46 replies to this topic

[sir steve]

Blue lance. you can never get the depth of colour wit KP as you can with AP or KC.

but this is a good starting point;

KClO4 6
BaNO3 6
Black copper oxide 3
Lactose 3
Parlon 1
MgAl 1

For stars bind with water

[fruitfulsteve]

cheers, i'll try it with kc is it still the same percentage?

[digger]

Now then Steve

Sulphur does not decompose to something nasty, in fact it is often used on crops and for soil conditioning (why else would garden centers sell it).

Barium will ultimately end up as barium Sulphate in the environment which is about as inert as chemicals get.

Strontium well we all need a bit of that as a trace nutrient.

Antimony salts are not the most pleasant from a toxicology standpoint, however they are pretty insoluble so won't present that much of a problem (I am sure someone will correct me on this if wrong)

Mercury, well I don't want it anywhere near me in any sort of vapor form. I have allot of fillings and not one of them is amalgam. There have been loads of papers on how this stuff builds up in the brain and slows down all of you reaction times aside from the other more acute poisoning effects.

Lead, no thanks for similar reasons to the above.

Copper salts, mmm not that great but in a whole different league to the two above.

Dioxins, produced from the burning of chlorinated rubbers. Well not that much research has been done in this area with regard to pyrotechnics. However loads has been done on dioxin formation in furnaces and this would indicate that this could be a problem in fireworks.

Yadi yadi yada

But ultimately why use things that can be avoided? and why risk poisoning yourself? I understand testing a few grams of these out of interest, but why do more than that?

[digger]

Blue lance. you can never get the depth of colour wit KP as you can with AP or KC.

but this is a good starting point;

KClO4 6
BaNO3 6
Black copper oxide 3
Lactose 3
Parlon 1
MgAl 1

For stars bind with water

and what binder?

Does this not turn out more of a turquoise?

[fruitfulsteve]

Wow have you just read that ?
on the sulphur issue(and i'm no expert as you know) but i don't think your supposed to set light to it before you put it on your garden, sulphur dioxide,hydrogen sulphide and ultimately sulphuric acid acid rain? spring to mind.
I did say i wasn't planing on covering the world with a thin layer of mercury, i was simply trying a few old formulas to see what they look like to give myself a control as it were.
More importantly i was just trying to make the point that pyro is not enviro friendly in my defence i only asked how much hgcl costs and got a load of greif of people some of whom may set off hundreds of fireworks a year and worse still i suspect a few who don't make any and just put down people who do with information gathered from reading books and never actually try anything.

I moved on from hgcl some time ago now and i think i'm on the verge of a blue that i like and it's enviro friendly (by pyro standards anyway)

[digger]

Wow have you just read that ?
on the sulphur issue(and i'm no expert as you know) but i don't think your supposed to set light to it before you put it on your garden, sulphur dioxide,hydrogen sulphide and ultimately sulphuric acid acid rain? spring to mind.
I did say i wasn't planing on covering the world with a thin layer of mercury, i was simply trying a few old formulas to see what they look like to give myself a control as it were.
More importantly i was just trying to make the point that pyro is not enviro friendly in my defence i only asked how much hgcl costs and got a load of greif of people some of whom may set off hundreds of fireworks a year and worse still i suspect a few who don't make any and just put down people who do with information gathered from reading books and never actually try anything.

I moved on from hgcl some time ago now and i think i'm on the verge of a blue that i like and it's enviro friendly (by pyro standards anyway)

Not trying to give you grief Steve and I fully understand about wanting to try these old formula out and I am sure a couple of grams are OK, heck I am truly interested in how good they really are! But I would definitely not want to breathe the smoke as there is a very good chance it will have a permanent effect on your brain function no matter how small. It may be insignificant, but I personally don't want to take a chance with something very avoidable especially also being a motorcycle rider wanting to keep my reaction times sharp.

I am just not sure we should advocate the use of some of these chemicals without highlighting the risks. No-one wants to get poisoned especially permanently.

Yep there are definitely issues with "enviro friendly", but they are probably not as bad as you think with most modern formula.

By the way any SO2 would ultimately end up as sulphates/sulphides (as will sulphur in a great deal of time), Yep H2S is very poisonous not sure of the ultimate products without thinking about it. Yes there are issues as you say, but not too poisonous in comparison.

I looked up the lethal dose of Paris green the other day, wow you don't much of that in you to have a very serious problem. You definitely need to take some proper precautions working with that.

Edited by digger, 01 July 2009 - 10:39 PM.

