document updated 14 years ago, on Jul 6, 2009
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- key point: You can test whether your combination of nichrome wire and voltage source will work by hooking it up without any pyrogen on it, and checking whether the nichrome glows red hot (it should either glow red-hot instantly, or within a few seconds)
- nichrome wire
- Salvage nichrome out of a broken hair dryer or toaster, or just buy it on ebay
- The thinner the nichrome wire, the hotter it will get.
- We tried wire that was about as thick as an individual strand inside cat5 cable, and that worked well with a 12v battery.
- note: nichrome wire is difficult to solder, you have to use a lot of flux
- voltage / current
- Current is all that matters.
- But the more voltage you have, the higher the resulting current (ohm's law)
- Use 9v batteries or 6v lantern batteries. If that doens't work, combine several batteries to reach a higher voltage.
- pyrogen
- black powder, or even standard fuse can work, if the nichrome gets hot enough
- very fine black powder is best, but that requires a ball mill
- pyrogen protectant (nitrocellulose)
- You can melt ping-pong balls in acetone, since ping-pong balls are nitrocellulose. However, you have to make sure the ping pong balls are nitrocellulose.
- The nitrocellulose is only needed if you're going to be storing the matches for any length of time. The nitrocellulose is just a protective outer layer that helps keep out water (the same layer exists in standard fuse)