Help with thermite... Improvised Al + iron oxide

[MasterSmiffy]

hey there.
i can anwser a few of your questions,
1. you said you were using steel wool for rust.but the rust must be iron oxide which is rust from iron not steel

2. im not sure that will work but you can buy 450 mesh aluminium powder on ebay,you can also buy it in many paint stores altho i doubt its is as fine

3.it is a 2:1 ratio of iron oxide to aluninium powder

4.im not sure about modeble thermite but the ratio above works

best of luck,
Mastersmiffy

[MasterSmiffy]

hi there,
you can light thermite with magnesium ribbon or sparkilers you can also light it with a rough mix of Potasium nitrate (KNO3) and suger,
best of luck,
MasterSmiffy

[fenderbender48]

Using steel wool is fine because steel is just iron and carbon and most steels have trace amounts of other metals too but all steel is just alloy. Remember that. There are no ionic or covalent bonds, so the iron is still there and easily oxidized.

For rust, I saw someone use thick steel rods AS electrodes, to relieve the problem of the electrodes being eaten (as with his setup the electrodes getting eaten was the main purpose).

For aluminum, I haven't tried it yet but will be trying it this winter... Use an electric grinder to grind your aluminum (the rims of soda cans work well) and then taking the aluminum shards and ball milling them until you have a fine powder.

It's worth a try.

[killerofall]

I just bought a one pound kit of unmixed thermite on ebay ro $16 ill tell you guys if it works.

[fenderbender48]

Sweeeet. You can also get pre-mixed thermite from United Nuclear... if anyone's interested...

[john lee]

Hello.I've tryed this and the cost is not worth the outcome,the steel wool cost almost ?4 and the bleach and vinegar cost ?1.50,after a week all i got was 2grams of dry oxide.It's cheaper to buy the stuff used as a colour pigment in cement.
Aluminium powder is easyer to buy from a casting work shop/store,it's a good mesh and saves all that milling.Please forgive any spelling mistakes,my spellings not very good.Cheers John.

[Hetfield]

Ok ladies and gents, I have a GREAT source to get powdered Iron that will Oxidize VERY quickly if left in humidity (It may however also go clumpy but hey, worth a try)

Over here in england they sell NUROFEN heat patches, These are like material pouches with Gel textured sticky stuff on one side, and they are filled with a salt solution and lots of FE powder! They are drug free and used as heat patches for bad backs etc.

As soon as you open the packet though they start to generate heat and oxidise, so you need to have a bowl of warm saltwater ready, ready to pour the contents into, and something fine like a seive to filter it through and stop the reaction clumping together every few minutes.

What you will be left with is saltwater and iron oxide powder. Filter the powder out, rinse it a good few times and there you go

Easy

Hope this helps

-Hetfield

[AdrenalineJunky]

Go to a machine shop, they machine rust off of things all the time.
I have over 20 pounds setting on my shelf, I just had to rust it out
a little more and screen out anything that was not rust to purify it.

aluminum, go to a recycling center where they grind it up and offer to buy the powder from them,
yes much of it is oxidized but thats not a hard problem to solve.

[john lee]

Originally Posted by AdrenalineJunky

Go to a machine shop, they machine rust off of things all the time.
I have over 20 pounds setting on my shelf, I just had to rust it out
a little more and screen out anything that was not rust to purify it.

aluminum, go to a recycling center where they grind it up and offer to buy the powder from them,
yes much of it is oxidized but thats not a hard problem to solve.

Just buy the stuff,it's not worth your time making it,there's no age limit on this,so anyone can buy it.

[xkdjs]

i tried the electrode in salt water method of making rust(the way you do it is get a lantern batter and hook up a wire coming from both ends and put them into salt water the one that bubbles you attach to your piece of iron, if you start getting green stuff switch the piece of iron to the other wire, the when you have your rust at the bottom of the container after a few days of waiting you can let the water evaporate of filter out the rust)and it was extremely inefficient and the way i was getting aluminum powder was by grinding down an ammonium bar with a grinding drill bit was also inefficient so i became lazy which was a good choice in this matter and bought chemicals from United nuclear.

[TuRps_NZ]

What is it with everyone making their Iron Oxide? It's so cheap to buy. Go to a hardware store and look for concrete products, it's used for colouring concrete. Look for Red Iron Oxide.