                                Article Four                     

                     How To Make Nitro-Cellulose That Works

Nitro-Cellulose is great stuff!  Have you ever seen those cartoons where they
leave a trail of powder in a line and light it and the flame goes all the way
along the line?  Just like Bugs Bunny, you too can do it! :)  Black Powder
will work, but it burns really slow and leaves a mess behind.  But wait! 
Nitro-Cellulose is the answer!  It'll burn fast and clean and follow that
line until all of it is burned up!

Here's an example from the file HANDBOOK.TXT:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  
  C. Cellulose Nitrate (Guncotton)

       Commonly   known as Smokeless powder, Nitrocellulose is  exactly  that-
it does not give off smoke when it burns.

Materials-

  70ml concentrated sulfuric acid
  30ml concentrated nitric acid
  5g absorbent cotton
  250ml 1M sodium bicarbonate
  250ml beaker
  ice bath
  tongs
  paper towels

   Place 250ml beaker in the ice bath, add 70ml sulfuric acid, 30mL
nitric acid. Divide cotton into .7g pieces. With tongs, immerse each piece in 
the acid solution for 1 minute. Next, rinse each piece in 3 successive baths
of 500mL ater. Use fresh water for each piece. Then immerse in 250mL
1M sodium bicarbonate. If it bubbles, rinse in water once more until no 
bubbling  occurs. Squeeze dry and spread on paper towels to dry overnight.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Apart from needing a good spell-checker/grammer-checker, these instructions 
aren't that bad!  We'll go over them again though to clear some minor things 
up.

1.  You don't need beakers and flasks and crap for this.  Simple glass jars
    will work fine.  Try to use approximately the amounts suggested here, 
    they are really pretty good.  The important part is the 70mL of Sulfuric
    Acid and the 30mL of Nitric Acid.  You must have 70% Sulfuric and 30%
    Nitric Acid in the glass container in the ice water!  If these ratios are
    off, the cotton won't react properly with the acid solution.  Now, it 
    doesn't HAVE to be 70mL and 30mL, you could just do it as 7 parts
    Sulfuric Acid and 3 parts nitric Acid, just as long as there is 70% and
    30% of each respective acid.  And make sure there is enough acid so that
    you don't run out before you use up all your cotton!

2.  The reason for putting small amounts of cotton in the solution is because
    you don't want a big piece in there since the middle may not be touched
    by the acid solution.  0.7g is nice... if you can measure it! :)  Just
    use small amounts.

3.  1 minute for each piece is good, but leaving it in there for 2 minutes
    for added measure is a good idea.

4.  Rinsing each piece of Nitro-Cellulose is VERY IMPORTANT!!  The reason is 
    that there is acid still present on the nitro-cellulose and you really
    can't touch it with acid on it :)  Also, the acid makes the substance
    more unstable.  So, rinse them as it says, 3 times for each piece.  Try
    to use fresh water each time.  It doesn't HAVE to be 500mL of water each
    time, just make sure they get submersed really good.

5.  For the common person, they really wouldn't know what 1M Sodium 
    Bicarbonate is.  And truthfully, if you don't know what it is, YOU 
    SHOULDN'T BE FOOLING AROUND WITH THIS STUFF!  But of course, I know that
    people are still going to attempt this process, so here is what it means:

    1M NaHCO3 (Sodium bicarbonate) means 1 mol/litre NaHCO3.  It's a 
    measurement of concentration.  The molecular weight of NaHCO3 is
    about 84 grams/mol.  Don't worry about what a "mol" is right now, you'll
    learn that if you take a chemistry class.  Anyways, since NaHCO3 has
    84g/mol, that means that 84 grams of Sodium Bicarbonate IS 1 mol.  And
    since we need 1mol of NaHCO3/Litre, we therefore need 84g of Sodium
    Bicarbonate to be dissolved in 1L of water.
    
    Confused yet?  Don't be!  Just do this:  Get 84g of Sodium Bicarbonate
    and dissolve it in approximately 1 litre of water.  That's the 1M
    Sodium Bicarbonate you need.

    Anyways back to the task at hand, immerse the pieces of Nitro-Cellulose
    in the Sodium Bicarbonate solution and dip it in and out a couple times.
    If it bubbles, re-rinse the Nitro-Cellulose in water again and try it
    again in the Sodium Bicarbonate.  Keep doing it until it doesn't bubble
    anymore.  Repeat this for all the pieces of Nitro-Cellulose.

6.  Now the Nitro-Cellulose needs to be dried.  I wouldn't suggest squeeze 
    drying it, just because you don't want to loose any of the
    Nitro-Cellulose.  Just leave it out to dry and keep it away from flames 
    and extreme heat :)

And that's it!  When it's dry, try lighting some of it up!  It burns easily
and quickly (it ignites pretty fast too!).

This was one of the rare times where I was impressed with the directions 
given by the original author.  Put a mark on the wall! :)
