New to candyrocketry

[Pyrostar]

Hi all

My mother forbade me to store large amounts of BP and I am very scared that she will get arrested,
so I stop making real pyro.
A good alternative I think will be candy rockets, since they are not so dangerous like BP.
I think that candyrockets can be quite funny.

I have got large amounts of KNO3, so I want to make a few candyrockets.

How can I make them very good and what precautions should be taken
and would they take off as easy as BP-based rockets?

I mean I ban anything of my pyro-career that is similar to BP.
My mother would want to ask a firefighter wether making BP is illegal or not,
and that scared the heck out of me.

So I want to start candy-rocketry.
So, any advices would be great!

thanks,


Pyrostar

[superman21]

My mother forbade me to store large amounts of BP and I am very scared that she will get arrested,
so I stop making real pyro.

Why are you scared that your mom will get arrested? She isn't doing anything wrong is she?

How can I make them very good and what precautions should be taken
and would they take off as easy as BP-based rockets?
Check out this website. It's made by James Yawn, and he has developped a very nice recipe for candy rockets called rcandy... And yes, if built well, they take off as easy as BP rockets, and they will be able to take a large payload with them. Yesterday I built a 35 grams rcandy rocket with a total of 28 grams of fuel. It burned down in 1.3 seconds and deliverd a peak thrust of over one (my scale goes only to one kilogram) kilogram for 0.8 seconds!!!

But check out the site and soon you'll be a rocket scientist :)

[Pyrostar]

Hi

Can I also make good rocket´s without melting the fuel?


Pyrostar

[Nitroglycerin]

Why are you scared that your mom will get arrested? She isn't doing anything wrong is she?

Sorry for the offtopicness, but would you like it when your mother would be in prison for a long time? Wtf mate. So you think you dont miss her, her jobs in the household and other stuff which makes you life more pleasantly?

[superman21]

When cold-mixing the ingredients (KNO3 and sugar and perhaps some Fe2O3) the quality of your mix will be lousy... It burns way too slow to push the rocket into the skies.

Technically the method James Yawn uses isn't actually melting. It's just another way to recrystallize in order to create a peanutbutter clay-like texture which cannot be molded, but can formed into shape with a ram and some engine molds. This recrystallising method is much less dangerous than melting the ingredients together, but precautions (i.e. face screen, garden handgloves and a labcoat) should be taken.

You CAN make rockets without melting, but they are way too pyro for your mom to agree with them, like BP rockets, whistling rockets or AN-charcoal rockets. But since these are out of question, I recommend rcandy...

Edit @ Nitroglycerin:

Would you like it when your mother would be in prison for a long time? Wtf mate. So you think you dont miss her, her jobs in the household and other stuff which makes you life more pleasantly?

This totally was not what I meant to say. I wanted to know why pyrostar was afraid his mother would be arrested if he'd be the one making blackpowder and other pyrotechnic devices. I don't see why his mom should be arrested... And of course I would miss my mom when she'd be arrested, and I certainly wouldn't like to imagine my mom in prison Excuse me for being obscure.

Prophet: paar typfoutjes aangepast.

[Pyrostar]

Hi

It is just the fact that my neighbour is from the police and BP-making is illegal in germany.
I didn´t really think over it, until my mother scared the heck out of me as she was saying that she would like to ask a firefighter wether it is illegal. I told that to her many times, but she recognize it.
She also took my BP for showing it the firefighter, but luckily I cried and she didn´t go to him at all.

Back to topic:
What are the disadvantages of candypropellant instead of using BP?
I mean the payload they can carry etc.


Pyrostar

[icarus]

i have been using a propellent listed as teleflite propellent a mix of KNO3 S and sugar it works well in the original tube size but is very pressure sensitive in larger diameter tubes (eg 15mm id ) burn speed rapidly increases and a 3 4 or 5 mm nozzle plug is blown out with a loud report the rocket then falls back to the ground i tried slowing burn time by addition of veg oil 1% but fuel characteristics stayed the same has anyone had any success with a casteable fuel grain using KNO3 and glues / resins??????

