Hier het rcept wat ik voor mn yellow powder heb gebruikt.
This is a "forgotten" fun explosive.
It's very easy to make from common accessible items.
The manufacturing is not dangerous in any way.
This powder burns 8.5 times faster than the best commercial black powder.
If it's pressed in a tube, no detonation occurs, but when the powder is molten upon an
iron plate in its uncompressed form, it first turns brown and then it detonates with a
loud "bang".
1. Mix 4 grams of dry potassium nitrate and 2 grams of dry potassium carbonate
(baking ingredient)
in a mortar and pestle. Grind together to a fine powder.
2. Weigh out 4.5 grams of the above powder
and add 1 part of sulfur. Grind carefully together.
This light yellow powder explodes heavily when molten by a match flame, etc.
Store airtight.
Try detonating it in metal tubes.
It's not shock sensitive.
This is fulminating powder, made, according to Ure's ,,Dictionary of
Chemistry," first Am erican edition, Philadelphia, 1821:
by triturating in a warm mortar, three parts by weight of nitre, two of carbonate of potash, and one of
flowers of sulfur. Its effects, when fused in a ladle, and when set on fire, are very great. The whole of the
melted fluid explodes with an intolerable noise, and the ladle is commonly disfigured, as if it had received
a strong blow downwards.
Samuel Guthrie, Jr. (cf. Archeion, 13, 11 jr. [19311), manufactured and sold in this country large quantities
of a similar material. In a letter to Benjamin Silliman dated September 12, 1831 (Am. J. Sci. Arts, 21, 288 if.
[1832]), he says:
I send you two small phials of nitrated sulphuret of potash, or yellow powder, as it is usually called in
this country. . . I have made some hundred pounds of it, which were eagerly bought up by hunters and
sportsmen for priming fire arms, a purpose which it answered most admirably; and, hut for the happy
introduction of powder for priming, which is ignited by percussion, it would long since have gone into
extensive use.
With this preparation I have had much to do, and I doubt whether, in the whole circle of experimental
philosophy, many cases can be found involving dangers more appalling, or more difficult to be overcome,
than melting fulminating powder and saving the product, and reducing the process to a business
operation. I have had with it some eight or ten tremendous explosions, and in one of them I received, full
in my face and eyes, the flame of a quarter of a pound of the composition, just as it had become
thoroughly melted.
The common proportions of 3 parts of nitre, 2 parts of carbonate of potash and 1 part of sulphur, gave a
powder three times quicker than common black powder; but, by melting together 2 parts of nitre and 1 of
carbonate of potash, and when the mass was cold adding to 4½ parts of it, 1 part of sulphur-equal in the
100, to 54.54 dry nitre, 27.27 dry carbonate of potash and 18.19 sulphur-a greatly superior composition
was produced, burning no less than eight and one half times quicker than the best common powder. The
substances were intimately ground together, and then melted to a waxy consistence, upon an iron plate of
one inch in thickness, heated over a muffled furnace, taking care to knead the mass assiduously, and
remove the plate as often as the bottom of the mass became pretty slippery.
By the previously melting together of the nitre and carbonate of potash, a more intimate union of these
substances was effected than could possibly be made by mechanical means, or by the slight melting
which was admissible in the after process; and by the slight melting of the whole upon a thick iron plate, I
was able to conduct the business with facility and safety.
The melted mass, after being cold, is as hard and porous as pumice stone, and is grained with
difficulty; but there is a stage when it is cooling in which it is very crumbly, and it should then be powdered
upon a board, with a small wooden cylinder, and put up hot, without sorting the grains or even sifting out
41
the flour.
This is a reprint of
"The Chemistry of Powder & Explosives"
by Tenney L. Davis, page 31. "YELLOW POWDER"
Gr33tZ
