Vaseline + KClO3

[Kdogg]

I know this has been covered alot, because I have searched & reasearched on it for a few days here now. People like "outsider" say it will not deflagerate, while others say its a low explosive that will. I have plenty of KClO3 to play around with & want to try this. Now isnt Vaseline a "gel" meaning I would have to mix with the KClO3 & let dry, & to what preportions? <<< This is the type of thing I could not find while searching. Well all the the info on this stuff was on posts like "detonating flash powder," So hopefully we can discuss specifically this here, & it will not get closed. Thanks in advance.

[Madog555]

this was coverd just a little while ago but the topic was deleted sience it was posted by RTC. u dont let it dry. and i think the proportions are 80% KClO4 and 20%vbaseline. may be 90/10 though.

here is some pics i thought u may apreciate.
its 100g of this plastique. wasnt very loud but it definately did some damage.

<a href="http://geocities.com/madog555/PC.html" target="_blank">http://geocities.com/madog555/PC.html</a>

[Kdogg]

Thank you very much!! So it is a gel? What does the vaseline do other that hold it together?

[Madog555]

it sensitizes it. just like mixin Al with AN to sensitize it and give it more power. oh, btw that detonator was like 0.7g PETN with some HDN on the bottom to take up room and give a little more power. i was realy low on PETN at the time.

[cutefix]

Nice Pics there Madogg...
Further,in relation to the purpose vaseline(as queried by Kdogg);it serves as the fuel to these explosive composition.

[Kdogg]

Ok like an anfo. Wow though I forgot to mention, I know its best to use alot of fuse, but you could get about a country mile away with that much. I mean half that much would give you plenty of run time, to be safe wouldnt it? Thanks alot guys, you were alot of help.

[Madog555]

well, at the time i used a TON, i probly use half as mutch now. and its not like an ANFO at all. i just used a fairly large det to make sure it whent off. i bet 500mg of PETN woulda done fine. one g of AP should do ya fine

<small>[ June 16, 2002, 10:48 PM: Message edited by: Madog555 ]</small>

[Kdogg]

Sorry I shoulda specified, I just meant that it needed a fuel as an anfo would. Not as it would be classified as an anfo type explosive.

[Madog555]

k, i get ya

[please refrain from posting one-liners like this]

<small>[ June 17, 2002, 02:34 AM: Message edited by: ALENGOSVIG1 ]</small>

[kingspaz]

recently there seems to have been a sudden drop in post quality. there has been a recent trend over the past week for crappy oneline replies which give no information. this is not a chat room so posts such as 'thanks for that' or 'ok, i see what you mean' should be avoided. think of new questions or additional information or even your opinion of an issue raised in the thread. make your posts useful and worthwhile.

the above is addressed to everyone, me included.

[sinstar]

Could NaClo3 be used instead? Its just it costs like half as much. And someone said that parrafian works better than vasaline, is this true?

[zaibatsu]

NaClO3 can be used, but it is more advisable to use KClO3 for two reasons: NaClO3 absorbs water from the atmosphere, making a (in some peoples findings) insensitive explosive even more so. Plus, IIRC, KClO3-based HE's are more powerful. NaClO3 can easily be converted to KClO3 using a potassium salt such as KCl or KNO3.

[Kdogg]

Easier or harder to detonate than anfo? Annm? anap? Thanks in advance for everything.

[sinstar]

KCl, I know of a brand called LO-SALT, would that work? I suppose its just a simple displacement reaction right, because potassium is more reactive than sodium? And in what proportions of NaCl03 should be added to KCl? Thanks.

[Zambosan]

It's a metathesis reaction; IIRC you need one of the products on the right side of the equilibrium to be drastically less soluble than the other in solution, or convert to a gaseous product to isolate the ionic compound you're after. Consult a solubility chart of various sodium salts vs. their potassium counterpart.

[zaibatsu]

Directed to Sinstar - Search and ye shall find

[sinstar]

Sorry, just did a search and got 17 results, I notice the search function is much quicker now!
Thanks Zambosan, very informative!

<small>[ June 18, 2002, 01:48 PM: Message edited by: sinstar ]</small>

[The Great Milenko]

Perhaps this is a bit OT, but I use KCl03 'plastique' (for lack of a better word) as a filler in some of my ANNM charges, and I was wondering if anyone thought it would be worth the extra bit of effort for me to use this new 'blu-tak' plasticiser instead of vaseline, from what I can tell it would make a far better plastique, but maybe theres something I've overlooked? What do you reckon?

<small>[ June 24, 2002, 08:31 AM: Message edited by: The Great Milenko ]</small>

[Zambosan]

That won't do you any good. The vaseline is required as a fuel; when intimately mixed with fine granules of the chlorate, it sensitizes the mixture. Polyisobutylene won't, in my opinion, have any such effect.

[NERV]

I was wondering if anyone had an estimate on how powerful this is I did a search and couldnt find anything.

[nbk2000]

You're either lazy, stupid, or lying.

