Magnesium Die Castings

[ted johnson]

When I modified the Homelite XP1000 saw into a kart engine, I was in an apartment in Weiser, Idaho. I was removing a ton of magnesium from the saw's point plate/crankcase cover, and had a little pile of mag dust on the wood table. Poof! Up it went, so fast it didn't even have time to burn the table top. I had a big bright spot in front of my eyes for hours. If you were to look at a picture of the saw, you'd see how much mag I Dremeled off. Table's still out there in my garage. I don't think there's even a dark spot on the surface. I was lucky! By comparison, powdered aluminum is wimpy and hard to light off. When Pop and Grandpop closed their Sunoco station in '50 or '51, Pop brought a 5 gallon pail of aluminum dust home to his new mower shop. It had been used in the olden days to make metallic paints. We kids used to make a long cone of paper and put aluminum dust in the cone and blow it into a fire so it'd make a big flare up. It was fun to make a gasoline fire in the dirt drive in front of the lawn mower shop at night and make an aluminum flare. When Pop sold the mower shop in '86, most of the pailful of Al. dust was still there. Ted

nice engine and machine work Ted , i think burning magnesium was the source for the flash for early photography

Back many moons ago, potassium chlorate and aluminum powder were quite common as flash powder. In later years, potassium perchlorate replaced potassium chlorate. Interestingly, potassium perchlorate and sugar can make a wicked good model rocket fuel. Pop and I tried such things when model rockets first came around, in the early fifties. TJ