[Synchronium]

Ok...

All quantities are by weight. 70/30 would mean 70g for every 30g. Unless specified in whatever article you read always assume it's by weight.

Flash Powder
Weigh out your metal (Al, Mg) and your oxidiser (XNO3, XClO3, XClO4, XMnO4, etc), and grind down the oxidiser into a fine powder if it's not already. You'll have a hard job grinding your metal down any further, so the only real way to make decent flash is to buy prepowdered metals. When you have both prepared, pour them onto a large (double layer) sheet of newspaper and pull opposing corners up to meet eachother. Lower them back down and repeat with the other corners. Continue this process (it takes a while...) until the mix is homogenous. You could also stick everything in a bag and mix it together with your hands, btu this is the most advisable method.

The finer your flash, the faster it'll burn. Usual flash powders look like just that, a slivery powder that gets everywhere. It's incredibly fine, but not too hard to handle provided you posess a little dexterity. A thin trail of unconfined flash powder will burn rapidly (and I mean rapidly) with a brilliant white light. If you make any attempts to confine it however, it will more than likley make a rather loud bang with a brilliant flash of light. If you've ever seen those old photographers with the hooded cameras that hold little stands, which they pour FP onto and ignite to produce enough light for the photograph, you'll get an idea of how this stuff burns. Granted, that FP is not chemically the same as the stuff we usually use, since it also contains strontium & barium to balence out the colours (since FP is usually bluish).

You'll only need a small amount to do whatever with. Anything more than about 5g is overkill and you're just wasting your powder.



Black Powder
BP is made from charcoall, sulphur and an oxidiser (usually KNO3). Use whatever ratios your recipe suggests (by weight of course) and grind up, or ball ill if possible, all your ingredients individually. Once you have three tubs ow powdered ingredients, mix them together in a similar manner to the above. Once mixed together, it'll look like a browny black powder that can and will get everywhere. In my experience I've never managed to get pure black charcoal, but it's always been just as good as pourchased stuff. Now, depending on what you want, you can use this powder as is or you can "corn" it; a process designed to standardise the stuff you work with. Corning involves wetting and pressing (with loads of pressure) your powder into little hard cakes. The cakes are then broken up into little "crumbs", which are seived using a number of specific mesh screens, resulting in a number of different particle sizes. Finer stuff will burn faster and larger stuff, a little bit slower. Commercial corning also includes dusting the pellets with graphite to reduce friction when handling (IE sliding them into tubes).

Black powder will burn with an orange flame, full of particulates. This burns a lot slower than flash. When compressed in casing, it might make a bang, or it might just pop the lid off, since BP is used for lifting more than exploding. To use properly, poor a small amount into a tube, add a fuse, wadding and projectile and ignite. The projectile will be sent into the air rather than the tube exploding, as would be the case with FP.

Other things you can do with BP are making black match, a semi reliable slow burnign fuse and BP covered sawdust, a tool used to dampen the explosive effects of BP even more - used to explode open firework shells in mid-air - if BP were used alone, it would more than likley shatter the stars inside, but the coated sawdust only pushes them out into the sky.


There ya go.