So I went down to one of the local firework store and I found this thing. This is a pull tab smoke grenade
Now, normally you would light your fireworks by holding an open flame to a fuse but not with this thing. You just pull the string, it automatically lights the fuse and smokes for about a minute.
So for this video I thought why don't we try taking some of the matchbook fuse lighters we made in a previous video and try making some improvised smoke grenades of our own.
Now most smoke generating compositions are made with potassium chlorate which I don't have right now. So for this experiment i'm going to go back to my solid state rocket fuel we made in a previous video.
This stuff is basically a mild solid state rocket fuel which burns very very vigorously but I think it will still be a good proof of concept of what we are trying to do here today.
I spent a little bit of time this morning putting together some new pyrotechnic pull tabs
And I made one small modification. If you look down here on the bottom, you can see there is a knot in the end of the fuse as well
And that is because the composition we are going to be using is going to be cast which means we are going to pour it into a tube and let it set.
as the composition sets it'll grab on to that knot
making it very difficult for that
fuse to come out when we tug on our
igniter. I'm not going to spend a lot of time
telling you how this composition is made
you already know that from another video
But it's a 60:40 mix of potassium nitrate
and sugar. let's get cooking!
update guys our composition is
thoroughly mixed we're just about ready
to put it on some heat and melt it down
and caramelize it. But before we do
that it's a good idea to have some
simple containers we can pour our
composition into before it's fully
melted and this is what I just threw
together. I started off with the handle
of a broom and disconnected it from the
broom head then took a piece of printer
paper and wrapped it around the handle a
few times until it was nice and tight.
I taped that off to keep the tube together
and then slowly pull it off the end of
the handle and you can see that gives us a
nice long tube. From there I simply took
a pair of scissors and snipped it up
into different lengths and then tips of
hot glue and glued it to a cardboard
base. It is pretty thin paper so I'm not
exactly sure how well they'll hold up
but we're going to find out aren't we!
All right let's turn up the heat
starting to look delicious like pie
there we go starting to get to a workable consistency.
so our rocket fuel is melted down into a
nice gooey consistency that looks a lot
like peanut butter and we've got our
tube set and standing by so let's go
ahead and pour the mixture in
and set our fuse !
so let's let this cool down in the fridge for a minute
I've got a lot of this stuff left over
so just for kicks I'm gonna try
pouring this into a glass
hope the glass doesn't break though
beautiful it's very
pretty! That right there is what I call
an energy drink! So looking back on the
situation I think I mixed up way too
much to begin with. I should have done
this in smaller batches and poured
smaller amounts. this is a very flammable
pyrotechnic material and I got it
everywhere! Do NOT do what I just did!
dang you can see how that's crystallized
like candy! I'm literally chiseling
rocket fuel off my workbench. Kind of
looks like peanut brittle.
It's got a bit of a bite to it. Let's check this out guys
surprisingly our paper tubes held up I
made quite a bit of a mess but the paper
tubes themselves did hold up now a lot
of these are still really really warm
I've had been sitting in the fridge for
20 minutes to cool down but they're
still going to need a little bit of
extra time to fully set so we're going
to light these off tomorrow but before
we do I'm going to cut the cardboard so
it forms individual pyrotechnic tubes
that we can light off one by one. And we
even refilled the tube for the actual
smoke grenade itself so we can put that
together and light it off as well.
And with all the stuff we had left over I
just poured into a glass stuck a
pull fuse in the top we're going to light
this sucker off with the rest of them
tomorrow. So is this idea even going to
work at all or did we just spend the
whole morning rigging up a system that's
going to be a complete fail. I'm just as
curious to know as you are so until we
find out thanks for joining me for this
video guys so i'll be looking for you in the
next one! talk to you then you know that
lingering sensation it's like my finger hurts oh
it's on fire don't worry I'm not going
to leave you empty-handed we still got
all those scraps we gotta go burn here we go!
here it goes
Hahaha! And that right there is how we do the
dishes king of random style. Yeah! Hey
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