White Smoke Mix

This is one of the simplest mixtures you can make and requires the least ammount of chemicals. It is normally a white powder, but you can also melt this together and cast it. If you melt it, it will be more of a golden brown instead of white. It is made from potassium nitrate and table sugar. Melting instructions can be found at the bottom of this page.

Materials	Equipment
Potassium nitrate, finely ground	Gram Scale
Powdered Sugar	16 ounce plastic cup
Paprika

Place the plastic cup on the scale and zero it in. Add 60 grams of powdered potassium nitrate. Into this cup, you can mix about 0.6 grams of paprika or any other material with a dark color. Iron (III) oxide can even be used, but this could speed up the burn rate and provide less smoke. Mix these two together thorougly so that the potassium nitrate has a light pink color. Now add 40grams of powdered sugar. Mix this until it is a uniformly faint pink color. In case you were wondering, the paprika is used to determine when both chemicals are completely mixed since they are both white. Now all you have to do is light this with a match or fuse and it will produce quite a bit of white smoke. It also burns fairly hot so be careful.

 

Melting White Smoke Mix together

When smoke mix is molten together, it provides more smoke and burns better. It is also easier to ignite. It is usually a golden brown chunk when finished (depending on what you cast it into).

Materials	Equipment
Potassium nitrate; does not have to be finely powdered	200ml Evaporating dish (or any other similar sized container)
Table sugar, does not have to be finly powdered	Heat source; I use flame but using flame can be dangerous
Fuse	Old spoon or screwdriver
Small cup, paper is perferable

Set the evaporating dish up with the heat source and begin heating (not super hot though). Add 40 grams of sugar to this. In another container, weigh out 60 grams of potassium nitrate. Continue heating the sugar in the evaporating dish until its all molten. Add the potassium nitrate to this and continue heating. Carefully keep heating this until its all uniformly molten and almost to the consistency of thin syrup. Be very careful doing this, make sure you stir all of it constantly. If part of it is not stirred, it could become unevenly heated and burn. This could catch the whole batch on fire and that is not a fun clean up. Once it is all molten, take it off the heat and scoop it into the small cup (or any other container). Stick your fuse in this and let it cool to room temp. If you are going to store this, store it in a ziplock bag to keep out the moisture. To see a video of this smoke device going off, go to the videos section on my main page.

 

Molten Sugar	Molten mixture	Mixture cast in a small cup