54 replies to this topic

[pyromaniac303]

I also bought from KNO3.com, 500g potassium nitrate, 500g potassium chlorate, 500g atomized aluminium and 500g copper sulphate. This was over 2 years ago and still no visit, in fact I've moved house since then so maybe somone else got raided!

[receive]

Hmm, well I visited a "local" garden center the other day but they had no KNO3. Has anyone ever found it in a shop of any kind? It seems that nowhere sells it - I've tried a few hardware/garden places.

[maxman]

Not recently but I used to buy it abot 30 years ago ( that makes me sound really old!) the local garden center sold it under the J Arthur Bowers brand. Easy enough to get sodium nitrate though. I think the reason is because of more fancy fertilisers in nice packets costing the earth are available whereas kn03 is a raw fertiliser and has limited demand rather than any anti pyro reasons. I remember at the time a 1.5KG box off the shelf was about £1.25p

[dr thrust]

talking about "arthur bowers" i use his "charcoal chips" from my garden center it comes in 350g boxs ,seems good stuff for rockets, not to fast, but i do use willow for my lift powder.

Edited by chris m, 27 October 2007 - 06:37 PM.

[icarus]

for rockets i use the cheapest lumpwood charcoal i can find brickettes have cement and other crap in them as binder the problem we have as i see it is we are sailing close to wind manufacturing pyro for our own use and education idiots and terrorists have put the security service onto a state of high alert that is why i said on a different posting its a shame there is no way of saying here i am you are welcome to visit at any time this is what i am doing . the public have become paranoid my village neighbours worry slightly but i am a good distance from them. Its frustrating that a well intentioned call (if we attempted to hide what we do) not only causes ourselves grief but waistes resources that could have been used to make a terrorists life more miserable i try to leave plenty of info as to where i am and i keep a log book of research undertaken the only reason i dont post my address is i dont want my chems stolen by a b**b maker

[BrightStar]

talking about "arthur bowers" i use his "charcoal chips" from my garden center it comes in 350g boxs ,seems good stuff for rockets, not to fast

Yup - so do I... perfect for 1lb core burners and also good for tigertail and chrys stars if you dampen well to let the nitrate soak in...

Be aware though that the chip size ranges from about 2-5mm (usually) to almost dust if you get the bottom of the barrel...

Edited by BrightStar, 27 October 2007 - 08:31 PM.

[maxman]

Dont bother to try and make lift from Bowers! I've tried it and its worse than useless. To be honest I cant tell any difference between greenmix and after milling it for 3 hours! Works OK for a core burner rocket just as greenmix but dont ram above the the spindle as the rocket will hit the ground before your payload goes! (Use something a bit faster above the spindle)

[bogsulphur]

Thanks for the replies, dudes. Hmm, its a tough one. Unfortunately, though - I don't see "the police" and "laws" as many people do. What I see is a large group of people, with more physical force than myself, who would readily exert that force if they came into knowledge of any kind of pyro-related activities being carried out (as well as many other thoughts/activities).

As we all know, the police are individual people and I think they behave as such, not as law-bound robots. Also my experience with cops I've met has given me a very unpleasant impression of the kind of people who choose that job.
If I'm found with "potassium nitrate" and one of the cops thinks "shit, i've heard of that before..." Then there's no doubt I'd be arrested, my DNA taken and kept, computer seized.. etc. Whether I am finally charged or not, it still is a rather undesirable situation. And my perception of the current state of policing and politics makes me almost certain that if I got chemicals etc and didn't get a visit then its only by luck that no police decided come round and have a look - not because they didn't know or weren't interested.

:/

Spot on, absolutely spot on. Not that its important but my view and experience of cops is pretty similar in that they act in TOTAL accordance with the law, which sometimes defies not just common sense, but the sense thats even deeper in your brain, right in the instinct department. As a general observation, and I've never met a cop who goes outside this description, they tend to behave as if they made the law up and it was their idea, like the kid at school who only let people he liked play with his ball. Do you know what I mean? They just don't think, look at people's background etc. because the law is made to cover the lowest common denominator - the shitebag criminal. But I didn't mean this to develop into a rant - there's something important.

