When sitting at the table eating lunch today I found something that might be very useful. My mother had bought some food additive, Psyllium husk fibre. This is added to some liguid and it then gells the liguid wich turns into a "slime" that you drink. It is supposed to be good for your stomach.

When I saw this slime I got this idea, what if it could be used as a plasisizing agent. After luch I decided to test it. I thought that I would try it with some ANNM. I didn't want to waste any nitro methane so I substituted the NM with water. I mixed 25g of AN with about 8ml of the Psyllium and then added 5ml of water. I started blending it with a spoon and after half a minute I added a further 8ml of psyllium. After a few minutes I took it out of the bowl and started molding it. It got more and more plastic as the psyllium started absorbing the water.

To my great suprise the addition of the extremely low density psyllium had made a great plastigue. It is very uniforme and is very easily molded into any shape you want. I haven't got a sutible word for it but you you can stretch it wothout it snapping off. I threw it into a wall ant to my great suprise it held.

I started playing with it and noticed that you can do anyting to wothout anyting of it getting seperated from the lumb. I must have trown it into the wall 20 times and it still didn't brake. I've kicked it thrown it and smashed it it takes anything.

A nother good thing is that it seems to keep the liquid from evapourating. I played with it for about half an hour with a very hot sun shining on it and when I started molding it it was still wet inside. I put it in the sun tg dry to see how it lookes like when it has dried I thing that it will get very hard.

This is of course only water but I see no reasond to why it shouldn't work with NM. I'm going to try and detonate a kilo of AN/ethylene glycol later today and I'll try the plastique as well.

Have you heard of the Psyllium before? I had never heard of it untill today. I thing you should be able to find it at the pharmacy or at a health store.

You should be ablt to use this for making allmost any moist or wet composition more uniform by adding some Psyllium. I am not shure how it affects the sensitivity of the explosive though. I'll find that out later today.

It's better known at Meta-Mucil here in the states. It's an orange flavored (and colored) powder. Very fine powder with a very slight gritty feeling.

The generic stuff is larger grains, very gritty, and tastes like snot. :(

But, the real question is, will NM be absorbed? If yes, great. If not...

Good thing is the stuff is pretty cheap to buy, easily available anywhere, and totally without suspecion.

Interesting that the stuff will stick to walls. That might have possibilities. Chemical delay detonators with glass ampoules stuck in the plastique. Sling it on a target and it goes of whenever the delay runs out. Walls, ceilings, passing propane and gasoline tanker trucks... <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="wink.gif" /> :D

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<small>[ May 09, 2002, 01:11 AM: Message edited by: 10fingers ]</small>

No luck! The NM didn't like the psyllium and the AN/ethylene glcol failed.

I'll test the psyllium on some others to see if it is of any use at all. To bad it didn't like the NM because this was the most plastic explosive I've tried.

It may only work with water soluble explosives.

Or maybe if you could mix wet psyllium with the explosive, then remove the water, the NM would replace the water in the pores of the fiber. Vacuum or dessicator?

H2O seemes to be the only thing it workes with except milk.
I've tried it with acetone, gasoline, methanol, ethanol and it doesn't work. The only thing it could be used for is explosives containing water.

Fuck psyllium.

doesn't the water react with it to produce the plastic/gel?
would a mixture of say 10% water and 90% nitromethane (assuming they mix) work? the water would plasticise the stuff and the nitromethane would mix into it.

Perhaps it works with PETN. 10% water increases the det. velocity of it and your gelatinizer works with water.
A problem could be that water evaporates in opposite of oil or other liquits.
Then it will lose it´s plasticity again.

The performance of psyllium is like guar gum,that is;it is hydrophillic but solvent selective.It prefers water to other polar solvent maybe because of better hydrogen hydogen bonding with its carbohydrate strucure.
This particular gum may be useful for tovex type explosives....

rofl
you have to look up what this stuff is (chemical)
and then you can say if it will mix with hydrophobic substances or not
by the way dont use ethylenglokol for anfo it sucks just use mineral oil

IIRC from my old days of playing with little chemistry sets when I was a kid, a mix of white school glue and borax with a little water makes for a mixture that might be an excellant plasticizer after letting it dry for a day or two due to the fact that there is such a low water content (it has a consistency similar to that of silly putty).... you could probably spread it thinly over a waxpaper surface and pour your explosive mix (would probably be best with a explosive such as APAN (you might need a larger concentration of AP than normal) in which no other liquids are used) over it and then mold it into a large ball. You would have to work on ratios though, too much of the explosive and your plasticizer may fall apart, and too little and you may just have a large fireball. Anyways it wouldn't hurt to try...

Ive heard of the glue, borax, water thing from when we did that as an experiment in 2nd grade, but i had never thought much of it until now.

The psyllium could probably be used for extending the storage life and pouring characteristics of AN slurries. See the thread about wet aluminised AN explosives.