frosty90

Hi all,

Any oxidiser except KNO3 is effectively completely unavailible commercially for me. I have to make do with what I can synthesise myself. I have made chlorate before using electrolysis with graphite anodes, it works brilliantly, but I became fed up with the errosion of the anodes, which puts an incredibley fine graphite into the solution. So I have purchased a commercial gold-plating platinum plated mesh anode and a stainless steel cathode. The stainless steel cathode has what appears to be a stainless steel strap spot welded to it to make the electrical connection. Heres the weird thing. At the point where the strap leaves the solution, the part exposed to the 'air' above the electrolyte is going brown/corroding. The part submerged is fine though. What is going on? This looks bad. Could it be gaseous chlorine? or something more complicated? more to the point: can itbe stopped?

Jesse

Hi,

I swear there was a thread already on this, but I could not find it (mods move/delete this if you feel so inclined):

I have barium carbonate, so I was thinking BaCO3 + 2HNO3 ---> Ba(NO3)2 +CO2 + H20
react the appropriate amounts, then test pH and bring it back up to 7 if needed with excess carbonate.
I can get 68% nitric (other dilutions are more expensive!), would you recomend diluting it first? Any special precautions for such a process (I am aware of the hazards of nitric, and soluble barium salts)?
Can anyone share their experiencees?

Jesse

Hi all,

How much lift should be used in bag mines (mines to be fired from a mortar), as a percentage of the 'load' ? I have only made 1" mines before with their own tube, and I use about 2g of powder for lift. I want to make some 2" or 3" mines, with coloured and silver stars, any suggestions?

Jesse

Hi,

I recently extracted my first batch of K chlorate from my electrolytic cell. I filtered and re-crystalised once, to remove graphite. I did not boil the solution. Now that the stuff is dry I can notice two apparent crystal structures: There are 'flat sheets' which are certainly the potassium chlorate, but there are also a few long, thin needle like crystals. What are they? Could they be K hypochlorite? Should I boil the stuff in solution and re-crystalise? I'd take a picture, but I havnt got a good enough camera for such tiny things.

Cheers,
Jesse

Hi,

I just recently asked the question in the general pyrotechnics section "why do whistle comps whistle" and several answers I got were generally along the lines of: The whistle comp strobes at audio frequency etc. This makes perfect sense. I unsderstand fully, but now (can you sense the question coming?).....so at a more fundamental level: why do strobing comps do so? why do some (i.e. whistle mixes) strobe faster than others? I know some chemistry, and a fair bit of physics, so if anyone knows in depth, I love to know whyy things work...


Cheers,
Jesse