I've been selling kno3 on ebay for 2 1/2 years now without any problems. And before you start, yes, I do all the stuff everybody loves to believe ebay sellers ignore. Anyway I got a phone call from west yorkshire police a month ago (i live in glasgow) saying they wanted to meet me. I had no idea why, or how they got my number or anything so I was pretty worried.

When they eventually came up (they drove 3 hundred miles from w.yorkshire instead of telling strathclyde police to get me so I realised it must be serious) they met me in central station and took me into an absolutely tiny room in the transport police office, and shone an incredibly bright light on me. They said 'do you know what this is about' and I said no and they said 'we're from counter-terrorism,' as in government agents. Then they told me some asian guy had bought kno3 off me on ebay and used it to make a b**b to use against the bnp in leeds.

As you can imagine I was getting kind of worried by this point. What happened was they took a massive 9 page statement, told me to come to court next year sometime to give a witness statement and let me go. BUT read this - this is the story, or the bare bones of it anyway.

http://www.yorkshire...t-on.3214623.jp

Stupid, isn't it? I mean I've got no criminal record or anything, but I have been detained by cops a couple of times so I'm pretty familiar with their procedures, and this was something else. Like properly organised, they must have spent millions on this one operation. They had ALL my details, even some I didnt know I had! And the guy only had 500g kno3. Thats 667g bp which isn't going to be very effective as a destructive device. I told them that and the amount they didn't know was staggering. They had no idea how inert it is, what it's uses outside pyro are, or even within pyro!

[ITCHI]

Great story bogs, the amazing thing to me is the police should be using the skill, knowledge and expertise of people from this board and other pyro boards to learn and grow in their knowledge.

[Arthur Brown]

Itchi, -They probably are!

667g of home made BP may not be a major demolition charge BUT it would cause terror among unsuspecting people, if the user was so minded. 500g of nitrate would be a year's supply of fertiliser for a very small plot of garden.

[Steve]

Wow bogsulphur! that is an interesting story.
I was involved with the same investigation, along with another member of this forum who can make himself known at his own discresion. From reading your post and what the police said to me, I think they visited us first.

The same police came down to Surrey to talk to us about the same suspect because he attempted to purchase chemicals from Inoxia. It turned out that he never purchased from us, he bailed out of the sale when things didn't go as smoothly and anomalously as he had hoped. The difference in response is interesting, the police met us at our house to take a statement, there was no mention of arrest or 'taking us down the station'. But then again, are you registered as a company? do you pay tax etc? If not, you can hardly be surprised at the reaction of the police, a private individual selling KNO3 on eBay for 2.5 years... looks dodgy to me, if not terrorism, certainly a honey pot for claiming back-tax and fining the hell out of you for illegal trading.

[aquarius]

Reading this makes me a bitt woried. Here a member talks about selling KNO3 on eBay, obvously as a private person, and admittingly telling the forum that he does not give a shit about the rules for sale. And in the same breath, complaining about getting investigated for it..
And people wonder why pyro has a bad rep? Jeez.

[Arthur Brown]

A basic concept of the internet is that data is split into packets ( some geek can tell how big ) and each of these packets has the terminal address built in. SO if you send data from a computer to a computer then each data packet has the to and from addresses included.

Although a warrant is needed to read mail inc electronic mail the traffic analysis and the address book give enough info to form networks between friends/acquaintances/accomplices. Terrorism enquiries will get the warrants if there is basic likelyhood of need.

[receive]

Here a member talks about selling KNO3 on eBay, obvously as a private person, and admittingly telling the forum that he does not give a shit about the rules for sale.

I can't find where he said that, can you quote it?

[aquarius]

No. I can't quote him, but I'll quote this:

And before you start, yes, I do all the stuff everybody loves to believe ebay sellers ignore.