testing incendiary (sp?) mixture

[fenris]

gasoline saturated with paraffin oil (poured in hot and stirred), added some very fine Al-powder and a huge amount of (costly) Mg-powder. Now this substance lights pretty well, the parrafin starts burning, too. If there's some burnable material closeby (not too hard to incinerate), it will start burning. The Mg-powder (not so the Al-powder) has a very nice side-effect. The glowing ashes now and then trigger some Mg to burning which, due to its heat, will start the fire all over again.
Nevertheless, I am definately NOT satisfied with this mixture since it seems as if the Mg severely lacks oxygen in case to light up big time. Besides, the same happens if I take some Mg-powder and light it. It burns hot, gives off white smoke with lots of white dirt swirling around and glows for awhile. This also doesn't satisfy me. I'd need some source of oxygen that SLOWLY releases the oxygen so that the Mg will burn but not explode.
I once read that the German Whermacht in WW II used Magnesium bombs to burn down targets. How did they solve the oxygen problem?
One last question to the incendiary mixture:
would wood (saw) dust help?

[Berserker]

Have you tried simply adding KNO₃?

[fenris]

KNO3? I'm not sure if you mean the permanganate. If so, it would be useless since it would dissolve and thus won't be of any help anymore. I actually thought that maybe Salpetre might help but I'm not sure.
If you mean the permanganate plus the Mg-powder as a form of incendiary bomb, I found out that the result is unreliable since the mixture very easily explodes - sometimes pretty violently.

[This message has been edited by fenris (edited August 22, 2001).]

[berg]

Hi,
Kno3 = Potassium Nitrate = Saltpeter, which is an oxidiser which would add even more oxygen to the mix making it burn faster. Kno3 + Mg is flash powder.

[kingspaz]

you could try adding ammonium nitrate to the mixture. it releases its oxygen slower than other oxidisers. i've had quite a bit of success adding it to napalm.

[fenris]

berg - thanks. Geez, I really should learn at least the essential chamical furmulae. Never had chemistry at school. Nevertheless it's fascinating to me.
Kingspaz -Thanks for your suggestion - I will try that defiantely.
I continued my experiments (if one could call this experiments, hehe).
Anyways, I had some lightly watered chlorate-sugar mixture in a plastic bag since about four months. I took some of the mixture described above and added this to it.
What happened was a thermal reaction and the whole mixture became so hot I feared it might ignite the gasoline. I put it away for a while, constantly checking the reaction.
When the reaction was complete, it seemed to have somehow modified the saw dust I added before to a substance that resembles hot plastic. When it had ambient temperature, it wasn't really hard, it became somewhat mouldable. I formed a piece that resembled a chocolate bar. after an hour or so it became hard and a little crumbly. I tried lighting a piece of the bar. It was hard to light with a bic, but after that it burned like hell and so hot that the little piece melted the bottom of the aluminium pot it was in!
I guess this could be an ideal igniter for thermite even though I didn't try that yet.
To the rest of the mixture I added soap dust and the result seems to be some very nice Napalm. The only drawback I instantly realized was that while burning, the liquid (that resembles a very runny slurry) forms a layer on any material which seemingly prevents effective thermal transmission onto said object. It becomes hot, mind you, and surely a burning splatter would cause severe burnings, but I guess that this mixture wouldn't light, say, a heavy timber beam or something that needs lots of heat to start burning. But maybe I'm wrong because this mixture burns incredibly long.
Finally I guess that the addition of Aluminium and Magnesium doesn't have any positive effect on how well the mixture burns. At least I can say that there weren't any sparks visible caused by burning Mg or Al.

[This message has been edited by fenris (edited August 23, 2001).]

[ALENGOSVIG1]

my favourite napalm mixture is 50/50 acetone gassoline with syrofoam added to make a very thin napalm and then napthalene, magnesium shavings, and kno3/sucrose is added. it re-ignites after being smothered or blown out. Wouldnt like that on my skin. when burning wooded areas the napthalene soaks into the wood and it will burn for a very long time.

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[Ropik]

Alen, can you post percentages of napthalene, Mg and KNO3/sugar mix in the napalm? Also, do you use normal 70/30 KNO3/sugar? Thanks.