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Smoke bomb


kv

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Could anyone tell me how are these (KNO3 50g+sugar50g+paraffin30g) smoke bombs made, simply putting KNO3+sugar in melted paraffin, or there is more dificult precedure to make those things?

Sorry for my english... :oops:

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I can't agree with you're opinion. Smokebombs can be fun, but its a waste of expensive chemicals indeed. But with cheap fertilizers you can make smokebombs for less then no money :)
I do think that the fun is over after one, and I can't enjoy myself by watching smoke for half an hour, like I can with some beautiful pyro effects like mortars and stuff. So far my opinion:D

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Ah, smoke effect...it brings memories from highschool. We (I mean we, a few of us avantguard of the Pyro movement) would wrap a half of a comb made of celluloid into aluminium foil and then punch a small hole at one corner. The same corner would be heated by open flame (i.e. matches) until white smoke thrusted out. This smoking piece would be regularily thrown among youngsters smoking their first cigarettes in school toilet so that the fun was great. If you ever experienced breathing that white smoke with fulll lungs, well, it's nasty experience believe me. It even provokes your eyes to produce fair quantity of tears. All in all, one hell of a fun for bystanders. Unfortunately, they don't make combs of celluloid any more.

As for well known mixture of KNO3 and sugar, I made it a lot in my time...usually in form of thicker or thinner sticks wrapped in some fancy paper. We would hold them like road flares or so but blody things would have produced a lot of hot dross and you couldn't hold them for long. The smoke is not so dense but it's more or less harmless to breathe. I remember once, one of the guys from my school brought a humungous smoke bomb (KNO3 & Sugar) casted into 1kg paint tin. I didn't know what it was until lunatic lit the fuse (common sparkler) and rolled it down the main city square full of high-schoolers chatting and laughing. Boy, you should have seen the panic...everyone was trying to get away from it but damn device propelled itself somehow and fizzzed around in least expected directions. Girls were screaming and boys were cursing loudly...simply beautiful foreplay for Christmas night.

Personally, I never tried those with parafine wax. They say that mixture tends to burn with open flame so that it should be tightly closed inside sealed vessel with small holes punched so that almost no Oxigen could get in. Quantity of O seems to be critical here....the less O, the thicker cloud of smoke comes out...

Blaf

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  • Root Admin

The trick for a goog smoke bomb is, I think, to make a composition that produces mostly gaseous reaction products which react back to solids into the air and so producing a very fine air floating powder (= smoke).

For example the potassiumchlorate/ammoniumchloride compostion:
NH4Cl -> HCl + NH3 => HCl + NH3 -> NH4Cl (smoke)



Can anyone think of other chemicals which behave the same way and could therefore be used as part of a smokebomb composition?

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Personally, I never tried those with parafine wax. They say that mixture tends to burn with open flame so that it should be tightly closed inside sealed vessel with small holes punched so that almost no Oxigen could get in. Quantity of O seems to be critical here....the less O, the thicker cloud of smoke comes out...


The heat of the KNO3/sugar boils the paraffine forcing it to evaporate. When it comes in contact with the cold air it condenses again forming a very thick mist of very small solid particles. It's kinda the same effect with the NH4Cl smokebombs. The heat makes the ammoniumchloride change (ok, that's not evaporating) into NH3 en HCl which recombines in the air to NH4Cl.

EDIT: Gamekeeper was faster.

Can anyone think of other chemicals which behave the same way and could therefore be used as part of a smokebomb composition?


I can remember a sort of thermite smokebomb with the same effect.

Ah, found it, here is an example with (I think) the same effect:

Zinc oxide........................................45
Hexachloroethane..................................45
Aluminum..........................................10
(2 parts ZnO can be replaced by 1 part TiO2)
(Hexachloroethane (poisonous) can be replaced by 72 parts PVC)

Difficult to ignite though, even harder when using PVC. I guess a magnesium ribbon, some thermite or maybe some glycerine with KMnO4 should do the trick.

Source: pryo composition datbase chapter 5, smoke compositions.

http://members.pyroforum.nl/gamekeeper/composities_data...e.html#chapter5
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  • 2 weeks later...
I didn't want to start a new topic so I'll ask in this one:

Has anyone of you guys made colored smoke?

That won't be easy to make, its a whole different story to make these things.
You need a composition that burns at low temperature. otherwise your collour burns instead of spreading.
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  • 2 months later...
  • 10 months later...
I can't agree with you're opinion. Smokebombs can be fun, but its a waste of expensive chemicals indeed. But with cheap fertilizers you can make smokebombs for less then no money :mellow:
I do think that the fun is over after one, and I can't enjoy myself by watching smoke for half an hour, like I can with some beautiful pyro effects like mortars and stuff. So far my opinion:D

I fully appreciate where your coming from but for us newbie's a smoker is a great place to start learning.
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