Chaoticentity

I've built 1/2inch ID x 7inch fountains that have shot well over 50 feet, check out skylighters articles for one such fountain, play with your own mixes. You fountain would have lasted longer had you been able to press in into the tube under greater pressure.

but you can't use strike anywere maches!!! the other ones are made out of red phosphorus and potassium chlorate, the phosphorus is on the match, (atleast thats how I think thay are made...  )
and, well it takes some time to strip the matches, but I'm happy whit the resault...

the red phosphorus is not on the match it is in on the stricking surface, most matches are indeed a chlorate/sulfur/whatever mix and are fairly friction sensitive. Try lighting a regular match on smooth concrete sometime it'll light. Match heads work for a simple report but I would recommend fast BP, whistle mix, or flash, the easiest would be to make BP.

My first reports were a fuse taped into a plastic bag with BP then wrapped in tape. These worked great. In this case I would focus on better blackmatch, once you make blackmatch that will burn under a brick you'll have no problems with a cracker

try 1% or even .5% red iron oxide is a good catalyst, generally any metal oxide works decent. Play with ratio's and %'s until you find what works.

i'll rephrase, I have never seen ceramic media spark at low tempatures, once a few years back I was doing using a Raku kiln (porcelin/stoneware cone 10+ so in excess of 2400 deg F) and dropped a red hot bowl from the firing kiln, this fragmented into very small pieces that went everywhere I suppose this could be sparking. The only sparking I've ever heard of in ceramic media was induced, that is that they milled several different mixtures, one of which reacted with another in the pourous structure.

I say this with the caveat that I would personally never use anything except hardened lead media. This stuff is tried and true and works. I believe that the balls rolling provides more grinding surface than anything else. I've tested BP after 4 hours in my mill that burned at 170cm sec (commerical air float, granular Kno3, and regular sulfur powder) this is with ~4lbs .60 cal lead muzzle loading balls in a lortone tumbler 12lbs capacity 2 6lb barrels. I would say that brass may be just a bit easier to aquire then lead balls, but that's in the USA so I have no idea of the restrictions in the UK.


I would also slow down the RPM's just a bit, I feel that the sliding/grinding action of the media does more good than a lift and drop. I found that slowing down my tumbler to around 75-80 rpm did a better job in a shorter amount of time. I have also found that milling dry was faster than milling wet. I get quite useable (160cm/sec or faster) powder after 4 hours instead of the 10-12 that it took before.

Okay.  Is it just me, or is this not a good idea?  I thought lead was the ONLY suitable media for BP

Ceramic media is non sparking, however it is slightly pourous which can lead to problems if you use it to mill anything other than BP, as long as you dont theres no problem. I have personally had better results by using hardened lead media and beefing up the motor so it can handle the torque.