Does anyone know what are ping pong balls made out of, I'm asking because they make the best smoke ever. So if you know were I can get more of that material please tell me.

Thanks

I believe that they are made of a very poor grade of nitrocellulose (sp?)

yes theyre made of low grade nitrocellulose and a small percentage of camphor.

its not the best smoke ever, but its ok.

if you want to make snoke, dont go on and buy a million ping pong balls. mix potassium nitrate and sugar in a 3:2 ratio, carmelize, add a fuse before it hardens, and light. thats the mixture used in the best smoke bombs and smoke grenades. sometimes they substitute the sugar for sulfur.

How do you get it to caramelize, is the potassium nitrate liquid? I always thought that was a solid.

Just heat them over a hot plate using LOW heat and that should carmalize them. After carmalization, just pour it into a conatiner to mold it, while its still soft insert a fuse. And thats all there is to that.

[This message has been edited by SmartyPants357 (edited 06-26-2001).]

carmalize the sugar first then take the mixture off the burner slowly stir in the saltpeter pour the mixture into the carboard tube from a toilet paper roll. At this point you can insert a cannon fuse or four to five matches.

yeah that would work. but its kinda hard to caramelize sugar. you need to do a very low heat, and slowly, if the sugar itself gets to hot, its burns, and the youve got a new compound, not sugar. itll be ok, as long as you remember LOW FLAME, LONG TIME.

how big of an explosion would the sugar and saltpeter make..? and where can i get potassium nitrate?

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haha.....boobiess!!!!

Potassium nitrate is simply saltpeter if you didn't notice before. Its like a seasoning i guess, i don't know. Shouldn't be too hard to find. I'd assume larger supermarkets like Marsh and such would have it, tucked right between the sage and nutmeg.

KNO3 (potassium nitrate) is NOT a seasoning. It is mainly used for fertilizer, therefore it can be found at agricultural supply stores. It is also used as an Anti-Viagra (the sick bastards !!!), another use for KNO3 is model rocketry. An excellent online site that you can order KNO3 from is http://www.ssaerospace.com/ thats the cheapest source I have found.

It doesnt explode, it just makes one hell of a lot of smoke as it burns.

if you powder the mixture really fine, it deflagrates pretty well. not well, probably worse than black powder, but i would think that it could be used for firecrackers. and if you want it to explode, i would change the ratio from 3:2 KNO3 to sugar, to 2:1 KNO3 to sugar.

lol.... seasoning! exploding! lol...

i have made those smoke "bombs" for quite some time now and they are great. i just made a 1.5 pound one but i haven't set it off yet. i used to make these smoke bombs inside of an empty egg. then just stick a fuse in it. it puts out a lot of smoke and is probibly only like a 10th of a lb. i have never carmelized them before though, i just don't have the patience that some people do. they have always worked fine for me in it's powder form. does it make it better to carmelize it? or just easier to use?

you can boil 3 cups of KNO3 along with two cups sugar and two table spoons of iron oxide in two cups water until it acheive the consistancy of oatmeal then pour it on to a sheet of tinfoil using a butter knife to put a 1 inch grid into the goop deepening it every 20 minutes until it is soft but not sticky and granulate it by pushing it through a screen. makes a handy gunpowder substitute.