ANNM/AL story+?

[CyclonitePyro]

Yesterday my life became complete, I dreamed of detonating a charge of ANNM/AL consisting of 435g re-crystallized AN, 25g AL, 130ml nitromethane, it all fit into a 20oz. soda bottle. The detonator was a piece of 1/2" PVC the length of the bottle filled with packed AP putty made with DB smokeless powder, I know that is a bit much but I despise misfires.
This was my first time with this and I underestimated power by a lot. I buried it 2 feet deep in a wet sandy mud, lit fuse retreated 30m, knelt behind a tree, ka freakin boom!!! The ground shook and the sound was so deep, it was so awesome, I swear I get an adrenaline rush every time I remember. Huge rocks I didn't know about started landing, that scared me a bit when one landed right in front of me. The crator was 8' across and 4' deep in the center, my jaw dropped when I saw this. Above me about 60-70" feet the branches and leaves were covered with mud, gobs of mud the size of basketballs were all over, stuck to trees 20m away.
Sorry no pics, I can picture it in my head though.

Here's my qeustion, What else does AN dissolve in that will evaporate qiuckly? when I use AN I dissolve it in water and then put the bowl in a food dehydrator, wait a couple days until the water is gone and it is a nice fine mass of whitish clear crystals, I don't like waiting a couple days for the water to evaporate, I tried denatured alcohol, but so little AN dissolves in it, I'd need a gallon to dissovle a pound of it.


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"Friends don't let friends play with
Nitrogen Triiodide"

[green beret]

Try putting the AN in denatured alchohol and heat it gently. You could also refer to Ragnars book-Home made c4(ANNM).

[Fingerless]

Beret, did you read his post? He said with denatured alcohol too much is needed.

I advise acetone, cheap, comes in larger containers, and evaporates quickly.

[Agent Blak]

I would also reccommend heating it. The recrystalizing nice thinking. Acetone Does evapourate faster than anything I know. What was the source of your Al Powder?

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A wise man once said:
"...There Will Be No
Stand Off At High Noon
... Shoot'em In The Back
And, Shoot'em In The Dark"

Agent Blak-------OUT!!

[CyclonitePyro]

That's great I didn't know AN, dissolved into acetone, It was German Darkhead 400mesh from Pyrotek.

[green beret]

Fingerless, did you read mine? I said to refer to ragnars home made c4 which explains a procedure for heating the AN and denatured alcohol. And in case you didnt notice he,(cyclonoite pyro) didnt say anything about heating it while he was trying to do it.

[This message has been edited by green beret (edited September 10, 2001).]

[Anthony]

Rather than putting the AN in the dessicator, just stick it in the oven at 100*C or so for an hour or two.

Your detonator (I'd call it a small bomb!) is way OTT, I've had success with 1.5gm or pressed HMTD. I haven't tried less yet but I'd bet 1gm would do it.

[green beret]

What type of container do you use for your 1.5g HMTD detonator Anthony? When using this for ANNM did you have Al in it? And do you recall the ratio you used for the ANNM.

[EventHorizon]

Anthony,

as little as .5g can be used for charges ~30g of ANNM in size and as little as .2g for ~.5g can be successful as well as 1g for 600 g ANNM.

Also, straight prilled AN CAN be initiated (so to speak) by plain old smokeless. (boy am I gonna like the response to this one http://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif )

[Anthony]

I've head of sub 0.5gm quantities being sufficient, but didn't want to state they work as I haven't tried them.

I pressed the MHTD into a section of 8mm ID 10mm OD Al tube. I didn't use Al powder and I used 20gm of NM to every 100gm of NH4NO3

I'm going to try to see if prilled AN can be used for ANNM as grinding the AN to a fine powder is labourious. I'll have to check that my prills are permeable (I've got a feeling they're coated).

[green beret]

Excellent, I am going to make up some HMTD soon.

[qwerty]

I know this hasn't got anything to do with your question, but yesterday I saw a programm about the bombing by timothy macveigh. In this documentary they looked at the possibility to accuse the furtilizer producer of neglegence.(read as could he have made his product safer). So they tryed the explosive retardents usually used nb(ammonium persulphate) This exploded as well as the pure ammoniumnitrate feul oil mix.
Conclusion: you don't have to separate the retardant.

And a question: Could I cast my an in a shape
and then pour over it the fueloil, let it sit for a while and then insert the det.
this was the an will be practically dry, and it takes only 10 min. to cast and a hour to dry.

excuse me for my englisch.

