20Professional's%20Guide%20to%20Pyrotechnics%20by%20John%20Donner.pdf

>>9

Thanks OP worked good for me.

>>9

>http://krystallnacht.com

>krystallnacht

oy vey?