what does sulfur desolve in?

from wikipedia: Sulfur is insoluble in water but soluble in carbon disulfide and to a lesser extent in other organic solvents such as benzene.

Yeah, organic solvents mainly. Carbon Disulfide and Carbon Tetrachloride are the two that come to my mind offhand. It does dissolve in alcohol, but only verrry slightly. I looked into this a while back when I wanted to give cast ZnS a try, but it was too much of a hassle and there were too many safety issues.

Carbon disulfide and carbon tetrachloride, both of which are toxic nightmares and also present no small safety issues with regard to powdered metals. I remember another weird organic solvent being mentioned but can't remember what it was, tetrahydrofuran maybe which is also quite toxic.

Certain allotropes of sulfur will dissolve slightly in safer solvents such as alcohol if they're boiling hot--but that poses a serious fire hazard.

But basically, if it dissolves sulfur, you don't want to mess with it because it also dissolves your DNA. That seems to be the general rule here.

Carbon Disulfide. Nice stuff. You can ignite it with a cup of boiling water. Yes, really.

Tom Koszuta

I would guess dimethyl sulfoxide is an effective solvent but might be wrong, BUT I would strongly avoid ever playing with that too.. since it will zip right through your skin and into your blood stream in seconds, carrying all sorts of nasties with it (although neat and pure, it is not particularly harmful). It is/was used as a carrier for analgesics for arthritic treatment.

MJD

Ahhh. Is that the DMSO I've read about in connection with poisons and assassination attempts? Something about tapping a guy on the neck with a DMSO/poison coated swab?

Well,

Thanks but no thanks. I'll leave the dissolving sulfur activity alone. Sound to nasty for me to dare do it.

I was considering using it as a sort of binder but sounds like I'd kill myself trying to get it to work. Glad I asked. In the mean time I got some simple Elmers glue to do the job just dandy for my igniters (Since buying them now is caput with the recent Fed activity involving quick burst).

Thanks for the help.

I suppose DMSO might work at that.

Hmmm. I wonder how one would go about searching the literature for sulfur solvents. Oddball things like the way liquid ammonia dissolves lithium or normally unreactive gold can be leached by cyanide and then easily decomposed back into metal.

Of course, the idea is to find a SAFE solvent for sulfur, like carbonated water(very slightly) dissolving chalk.

My chemistry isn't good enough to even speculate about sulfur solvents.

I recommend PVC cement or nitrocellulose lacquer (called nitrate dope at the hobby store) for making igniters. It evaporates quicker and acts as a better fuel than Elmers.

thanks, I'll try that.

Kt

Dissolve ping pong balls in lacquer thinner or acetone. Modern day balls have inhibitors to combustion in them but it doesn't matter if one adds a vigorous reagent to the mixture.

Go to ebay and buy the finest ground aluminum powder you can find and black copper oxide CuO. Measure out 4.42gms of CuO to 1gm. of aluminum. Use this ratio to make larger amounts. Mix in the syrupy nitrocellulose lacquer and you'll have a vigorous igniter without any oxidizers. Buy a cheap 50gm. electronic scale off of the internet. It's good to titrate black powder for ejection charges and it worth the investment.

Use a 30 to 32 gauge nichrome bridge wire. Don't go to any smaller wire as the wire may break before enough heat is imparted to the CuO thermite lacquer. There may be a 2 second delay from the time you push the 12V launch button but the igniter will generate a wicked amount of heat.

This is fine to use as long as you're not going in a drag race. If so give these igniters to the competition and use the good stuff for yourself! :-)

Yup, that would be DMSO. Timothy Leary had fun with it in his day...