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Smoke Pigeons &
Rockets

This Page Updated: June 12th,
2003

By far, the most
common smoke formula is the Potassium Nitrate/Sugar formula.
It produces a
white-gray smoke and is both easy, inexpensive & fun to make.
The
percentage of Potassium Nitrate and Sugar in this composition vary somewhat
depending
on who you ask, but the 60/40 mix listed below is pretty
common.

A lump of
this stuff the size of your thumb produced the
smoke cloud on the right in
under 2 seconds.

Potassium Nitrate

60
%

Sugar

40
%

Although the two
ingredients can just be finely powdered and mixed together, in recent
side-by-side tests, we found that melting the two together does in fact
make a superior Smoke Bomb.
To melt the mixture together, you'll need
small metal saucepan or other heat resistant container, and an electric
hot plate. An electric hot plate is preferred to an open flame heat source
because it's a tad safer, and easier to prevent overheating of the
mixture.
The mixture must be heated SLOWLY, and over a LOW heat until
it just starts to melt.
Heating it too quickly, or at too high a
temperature will cause it to turn black, burn & ignite making a giant
mess, not to mention a fire hazard. In any case, this
should all be done outside just in case you overheat it does happen to
ignite. As the mixture begins to melt, it will turn brown and look
exactly like Carmel Candy (see image above)... after all, you are melting
Sugar ( and no, you can't eat it ).
A step-by-step procedure is
outlined below....

Procedure

Start by
making a small size batch (50 grams total). Measure out 30 grams of Potassium
Nitrate and 20 grams of Sugar into a small cup. For those of you who cut math
class, 30 grams of Potassium Nitrate and 20 grams of Sugar is still a 60% / 40%
mixture. If you make a batch larger than 50 grams, it will be very difficult to
mix and heat evenly. You can always make more, so don't mix up a giant
batch.

Snap a
lid on the container and shake to mix the two chemicals together. Pour the
mixture into a heat resistant container and set it on your hot plate.

Set the hot plate
temperature to medium-high, and about every 30 seconds or so, stir the mixture
well, being sure to scrape the material that may start sticking to the
bottom.

Over the next
several minutes, the mixture will begin to darken and clump. It will soon begin
to look like brown sugar, and when it finally mixes smoothly and looks like
peanut butter, it is done. If you mixture is turning BLACK, you're heating it a
too high of a temperature.

Remove
the container from the heat, and scoop out a lump of the sticky mass. You can
either just plop some on the concrete, or if you're picky about the way your
smoke bombs look, you can make small cardboard molds and press the gooey mass
into them. Personally, we just lay it on the concrete.

Before the little
blob cools, insert a small piece of Visco Safety Fuse.

Do this to the
remainder of the material and allow them to cool and harden.

In about 5 minutes,
the material will be cool and become
rock hard ( beware that it will stick to the surface while cooling, but is
easily removed with a little knock from a hammer. ) Set your Smoke Bomb away
from any flammable materials, light the fuse and stand back.

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