[Anthony]

Today I tried to detonate 24gm ANNM usins straight prills and 0.5gm HMTD cap (4.5mm ID Al tube). The NM was allowed to soak into the AN for at least and hour but the prills were impermeable and detonation did not occur. There was a fair amount of free NM swimming amongst the prills.

I also made an equal sized charge using powdered AN with and indentical detonator. Both charges were in a small plastic bag, this one did go off (much louder bang and a cloud of white smoke).

The strange thing is that both charges produced a mini-crater in the ground, the only difference being that the powdered AN one was slightly larger and was warm while the other was cold.

I would have expected a large difference in crater size produced between 0.5gm HMTD cap and 24gm ANNM + 0.5gm HMTD.

[Fingerless]

I read a study about the government testing differant things to put in fertilizer to retard the explosiveness, but they didn't get it to work out. All they said was that by putting differant additives in, that some made it a little harder to detonate but "increased the power when detonated". I'm not sure what they mean by this, VOD perhaps.

[EventHorizon]

There should have been a BIG difference, as the .5g cap should have marked the ground at the MOST and the ANNM should have left a much larger crater and significant blast "ring".

Just crushing the prill should be sufficient to break the, IIRC CaCO3, coating and allowing the NM to soak in.

Soaking in alcohol then heating at 40-50C untill bone white and powdering is the ultimate method tho.

[Anthony]

Yeah, that was going to be the next test, wetted and dried AN prills and using the powder produced without any powdering. Would be much easier to do en mass.

I set off the charges on a compacted sand/gravel path, it's practically concrete hard and a 120gm ANNM only left a crater a few inches accross and an inch or so deep. Weird.

Qwerty, the problem with the "retardant" coating which makes the product less hygroscopic is that it can also stop the prills absorbing the Fuel Oil.

[qwerty]

this could be but with a strong enough booster even pure an would explode. the feul is only for more energie.

[Donutty]

With the ANNM, it should be possible to detonate the mixture even if the NM didn't soak into the AN - pure liquid NM can be detonated:

http://donuttyfiles.50megs.com/vids/knowledge/det_nm.zip

Detonating the NM with a strong enough charge should then detonate the AN


BTW - My FTP site will be taken down soon because 50megs are tight and wont let me use FTP access after 17th Sept!

[CyclonitePyro]

Thanks for the info about recrystalizing AN, I only wanted to know this because I wanted to make my next charge really fast, but the same day I put up this topic I thought of an idea that didn't work so well, I dissolved the my AN prills in water, put the liquid in one of my mom's frying pans, and placed on my hotplate, I then turned it all the way up and left, (don't worry my hotplate is either unique or busted because it only heats to about 110* C), I put the pan on the hotplate and went out with my mom somewhere, when I got back my basement was full of white mist/smoke, I held my breath not knowing what I had produced, N20?, and opened the garage door, we have a basement/garage, and turned on the fan and got it all out, there was no smell or irritation but then again I didn't breath much of it in. In the pan there was a rock hard cake of AN. So I just crumbled it and dissolved it in water and put it in my dehydrator waited 3 days until today.
It's funny I started out with 500g I got from ebay and after some of it decomposed I have exactly the same amount of AN I used last time, 435g, I did the same thing from above except I used more NM and a smaller detonator, not sure how much Ap putty I used but it filled up a hollow pen tube.
This was in a different location, in really rocky mud, it was basically round rocks the size of baseballs up to softballs with mud in between them, it was hard to dig, it was about 2 feet deep in this buried and fuse lit, I ran away and stood behind a tree, I didn't get to see the blast but I felt it, and for about 30 seconds those rocks were falling everywhere once again awesome, I inspected the crator, I didn't really get to inspect the crator much I just glaced at it then booked, it was very large, not quite as large as the last because of all the rocks but very impressive!

------------------
"Friends don't let friends play with
Nitrogen Triiodide"

[This message has been edited by CyclonitePyro (edited September 12, 2001).]

[EventHorizon]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by EventHorizon:
Anthony,

Also, straight prilled AN CAN be initiated (so to speak) by plain old smokeless. (boy am I gonna like the response to this one http://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif )

</font>

hmmm, you'all really bummed me out on that one. I figured I'd get a few people telling me I was crazy etc. Who else here knows it can be done.

[Anthony]

Sure, straight NH4NO3 can be detonated, it's just a case of having a big enough booster. Detonating SP, particulary double base would work. Deflagerating SP should also work if you have enough of it.