84 replies to this topic

[Amleth]

I am still not convinced. With a ball mill, charcoal can be reduced to any required mesh size with very little mess providing care is taken and the egress of said product is conducted outdoors.

There are no compatibility problems relating to charcoal that I am aware of, perhaps with the exception of the cocoa type blackpowders.

I much prefer my onions in a salad or a nice French onion soup! Much less hard work too!

Not to mention the raw material for charcoal is gathered in large quantity much more easily, and generally for free. Even if this onion formula had some useful, practical purpose, I doubt it'd be worth sitting around a few hours peeling onions just to recover a few tens of grams of material. And that's effort put in before the hassle of grinding it down, so I don't see how it's supposed to be any less effort or hassle than charcoal...

Still, this thread gets top marks for hilarity, however unintentional.

[pyrotechnist]

Why follow the old chemicals there are new chemicals out there and you never know what thing near you can do what so it might be funny but it works and grinding charcoal is just has annoying so why not ball mill onion skin which would give you a reasonable ammount or buy onion powder like stated in this thread which should be very cheap. Then mix it with Potassium Nitrate wolla it makes a reactive mixture that burns weirdly to my tests.

Does anyone know were i buy onion powder? i looked in Tesco couldn't find any.

[Creepin_pyro]

Try these guys:

http://libertynatural.com/msd/513.htm

They also carry other misc. culinary powders which you may be interested in for future experimentation : )

[pyrotechnist]

Thanks for the support man, well my next experiment involvs using peace lily leafs since they burn fast lol.

[mussie_electric]

Organic pyro.. very politically correct and up to date! Sure you are aware that organic KNO3 is available... apparently as its taken from totally naturally occuring deposits rather than any chemical process. Would take care though... specifically as a lot of the MSDS for oxidisers specifically identify the hazards associated with them and organic material.

So is mustard gas made of........?

[fishy1]

Thanks for the support man, well my next experiment involvs using peace lily leafs since they burn fast lol.

pine needles-incredably fast burn, i think if i had a way to mill them they'd be decent.

[pyrotechnist]

Organic pyro.. very politically correct and up to date! Sure you are aware that organic KNO3 is available... apparently as its taken from totally naturally occuring deposits rather than any chemical process. Would take care though... specifically as a lot of the MSDS for oxidisers specifically identify the hazards associated with them and organic material.

So is mustard gas made of........?

No need for sarcasm dude, i know Kno3 is organic but i am merly stating over chemicals.

[lord_dranack]

Were you taking the brown paper-like skins from the onions and powdering them, or did you powder the entire onion?

The onion powder you can buy in the spice section of a supermarket is made from the entire onion, not the skin, so may produce a different effect?

[Pieman]

I have to admit I too have dabbled in similar things:
A few months ago I did some experiments with nitre, charcoal and various spices mixed, to see whether the smoke would smell nice.

Lol did it work? Personally I don't think you can't beat the smell of burning BP. As 'they' say; "He who hath once smelt the smoke is ne'er again free." I'm inclined to agree.

Edited by Pieman, 19 January 2006 - 04:13 PM.

[pyrotechnist]

Yes i used the peper coloured skin since it is nice and dry and burns realy well it catches fire easy to so it was my best bet i have yet to try the actual onion lol.

This actualy works well i have done 3 tests and each one was succesfull with the powder burning realy quick when it wasn't even ground that fine and had some weird results.

[damocov]

Hmm - an interesting turn around, I use a spice mill for grinding up my rough charcoal to a powder before manually griniding with S and KNO3 in a pestle+mortar (ball mill under construction) but I'd never thought about putting spices in my BP!

[neo]

hehe

i tested this today

and, it worked! pretty cool effect. but, it didn't burn that fast. but that?s because I used NaNO3 instead of KNO3.. (didn't have any KNO3 at home..)

but, sorry adamw, oregano didn't burn at all

[adamw]

Haha it was only a joke and a poke at the whole idea

[neo]

Haha it was only a joke and a poke at the whole idea

yea, but it sounded so fun, so I just had to test it
but, it did smell quite good. like pizza =)

[pyrotechnist]

See my friend i told you what did yours burn like? and also did your grind the onion skin in a ball mill? how fine was it?

Edit: can you also explain the effect you got with Sodium Nitrate?

Edited by pyrotechnist, 21 January 2006 - 10:54 PM.