slow match from highway flare

[guncobbler]

I made some cotton match by soaking it in water that had disolved the oxygenator (potasium chlorate?) from a highway flare. Used about 6 inches of flare to one pint of water (used filter paper to remove the sludge and sawdust). After soaking the rope in it and drying the match burns nice but does this little sparkle thing every so often. My first guess is that's not a good thing as we don't want sparks to land in the pan until asked nicely. I going to dilute the mix til I don't get any more sparks. How did you titrate your mix? I assume that we just want enough mix in there so that the match will burn without going out. Thanks, GC

 

[juancho]

Hi,more than answers You just got me thinking.Would it be possible to dilute black powder to extract potasium nitrite ,filter it and so forth, to make slow burning match.As a 15 year old I made a very nice match lock , but did not know how to make a match, so the only thing readidly available that I found (other than a cigarete) was a mosquito coil.Everybody use to laugh at the range but at least we had no mosquitoes :rotf:

 

[Itegorm]

Actually using powder to make match works very well (most of what I am using at the moment was made by mixing powder and vinegar then soaking hemp rope in it). I mix about 1/4 cup of powder to about 1 1/2 gallons of vinegar lately. Only the saltpeter in the powder disolves (the sulpher and charcol don't), you end up with a black sludge in the bottom of your soaking container and your match comes out a bit dark colored. The stuff works just fine.
I never thught of using road flares for making match so I don't know about the dilution to reduce sparking. Play around with it to see what you come up with.