[fruitfulsteve]

I wasn't referring to you when i mentioned giving me grief
As far as paris green is concerned it's gonna be a while before i have to worry about it but i will be VERY careful, and again i'm not going to be making any great amount of anything with it.
I should also mention i do most of my testing over an old asbestos land fil site (and maybe the odd sneaky one from the back garden) so a little AS or HG is negligible

btw why do they take the sulphur from petrol ? (i'm sure it's not to keep the pyro industrie supplied with sulphur)

[digger]

I wasn't referring to you when i mentioned giving me grief
As far as paris green is concerned it's gonna be a while before i have to worry about it but i will be VERY careful, and again i'm not going to be making any great amount of anything with it.
I should also mention i do most of my testing over an old asbestos land fil site (and maybe the odd sneaky one from the back garden) so a little AS or HG is negligible

btw why do they take the sulphur from petrol ? (i'm sure it's not to keep the pyro industrie supplied with sulphur)

They take sulphur from crude oil because it poisons the catalysts used in the process of cracking the longer chain hydrocarbons into the nice light short chain jobies that your car likes. Clearly there could also be an issue will acid rain if we burned loads and load of the stuff as you noted.

[fruitfulsteve]

poisons catalysts ? acid rain ? doesn't decompose into something nasty ? fancy some volcano abseiling?

i have some concerns about hexamine that stuff or whats in it just worries me, i'm still trying it in some blues thou!!

[digger]

When I say poisons catalysts it blocks the adsorption sites for the hydrocarbons on platinum/nickel etc so not quite poison in the human sense. When acid rain stops the land recovers quickly. That can't be said about heavy metals which remain for countless years or even lifetimes. The environment can deal with many things easily whilst others just hang around generations.

Ever heard of Mad hatter disease?

Hexamine does not worry me too much, it should decompose fully in a flame to water co2 plus nitrogen. Yes it can decompose to formaldehyde in the presence of acid conditions in the pores of the skin which could be a problem that will cause a bit of skin irritation. This is nothing in comparison to your paris green which has a lethal dose of 5mg per kg for humans!

Edited by digger, 02 July 2009 - 07:09 PM.

[sir steve]

cheers, i'll try it with kc is it still the same percentage?

Something gone wrong with my post. I don't know my be a bit fast let me know

Stephen.

[sir steve]

and what binder?

Does this not turn out more of a turquoise?

No it is a better blue than just perchlorate don't know why.

The lactose is fuel and binder they roll up easly.

[fruitfulsteve]

When I say poisons catalysts it blocks the adsorption sites for the hydrocarbons on platinum/nickel etc so not quite poison in the human sense. When acid rain stops the land recovers quickly. That can't be said about heavy metals which remain for countless years or even lifetimes. The environment can deal with many things easily whilst others just hang around generations.

Ever heard of Mad hatter disease?

Hexamine does not worry me too much, it should decompose fully in a flame to water co2 plus nitrogen. Yes it can decompose to formaldehyde in the presence of acid conditions in the pores of the skin which could be a problem that will cause a bit of skin irritation. This is nothing in comparison to your paris green which has a lethal dose of 5mg per kg for humans!

i know (i'm not that dumb) that catalysts don't get a bad tummy through sulphur poisoning

i did read about mad hatters disease, something about HG or PB used in the process of making hats and off course the mad hatter.

can you not get hydrogen cyanide from formaldehyde + acid?

it's not my paris green yet, but less than half a gram lethal to someone of my weight will certainly keep my concentration levels up!! does it accumulate in your system? i'm guessing it does.

did you know the Romans used to drink mercury because they liked the feeling of it slopping round in their stomachs, they keep finding it in old Roman sewers.

[digger]

it's not my paris green yet, but less than half a gram lethal to someone of my weight will certainly keep my concentration levels up!! does it accumulate in your system? i'm guessing it does.

did you know the Romans used to drink mercury because they liked the feeling of it slopping round in their stomachs, they keep finding it in old Roman sewers.

I don't know if it concentrates in your system (other types of arsenic poisoning can be cumulative but recoverable if the poisoning stops), you will have to do your research on that one. There are still deaths attributed to this stuff in this day and age. It would seem after doing a quick google these were Artists, fireworks workers and other random deaths. It would appear that it has been a poison of choice in the past.

No I did not know the romans used to drink mercury. I wonder what effect that this had on their lifespan?. It ceratinly would not be something I would like to do knowing what we do now.

[fruitfulsteve]

Apparently Napoleon died of arsenic poisoning, from his wallpaper.

Perhaps the Roman empire didn't fad away because they we're a bunch of screaming homos, it was just plain old mercury poisoning after all