"Ignoramus20786" wrote in message
...

snip
I'm not sure if the maintenance tech job for the explosives manufacturer
pays good enough to interest me, learning about explosives sounds kind of
fun though, big firecrackers! :-)

RogerN



Let us know how this ends up working, I am very curious.

i

I saw an ad for the maintenance tech job at the explosives plant, it's a
little farther away from me a pays less per hour so I'm not very interested.

I have been looking up info on Aluminum powder/ Ammonium Nitrate exploding
targets. So far nothing I have read indicates a rifle bullet could detonate
the explosive. The blasting caps seem to generally have a powerful primary
explosive that sets off a secondary explosive. In general, I didn't see any
mention that a secondary explosive could be detonated by smokeless powder
and a projectile. I understand an explosive like flash powder isn't a
detonation, it just a very fast burn, but if a fast bullet can detonate,
couldn't flash powder (or maybe black powder) propel a projectile at 2000
fps to detonate? Has secondary explosives been tested with rifle shots? Is
there a list of what can be detonated by a rifle shot? I guess it depends
on the situation but if a soldier found himself with more guns than he
needed or could carry, it seems it might be easier to point a spare rifle at
explosives and rig a trip wire instead of scratch building a blasting cap to
detonate.

The chemistry behind it all seems interesting to me. I find reading about
it interesting but don't want to try to make anything too dangerous. It
seems that creating a chemical that can explode, without exploding it, is
kind of like setting a mouse trap, but in the case of the explosives, the
"trap" going off does more than just snap you in the fingers! Not as
dangerous as explosives, I think it would be fun to make some rocket engines
and perhaps some colored stars to burn in the sky, but I'm sure that
wouldn't be legal here.

Vacuum Distillation. The improvised munitions manual from the Army tells
about making nitric acid from potassium nitrate and sulfuric acid. It's
basically use 2 parts potassium nitrate to 1 part sulfuric acid, and a
distillation process to get nitric acid in the receiving container. I have
read a little about vacuum distillation, what I like about it, or at least
about the setup, is that everything is sealed and has a single tap for the
vacuum pump. This seems that it would be a great way to deal with the
fumes, even without the vacuum pump you could route the fumes through a tube
away from people.

This brings me to a distillation process I saw, they use a small bucket of
mash inside of a larger bucket, the mash is heated by a small immersion
heater, only to about 40-50 deg. C, and the alcohol is collected in the
larger bucket that isn't heated. Expanding on that idea, if a vacuum was
drawn the alcohol would boil at a lower temperature. Seems that if you made
a closed type still, you could pull a vacuum, slightly heat the mash pot and
cool the receiving pot, thought this might make fuel strength alcohol more
efficiently. I'm not interested in going into big time ethanol production
to run my car from it, but I like how chemistry labs produce their chemicals
from what they have on hand. With the proper setup I should be able to make
charcoal for homemade black powder and get wood alcohol (methanol) at the
same time. Or maybe ferment a little sugar water and distilling to make
alcohol for the alcohol lamp, instead of paying $7 per quart at Wal-Mart. I
guess I'd have to get a permit to make ethanol for an alcohol lamp and
science experiments, maybe wood alcohol would better.

RogerN