There's litterally dozens of topics discussing this subject and you can't find a single one?

Why is it that all lamer newbies say "I've searched but I couldn't find (blank). Spoon feed me everything there is to know about (blank)"? Is it because they think we're stupid enough to do so? Must be.

My patience for ignorance, and the ignorant, is shockingly low. :mad:

[NERV]

I did find lots of topics on it but non of them relly had any good information on how much power this had. If I missed somthing though I am sorry.

[cutefix]

Rest assured this particular explosives are weaker.....than favorites such as ANNM,picric acid,TNT,NG,NC...
Its advantage lies in the ease of procuring ingredients...

[The Great Milenko]

Ah, yes I thought as much Zam, thanks for clearing that up.
But on another note, I use this 'Lo-Salt' stuff that sinstar has, to make my chlorate, it's only like 50% potassium chloride (sorry don't know the chem name) and 50% sodium chloride, it doesn't seem to have any adverse affects on my chlorate, but I'd still like to make sure with you guys that half my chlorate is'nt something else thats more dangerous, or perhaps someone knows of a way I could seperate the two salts before I use them in my chlorate production? Methinks recrystalisation may be the key, but I'd hate to extract the sodium salt and dump the potassium salt by accident.

[andreas]

Whell you should do some updating on your chemistry knowledge.
Read a book or go to the library before posting such BASIC questions.
But then again I think you won't so to stop the questioning I will explain once.
Lo-salt contains (directly from the pack) 66% KCl and 33%NaCl
They both are about equally soluble in water so separating isn't easy.But when you ad the chlorate ion you will notice that the potassiumchlorate is less soluble than the sodium.
So what are you going to do is work out how much low-salt you need, then make a saturated solution of that lo salt and make a saturated solution of the chlorate mix boil until cristals form then cool to 0 degrees centigrade filter the cristals thus formed.
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Campus/5361/chlorate/sodium.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Campus/5361/chlorate/sodium.html</a>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Campus/5361/chlorate/chlorate.html" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Campus/5361/chlorate/chlorate.html</a>
<a href="http://www.geocities.com/chemengr_60064/kclo4a.htm" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/chemengr_60064/kclo4a.htm</a>
<a href="http://huizen.dds.nl/~wfvisser/EN/kclox_EN.html" target="_blank">http://huizen.dds.nl/~wfvisser/EN/kclox_EN.html</a>
You will find tons of info at these sites but if you weren´t to lame to do a search you would have found them yourselve

<small>[ June 25, 2002, 04:37 AM: Message edited by: andreas ]</small>

[Kdogg]

"You're either lazy, stupid, or lying.

There's litterally dozens of topics discussing this subject and you can't find a single one?

Why is it that all lamer newbies say "I've searched but I couldn't find (blank). Spoon feed me everything there is to know about (blank)"? Is it because they think we're stupid enough to do so? Must be.

My patience for ignorance, and the ignorant, is shockingly low."

Ok like I said, I did search for this info & found it, even posting proof, ("People like "outsider" say it will not deflagerate") that I searched, but like nerv said I found nothing very usefull on whether or not to let it dry ect. I am not a newbie because I have 38 posts I just do not post much. I was member #960 there are alot more than 1,000 members here now.

[blazter]

potassium water softener salt is a much purer (and cheaper) way to get KCl. from what i've seen where i am you can get a 40lb bag of it for about $11 and it says its 99% pure. much better than even morton's salt substitute that ive seen with costs about 2$ for a small shaker of it (probably less than about 100g) and it has a lot of anti-caking type additives in it which ive noticed are not particulary soluable. with the softener salt it has to be quite pure because anything less would gunk up the softener media that it recharges. the only downside is that its sort of a speciality product and the only people that need to buy it are those that cant have any sodium, like people with high blood pressure or something.

[mr.evil]

in a dream i just went out detonating 100grams of potassiumchlorate/vasaline/sodiumbenzoate. But it was only a partial det. :(

i don't get it, it was sensitized with sodiumbenzoate, and mixed very well. The mix was put in a cardboard tube of 2'' diameter, and 8 centimeters high. The wall of the tube was about 4mm thick.

The detonator was an paper tube of 1cm diameter, 6cm long and had a wall of 1mm thick. It was filled with 2 grams of CTAP.

i've taken some pictures for you guys :) :

<a href="http://www.geocities.com/mr_evilforum/chlorate_plastic_1.html?1047138087000" target="_blank">http://www.geocities.com/mr_evilforum/chlorate_plastic_1.html?1047138087000</a>

(copy and paste link)

stay green,

[Mr Cool]

2.0g of AP in 4.7cm³ means a loading density of 0.43gcm^-3. That's why it didn't work I suspect!!

Also, IIRC the optimum loading density for chlorate/vaseline is around 1.3gcm^-3, yours is at 0.64gcm^-3. Maybe it would work better if it was denser? Although the low density could be due to one or two large voids...

