Alright well everyone fucking tells me something different every damn time, so I just wanna know, is this how you make motherfucking thermite:

1. get some fucking steel wool
2. touch a fucking 9v battery to the fucking steel wool so it burns or whatever it does
3. fucking get some alluminum foil and mix it with the fucked up steel wool
4. fucking shred that shit into fine fucking pieces (someone wanna tell me how?)

and then dont you have to light that shit with magnesium? where the fuck do i get that shit home depot doesn't carry it.

it's just iron oxide(rust) and aluminum powder. sure you can do the steel wool thing but it shouldn't be too hard to go outside and find something old with rust on it. it has to be in a 70 to 30 percent ration. i forgot which one was 70 percent and which was 30. it has to be mixed good. ziploc baggies are good for mixing it. and yes, you need a magnesium ribbon to ignite it. you shouldn't have posted this because there's like 15 other threads on this. you could've used the search option or googled it.

Wow, you're articulate.

If you want to grind aluminum, throw some foil into an old blender. It won't get it super fine, but you don't need it to be that fine to make thermite. You can ignite it with things other than magnesium... Any hot burning pyrotechnic mixture will do. People have had luck with sparklers, oxy torches, permanganate/glycerin mixtures, and other things. The finer and drier your materials are to start with the easier the thermite will be to ignite.

Foil is to low grade to use it wont burn well. Use straight up aluminum powder from online. Or go to the metal shop and empty the aluminum band saw tray into a container take it home and ball mill it. Then take steel wool dissolve it into hcl. Then add that to sodium hydroxide ppt and filter.

Okay, Urkel, enlighten me. How is aluminum foil 'low grade?' Modern aluminum foil is just that: Pure aluminum, in foil form. It isn't anything else because it would cost more to make it more complicated than that.

Your particle size may affect how well it burns, but with thermite this isn't very critical. As you say, ball milling can also generate finer powder, after you blend the stuff.

Dissolving aluminum in hydrochloric acid will generate ferric chloride; Adding sodium hydroxide (a base) to the solution will not cause your ferric chloride to convert back to iron or iron oxide. Rather, it will neutralize the remaining acid and make a big mess. After the strong acid is neutralized, the weaker ferric chloride will be neutralized, resulting in ferric hydroxide. Useless to us.

You can reduce iron out of ferric chloride by heating in the presence of sodium chloride. This is done in industry by aerosolizing the stuff over a catalyst with equipment you do not have.

A faster way to make iron oxide is to simply burn the steel wool or douse it in acetic acid (it's vinegar, kids) and then expose to oxygen.

ummm.....why wouldnt you just go to a drug store, and buy an etch a sketch, take it home, smash it open, take the aluminum powder out, and then find some rust on a shitty car and mix em together....that seems like it would work. then like go to a camping store, buy a block of magnesium used for starting fires, file the thing into a shitload of powder and use that to ignite the thermite. this is what i plan to do, and i am not positive it will work. if it wont, someone please tell me (in a respectfull manner, that would be apreciated....not like you fucking dumbass that shit wont fucking work, but like explain why it wouldnt. eh?)


o, and as for how pure aluminum foil is....got this from Enotes.com

"Aluminum foil is made from an aluminum alloy which contains between 92 and 99 percent aluminum. Usually between 0.00017 and 0.0059 inches thick, foil is produced in many widths and strengths for literally hundreds of applications." so there you go...92 to 99 percent aluminum

It should work just fine.

Hah, sorry I was more drunk than sober on my last post...

So yeah, I'll ask nicely this time, does anyone know where to find mag ribbon other than online?
Or a way to isolate magnesium that I could light for the same purpose?

And will a butane lighter be sufficient to ignite the mag ribbon? cause that's about all I have access to...or would it work better to start a fire on a Duraflame log and just throw the mag ribbon and thermite together on top of that?

you need a mag ribbon to ignite thermite because a lighter doesn't burn hot enough to ignite it. a mag ribbon has a low temperature of ignition so it can be lit by a lighter but burns hot enough to ignite the thermite. a mag ribbon is recommended because it's cheap, easy to find, and easy to use. but you can use anything that burns really hot. i forgot what temperature thermite ignites at, so look it up and use anythign that burns at at least that temperature.i think you might have misunderstood what was said in the previos posts. a mag ribbon is like a fuse. a lighter can ignite the mag ribbon.

You don't need magnesium ribbon. Magnesium fire starters will do (check your local sporting goods store/section) among a whole host of other things, such as just about any fuel/oxidizer pyrotechnic mixture.