Important: Safety Warning
This page contains instructions involving gunpowder or other explosive or pyrotechnic compositions. Preparing explosives as described has caused severe injuries and deaths, and is illegal in most places.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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Colored Fires
Great care is necessary in the preparation of these combustibles. The ingredients should be separately reduced to powder and sifted; then put into well-corked, wide-mouthed bottles until the time for mixing them for use. Colored fires deteriorate rapidly by keeping, and are nearly all dangerously inflammable; they should, therefore, be mixed as soon as possible before using them. The ingredients should be pure and perfectly dry; uniformly powdered, but not so fine as to be dusty.
Nitrate of strontia, alum, carbonate of soda, and other crystals, should be gently heated in an iron pan until they lose their water of crystallization and crumble into dry powder. (See Drying, No. 3842.) Chlorate of potassa must be very cautiously handled, as it explodes by moderate friction. The requisite quantity of each ingredient should be weighed and placed on a clean sheet of white paper, and mixed lightly with a bone knife; they may then be more thoroughly mixed by sift. ing through a fine wire seive.