[Underlord]

Please learn to use .'s, ,'s and maybe some !'s and ?'s, and it would be useful to use capitals. I can't follow your story.

[D.L.]

I made some very nice candy propellant with potassiumnitrate sugar and hunny.
Take 200grams potassiumnitrate 60 grams of sugar and 40 grams of hunny. Ad about 300-400ml water and start to boil the mixture until all the water evaporates. Than all the ingredients are very good mixed. And you have a very nice rocketfeul.

[miech]

I would recommend to use a 75/25/+1 ratio of KNO₃, sugar and brown or red iron oxide. This will provide a lot of thrust, especially with a full core. The burn time is usually quite short, less than a second, but you get a nice gas output. For best results you will need to melt it together, but this is considered somewhat dangerous. Substituting sorbitol for sugar will lower the melting point, and is therefore safer. A burn from candy propellant heals easier than one from black powder, because the sugar feeds your body cells. That's another reason in favour of using it.

The disadvantages are the hygroscopicity (absorbs moist from the air readily) of the propellant, and the need to melt or recrystallize it. Sorbitol based propellants are somewhat less sensitive to moist, but at extended time they will suffer from it too.

For a good fast take off, priming the core with meal powder or a similar composition is necessary. A gramme would be plenty for a rocket, so you don't have to make or store remarkable quantities .

[icarus]

sorry previous post difficult to follow saltpetre KNO3 63% sugar 27% sulphur S 10% casing 1/4 inch inside diameter ( quarter inch) length 2 inches nozzle diameter 1/8 th inch
ive tested these very small but fly well

all information from "the incredible 5 cent sugar rocket " teleflite corporation may be found at

http://www.alphalink.com.au/~brucej/nickle.htm

[Willy]

heee,

I was wondering if anybody from holland could tell me what they use instead of the Karo Syrup that is used in the original recipe. Do you use honey? Or maybe maizena? Please tell me.

[Willy]

i found out myself that normal honey works perfect. I made a 150 gram batch and the candy was really fast. I tried making a rocket of it but I got a CATO with a starmine like effect. Then I tried making a rocket with it without the nozzle but still I got a CATO with a starmine like effect. Tonight i`ll make another batch and i`ll cut some stars of the candy dough. I think that it will turn out pretty nice. I was surprised how fast it was burning.

edit: ( I couldnt edit my own question with a answer thats why I made a second reply.)

Edited February 5, 2008 by Willy

[mr.stijntje]

That's interesting, a CATO with a nozzleless rocket! Did it have a core? What was the end plug made of?
It sounds quite odd to me, getting your candy fuel that fast!

[Willy]

Hey,

My rocket didnt have a nozzle or a core. I used some bentonite for the endplugg. But still it blew up in a blink of the eye. The tube was still intact but the candy that was inside was gone also the end plug didn`t blew out. I put the tube with the nozzle up to the sky in the ground for a static test but when it was lit, it looked like a starmine, 4 rcandy "stars" blew in the sky about 3 meters high. It looked awesome, to bad i didn`t catch it on film.

I have some candy of that batch left over, I`ll film it. I was really surprised with the burning speed it looked just as fast as the Rcandy from James Yawn with added Fe2O3 maybe even faster. One thing that made the RCandy different then others was that when dry, it turned into a rock hard piece (really really hard). It looked a bit like crack. The texture was not as it was supposed to be.

I made another batch that evening and that one was made with 100 gram of potassium nitrate, 50 grams of sugar and 15 grams of honey (excellent acacia from the Albert Heijn). It turned out more like it was supposed to; as a sort of cookie dough that you could from. Me and my friend wanted to have some fun so we put the still warm RCandy dough in a paper tube. I though that it was going to CATO but it was burning a bit slow and it was a perfect torch like the ones you see in football. I still have some of that batch too, i`ll compare them and film it. The torch was cool i`ll make some more.