10/10/20 burns fast and is best hammered into a thick cardboard tube while still hot! It changes its colour into light gray then due to the better distribution
of the wax.
Best to go with is 10/10/2 up to 10/10/3 I guess. Remember to use bigger holes then. If you still got problems, a tiny ammount of a catalyst will help you! Use Fe2O3, Fe3O4 or CuO for it.
To get comparable results, make a huge batch of milled/mixed KNO3/Sugar and store it air-tight. Then you can test this stuff with various ammounts (use +% for this
, e.G +2% +5% and so on)
The standard 5/5/2 mix, hammered still hot into a tube gives this result (100g):
It uses 0,1% Fe2O3 to keep the burnrate steady. Thats an old pic of mine. The smoke later on ignited because I used no "baffles".
Just for comparisons sake: 300g KNO3/Sorbitol 2/1
You see, the smoke is much lighter and due to the high combustion speed it jets into the air instead of staying near the ground.
Baffles...
Best way to produce baffles is o make cardboard end discs and glue (with non-thinned white glue!) 2 layers of aluminium foil onto them. Let them dry and glue them into your tube. Use white glue for that, too. Doesn´t melt away like hot gun glue.
Another, more complicated way is to use gypsum. Take a piece of tube which is the same ID as your cardboard tubes and put in a 5mm layer of
thick gypsum. Then take tubes of the desired hole diametre and push them into the gypsum-layer.
When dry, just pull them out and you´ve got a durable, fire resistant plate, which is easily glued into your tube.
It´s easy to make dozens of them. Just cut enough pieces of plastic tube to fill gypsum into...
Edited by paul, 26 March 2007 - 10:00 PM.
