102 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
102 lines
5.0 KiB
Plaintext
Article Four
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How To Make Nitro-Cellulose That Works
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Nitro-Cellulose is great stuff! Have you ever seen those cartoons where they
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leave a trail of powder in a line and light it and the flame goes all the way
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along the line? Just like Bugs Bunny, you too can do it! :) Black Powder
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will work, but it burns really slow and leaves a mess behind. But wait!
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Nitro-Cellulose is the answer! It'll burn fast and clean and follow that
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line until all of it is burned up!
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Here's an example from the file HANDBOOK.TXT:
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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C. Cellulose Nitrate (Guncotton)
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Commonly known as Smokeless powder, Nitrocellulose is exactly that-
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it does not give off smoke when it burns.
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Materials-
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70ml concentrated sulfuric acid
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30ml concentrated nitric acid
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5g absorbent cotton
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250ml 1M sodium bicarbonate
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250ml beaker
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ice bath
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tongs
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paper towels
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Place 250ml beaker in the ice bath, add 70ml sulfuric acid, 30mL
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nitric acid. Divide cotton into .7g pieces. With tongs, immerse each piece in
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the acid solution for 1 minute. Next, rinse each piece in 3 successive baths
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of 500mL ater. Use fresh water for each piece. Then immerse in 250mL
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1M sodium bicarbonate. If it bubbles, rinse in water once more until no
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bubbling occurs. Squeeze dry and spread on paper towels to dry overnight.
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Apart from needing a good spell-checker/grammer-checker, these instructions
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aren't that bad! We'll go over them again though to clear some minor things
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up.
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1. You don't need beakers and flasks and crap for this. Simple glass jars
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will work fine. Try to use approximately the amounts suggested here,
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they are really pretty good. The important part is the 70mL of Sulfuric
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Acid and the 30mL of Nitric Acid. You must have 70% Sulfuric and 30%
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Nitric Acid in the glass container in the ice water! If these ratios are
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off, the cotton won't react properly with the acid solution. Now, it
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doesn't HAVE to be 70mL and 30mL, you could just do it as 7 parts
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Sulfuric Acid and 3 parts nitric Acid, just as long as there is 70% and
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30% of each respective acid. And make sure there is enough acid so that
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you don't run out before you use up all your cotton!
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2. The reason for putting small amounts of cotton in the solution is because
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you don't want a big piece in there since the middle may not be touched
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by the acid solution. 0.7g is nice... if you can measure it! :) Just
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use small amounts.
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3. 1 minute for each piece is good, but leaving it in there for 2 minutes
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for added measure is a good idea.
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4. Rinsing each piece of Nitro-Cellulose is VERY IMPORTANT!! The reason is
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that there is acid still present on the nitro-cellulose and you really
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can't touch it with acid on it :) Also, the acid makes the substance
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more unstable. So, rinse them as it says, 3 times for each piece. Try
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to use fresh water each time. It doesn't HAVE to be 500mL of water each
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time, just make sure they get submersed really good.
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5. For the common person, they really wouldn't know what 1M Sodium
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Bicarbonate is. And truthfully, if you don't know what it is, YOU
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SHOULDN'T BE FOOLING AROUND WITH THIS STUFF! But of course, I know that
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people are still going to attempt this process, so here is what it means:
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1M NaHCO3 (Sodium bicarbonate) means 1 mol/litre NaHCO3. It's a
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measurement of concentration. The molecular weight of NaHCO3 is
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about 84 grams/mol. Don't worry about what a "mol" is right now, you'll
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learn that if you take a chemistry class. Anyways, since NaHCO3 has
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84g/mol, that means that 84 grams of Sodium Bicarbonate IS 1 mol. And
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since we need 1mol of NaHCO3/Litre, we therefore need 84g of Sodium
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Bicarbonate to be dissolved in 1L of water.
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Confused yet? Don't be! Just do this: Get 84g of Sodium Bicarbonate
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and dissolve it in approximately 1 litre of water. That's the 1M
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Sodium Bicarbonate you need.
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Anyways back to the task at hand, immerse the pieces of Nitro-Cellulose
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in the Sodium Bicarbonate solution and dip it in and out a couple times.
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If it bubbles, re-rinse the Nitro-Cellulose in water again and try it
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again in the Sodium Bicarbonate. Keep doing it until it doesn't bubble
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anymore. Repeat this for all the pieces of Nitro-Cellulose.
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6. Now the Nitro-Cellulose needs to be dried. I wouldn't suggest squeeze
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drying it, just because you don't want to loose any of the
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Nitro-Cellulose. Just leave it out to dry and keep it away from flames
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and extreme heat :)
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And that's it! When it's dry, try lighting some of it up! It burns easily
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and quickly (it ignites pretty fast too!).
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This was one of the rare times where I was impressed with the directions
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given by the original author. Put a mark on the wall! :)
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