Does this chemistry thing really work?

Do be careful. We don’t want you blowing up or blowing off any important bits.

Can you put it far, far away in the middle of a field and then shoot a flaming arrow into the mixture?

@gailcalled I’m mixing it in a60/40 ratio with sugar to test out making colored smok for special effects

Yup, its the right stuff. it ignited when i tried to dry it in the microwave XD

Jeez. Are you OK? Is the microwave? Is it your microwave? (Have you a mother nearby or do you need a surrogate mother?)

And the important question:

Did it burn a cool color?

@incendiary_dan the basic yelloey, and smoke of course. I am going to buy the powdered die I need soon, possibly tommorow. I have a cool idea for a 3 stage grenade, using 3 different colors so that it changes. NEver seen one like that.

@gailcalled perfectly fine, although the neighbor on the roof looked puzzled as I ran out going “oh shit oh shit oh shit” caring a plate that was smoking like crazy XD

It’s been a while since I read up on home chemistry: is this one of those recipes that can be used to replace nitrocellulose (smokeless powder) in ammunition cartridges in a pinch?

No, the end product is impure potassium nitrate. It’s a slow burn, although sugar does accelerate it, but it’s not that fast.

It is probably enough to draw the attention of the BATF-E. They don’t take kindly to homemade bombs, even just smoke bombs.

We don’t have that in canada as far as im aware.

As far as the original question, yes, it works. Though you seem to have figured it out :-p. You’re doing a standard precipitation experiment, exchanging the ions to create two new salts (one soluble and one insoluble) from the two starting salts.

As far as color goes, you may be able to do colored smoke that way (though i would expect most dyes are going to combust in the heat given off by the saltpeter), but you can also do colored flames/sparks/etc from mixing in other salts, look here (though, fair warning, you should not do Magnesium Sulfate. It not only makes white light, but quite a lot of UV, and thus can blind you. Bad stuff)

Well powdered organic dies work apparently and we got a pretty big hobby shop in the area, so that might be a source.

Ah yes. Rocket candy!
—That’s what they called it in October Sky. Homer and the boys used it as a second-generation fuel (after black powder, but before “zinco-shine”) in their model rockets. If you look at the equation for the reaction you should be able to abstract the correct ratios.

Yeah, when I was test burning it it wasnt quite dry and a burning blob landed on my thumb nail, and kept burning for a bit, I had my finder in ice water for a few hours cause it hurt so bad. XD

Here is my test video for my mix, it wasnt quite a powder but it seems to work pretty darn well.

Here is another video, I made it to test out the cheap webcam I got and try a picture in picture effect.