<small>[ March 08, 2003, 10:57 AM: Message edited by: Mr Cool ]</small>

[xyz]

Anyone know if you could use NH4NO3 instead of KClO3? I can't get KClO3 but I can get large amounts of AN. The vaseline should also have the advantage of waterproofing the AN.

There seems to be quite a lot of variation in the sensitivity of KClO3/Vaseline, would this be due to the KClO3 being powdered to different degrees of fineness?

[Al Nobel]

AN+Vaseline would create an quite insensitive ANFO kind explosive and would require a large booster.

[Mic]

And what if we add AP to the vaseline+AN mix ? would it work as a plastified charge of APAN ?

[metafractal]

I, too, am desparate for KCl (well, that was before I realized that K2S04 (avialable cheaply and commonly as a fertilizer) would work the same for my liking, but heres the story for others benifit). Anyway, I resorted to desparate measures. The only form of KCl I can get is 'Light Salt', which is a 50/50 NaCl/KCl composition. It has been said that KCl and NaCl are practically equally soluble in water, this is mainly only so around room temparature. If you will observe this graph I plotted (excuse the filesize):
<a href="ftp://ewf:sd332gf@209.195.155.80/hosted%20images/metafractal/knaclgraph.jpg" target="_blank">ftp://ewf:sd332gf@209.195.155.80/hosted%20images/metafractal/knaclgraph.jpg</a>
Figures from the merck tables.
Interesting, above ~24*C, KCl is more soluble than NaCl while below its visa-versa. Upon examination of the graph, The NaCl gradient is clearly an accelarating positive curve while the KCl looks, at least at this scale, like a steep positive linear gradient (line of best fit) with a possible slight inverted curve. This means that once could preditct that as the temprature drops below zero, KCl solubility dramatically decreases while the NaCl solubility stays relatively the same (unless its doing some weird sine wave or something; unlikely). So all we need is a good freezing mix to separate the KCl. For this, refer to <a href="http://www.roguesci.org/cgi-bin/ewforum/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=13;t=000060#000000" target="_blank">my post</a> regarding the matter (scroll down). Even an NH3NO3 bath would probably do, but if one has access to more exotic chemicals (unlikely if he cant get KCl :D but ya never know), then use one of them. Finding the optimal temp is another adventure for another day, but for those who really need that K salt and have the time, this should at least provide some direction.
It should be noted, though, that I realize that this is a desparate measure. You probably would be better off converting NaCl to KCl with some applicable K Salt (that is if you really needed KCl). Pretty sad lab if you dont have one K Salt! Anyway, you never know who might just need it.

[0EZ0]

You can't find KCl?!

Damn you must have some real troubles finding chems if you can't even find KCl!! KCl is used as a pool salt. If you have a spare $5 and can carry a 25 kilo bag, head to a place supplying limited swimming pool chems. Hell you can even pick it up from a hardware store like Mitre-10. It's always cheap to get it in such large amounts. A 25kg sack will put you back around $5. Not only is it cheap, but it is readily available almost everywhere.

That should solve your problem of having no K⁺ ion to experiment with <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> . Don't eat it all at once :D .

Good luck.

As in regards to sensitizing AN with Vaseline, it would certainly not sensitize it to the extent of being able to be detonated by a blasting cap. A big booster would be required. I would also suspect that the charge's minimum diameter would be greater than any ANFO type. As someone has suggested, maybe another sensitizer along with Vaseline could work...

<small>[ March 10, 2003, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: 0EZ0 ]</small>

[ALENGOSVIG1]

25kg bags of KCl can be found at most grocery stores. Health food places carry smaller amounts.

i think vaseline would work fine for anfo. I dont think it'd have any advantages over normal anfo though but rather disadvantages. Vaseline is expensive compared to diesel for exmaple, and the AN would need to be heated during the vaseline addition to ensure proper mixing.

[0EZ0]

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica"> Vaseline is expensive compared to diesel for exmaple, and the AN would need to be heated during the vaseline addition to ensure proper mixing. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica">Your right about Vaseline being expensive. There are alot of cheaper and easier fuels to use(hence ANFO).
Heating wouldn't be absolutely necessary. Just thin down the Vaseline with a volatile solvent, and mix with the AN. Then allow the solvent to evapourate, or gently heat to speed up the process. The result is a homogenous mix of AN with Vaseline. Hopefully the vaseline would hinder any moisture absorbance.

[ALENGOSVIG1]

True, but if you have solvnents in the first place why not just use them to sensitive the AN? The cost of the vaseline plus the solvent (assuming you dont distill it off, which would nead heat :) ) is getting pricey for ANFO. Vaseline would be used as a last resort kind of thing IMO.

Mabe the vaseline would have better moisture protection than most fuels but theres cheaper alternatives. Soy oil for example is good for protecting AN from moisture. I small percent is sometimes added to AN used in dynamite. I placed a few grams of well mixed ANSOY in a jar of water and after 2 weeks the prills were undissolved and not mushy at all.

Woah this is getting off topic.

<small>[ March 10, 2003, 08:02 PM: Message edited by: ALENGOSVIG1 ]</small>