Name: Dark Flash
Source: Davis (et al)
| percent | parts | component |
|---|---|---|
| 50.00% | 1 | Potassium Chlorate |
| 50.00% | 1 | Antimony Trisulfide |
Diaper together the pre-milled and screened ingredients carefully.
A very sensitive and powerful composition, make and use with extreme caution.
The name may be an oxymoron, but its derivation is obvious; it produces little light but is a powerful report composition like most flashes. Sometimes called "dirty flash" or "dark report" composition.
Adding some Manganese Dioxide makes the composition significantly more sensitive and quite dangerous. Such a mixture is quite a good cap composition despite being quite a bit more friction sensitive than shock sensitive.
Ideal for breaking crossettes as it produces very little light, or anywhere else a minimum amount of space for a report composition is available, the power required is significant and a bright flash is undesirable.
This composition is also often used as a 1st-fire pyrogen for bridged e-matches. It's thermal sensitivity makes it a good choice, but its friction sensitivity needs to be managed, typically by coating over with something else, despite this such a match may still ignite from common abuse, like being stepped on.
The reaction is roughly:
3(KClO3) + Sb2S3 => 3(KCl) + 3(SO2) + Sb2O3
Which suggests a stoichiometric mixture:
52 KClO3
48 Sb2S3
Therefore conventional 1:1 is pretty close to stoichiometric.