"Lloyd E. Sponenburgh"
Post by Lloyd E. SponenburghDon, I'm independently dubious of your description. When most professional
pyros talk about sponge Ti, they're not talking about raw crushings from the
furnace, they're talking about granulated material derived from raw sponge.
I've never seen any use of sponge Ti where the particle size was larger than
about ten mesh. Twenty mesh material can travel forty to fifty feet from
the point of projection.
Almost all silver-tailed effects (that use titanium) use -30 mesh or
smaller.
Well I can only speak of my experience. The sponge Ti I purchased years ago
was just that the raw material. Mesh? Split pea to green pea! T'was this that
I tried in da blender:
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Tell the WiZ (Donald J Haarmann)
American Fireworks News
Number 19 March, 1983
Dear WiZ: I have, after a 25-year hiatus returned to fireworks, my renewed interest
in which coincided with the arrival of last year's tax refund. I promptly ran amok,
ordering a pound of this and that and soon had a fine collection of pyro chemicals. I
felt confident that I could, on a moment's notice, whip up any formula published.
Wrong. As luck would have it, when Jerry Pulice's Whistling Titanium Rocket article
was published (AFN #9) 1 found I lacked 10-28 mesh titanium and had only 100
mesh or some very coarse sponge which I had obtained from Jim Finckbones Mega
Tech (of whom it can be said, here is a pyro who has paid his dues).
The problem of reducing the 4 mesh sponge to 10-28 mesh seemed a simple
problem of running it through my kitchen blender. So I proceeded to dump the entire
pound in the blender and start it on Speed 1 (my blender has seven speeds).
Click-it-ter, click-it-ter, click, snap, crack, ting-ting; it would seem that a little higher
speed was in order. So, on to No. 2, then 3, now 4 and then 5 and WHAT-HO, along
with the click-it-ters, snaps, tik-tik, bang-bang, clinks and rattles, there were little
white sparks going around in circles, along with the titanium, when HOLY
PYROPHORIC BATMAN the-the-the inside of the blender just lit up like a light
bulb! Now the top has blown off and titanium dioxide smoke and finely divided Ti is
issuing forth. It rapidly became a race to turn off the blender and at the same time
keep my laundry bill to a minimum.
Hummmmm, no doubt a fluke so this time I tried it again, but using a three-foot
dowel rod to push the buttons. All was OK.(even fine) until once again Speed 5 was
reached and once again FLASH-POP SMOKE. All of which leads me to write to my
WiZ with my plaintive question: WHY ME?
signed G. R. Phlegmone
Dear Phle: The answer to your question is less obvious than would appear. It would be
simple to put it down to "just another nut job", however we pyros as a group are given
to mixing together finely divided, highly reactive metals, along with strong and not
particularly stable oxidizing agents. Then, not being satisfied, we add fuels like gums
and charcoal. And for the height of folly, we put a match to it!
There is, of course, a rationale to all this: fireworks are fun.
Now as to what happened and what to do about it, the following may be of some
use/interest. As you have astutely observed ' titanium, along with several other metals,
is pyrophoric, that is, they are 1) capable of producing a spark when struck (as with a
blender blade), 2) burning in air spontaneously (indeed, some months ago a well known
pyro was burned when some Ti powder ignited as he was pouring from one container to
another). What probably saved you was the limited amount of oxygen available in the
blender and when the heat from burning raised the air pressure add blew the top off,
the powder was dispersed sufficiently so that the reaction was not sustained.
Now things to do. You could Simply buy coarse Ti but then I would be out of a job and I
need the money. Being a Wizard aint cheap. Now, as the Ti is rather reactive with air,
we have the choice of either removing the air by placing the blender in a vacuum
chamber (shouldn't cost more than a couple of grand) or of placing the blender in a
cabinet and displacing the air with an inert gas such as krypton. This is simpler than the
vacuum chamber but lacks elegance.
What is needed is an inert gas that could be poured into the blender to displace the air;
as luck would have it, there is such a gas, sulfur hexafluoride. Not only is it inert and
non-toxic, but it is five times heavy as air.
There is the eternal problem: where to buy it? The Sears catalog doesn't list it and a
quick check of the J.C.Whitney catalog failed to reveal it. So. we have to call out the
heavy artillery, that is, to barter. If you live in a "closed" state and have access to Class
C, you have a great item to barter.
Now SF is commonly used as an insulator in high voltage work, so grab a handful of "C"
and truck over to your local power plant with a big plastic bag and trade for some. If you
choose to buy it, at $10.30 a pound in 10 pound lots liquefied in a steel cylinder, you
should have about a 7,000 year supply. If you dont like the plastic bag idea and you
are a physics fan, the fact that the critical pressure of the gas is only 2,206 kPa & 21
deg. C. will be of some use:
When you get it home, pouring it into the blender will be a bit of a chore as it is
colorless . You will have to fall back on by-guess and by-gosh or if you have one
handy, a Schileren set-up will be useful. If you decide to use this method, please drop
me a note so that I can check the horizon for smoke now and then.
[Who would put titanium in a blender? Ill never tell!] /djh/
donald j haarmann
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Who may not be the brightest port
fire in da box ... but he do have fun!!