Scott,

Sulfur and Charcoal are the two easiest to aquire chemicals. Sulfur can be found at reasonable purity in hardware stores as a garden product, some supermarkets even carry it, as do some chemists.

Charcoal can also be found in supermarkets and hardware stores as BBQ fuel. Of course the quality for pyrotechnic uses varies, and brickettes are basically useless, but many of the true lumpwood charcoals are usable. They will generally be pine or similar cheap timbers, which make good sparks by not excellent propellant grade BP. You can always pyrolyse your own charcoal and control the timber type and the temperature it was pyrolysed at to optimise it for your purposes.

Regards,

Alan

hi i was wondering where u get your stuff from to make your fuses like the sulfur and the airfloat charcoal

Sounds completely insane to me. Chlorate + Sulfur is just asking for an accident. Please don't use this composition!

Just to add another recipe, I was playing with quite long ago. Used a circa 12-14 gauge cotton

string coated with a finely powdered stoichiometric mixture of potassium chlorate, sulfur and pine rosin, stirred in chloroform based PVC glue. Made it to be as consistent as sour cream. Result: moderately fast burning ( rosin makes it go faster ), moisture proof, burns even submerged, sturdy )

Not really no. It got a bit beaten up in transport, and I had access to commercial fuse around the same time. Still have it, just haven't played with it much.

I was thinking of using it with different compositions, like colour and propellant ones to make flying fish, etc. Always wanted to try Senko Hanabi in it as well, but I suspect there would be too much string and not enough comp for that to work well.

Did anything ever become of that visco machine?