TOPIC: Trying my hand at making home made motors

I've been working towards making my own Rapier motors. So far, I have the tooling done. The cases done. The ingredients gathered and now a ball tumbler to powderize the ingredients. Check out this jalopy of a setup!

Very interesting. About 20 years ago I made a similar device.

At the time I had a number of Jet-X motors from Roy Lever's rediscovery of old steel case Jetex motors in 50 and 100 sizes. I was mixing up potasium nitrate and sugar, rather after the style of the 'rocket candy' that the ballistic rocket boys in the USA make.

I'd measure out my KNO3 and sugar and then mix it in a tumbler made from a jam jar, I used an electric screwdriver to turn it. I'd then pour the mix into a steel measuring cup with a long handle and then warm it up in a temperature controlled deep-fat fryer! This limited the temperature safely.

Once I had a suitably free flowing slurry I would pour it into the steel case of a Jet-X motor.

Compared to Jetex etc it burned faster but by opening out the nozzle I was able to moderate it and slow it down enough for a few aerodynamic flights. I used a nichrome wire and a NICAD to get the stuff burning. I had a few succesful flights.

Great tips Terry! Thank you.
I plan to try a few methods.
Hammer down powdered Oxide/Sugar mix
Slurry the Oxide/sugar by heating and pouring/pressing it in
slurry a mix of oxide/powdered sugar/glucose syrup and pour it and press it down.

If that doesn't dance for me, I will try a charcoal blend.

(I use my words carefully as I am in Australia and some things are 'frowned' upon here).

It's been really wet and rainy here for a fair few weeks now so there's a lot of moisture in the air (dripping wet ) and a storm breached my roof and dripped down the wall of my workshop and wet the carpet so I have bought some damp rid crystals and placed all my mixes into an airtight container with it to remove all moisture from them. I'll let that sit for a week while I knock out a profile jet as the test model.
I also bought a 2.2Kg container of damp rid to dry out the whole workshop while I am at it.

This website:
www.nakka-rocketry.net/

Is the essential guide to rolling your own!

Roger adds:

is the site maintained by his widow? Looks dangerous to me!

On the subject of home brew motors, this_guy has some interesting variants. He takes a little while to get to the point, you may want to skip to minute 12 on the video.

Of course scaling the design down to KK Vulture size may take a bit of work...