| 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.
The smoke from this mixture is essentially non-toxic,
but that doesn't mean you should stand in a cloud
of it and breathe it all day long. Like any smoke
from burning material, people may be allergic
to it, or is my cause eye irritation in
some more sensitive folks.Colored SmokeUnfortunately,
colored smoke mixes are a totally different animal.
The nitrate/sugar mix cannot be colored. Colored
mixes use an entirely different cool burning mixture
and vaporize special low-temperature dyes to produce
colored smoke.