PVB has many interesting properties, but not all are directly relevant to pyrotechnics. To help clarify the situation, I’ll say what I and one or two others have found so far.
PVB dissolves in a wide range of solvents. In the vast majority of firework-related situations, 100% isopropyl alcohol works very well and is all you need to use.
It acts as a very good binder in a wide range of formulations to make cut, pumped or rolled stars. For pumped and cut stars, particularly if they contain reasonably large percentages of PVB, you need to take care about the amount of IPA you use – you need enough to activate the binder, but too much can result in a soft, sticky mess. With the right amount, pumped stars are easy to make and separate cleanly from the pump. In all cases I have tried, using PVB means that rolled stars become much easier to make, compared with other binders. To give you some idea, I took twenty-four 2mm cores and hand-rolled them to 8mm in a 400ml beaker. Normally, that would result in some rather oddly shaped bodies of varying sizes. Here’s the result:
IMG_2120d.jpg
It also is a good fuel and it looks as though it can largely replace a range of other fuels. Compositions made with PVB seem to ignite easily and be smooth-burning. I found that it disturbed the colour of one particular blue formulation, but Ken tells me that he has found an alternative that works well with PVB.
There is some evidence that it improves some strobe mixtures. It certainly seems to work in ones of the barium nitrate-sulphur type. An example I tried strobed very well and was exceptionally easy to ignite, compared with a similar mixture without the PVB.
Lloyd points out that adding NC can help release the solvent in cases where PVB would otherwise tend to retain it over relatively long periods of time. All I can say is that, with IPA as the solvent and modest percentages of PVB as binder/fuel, I haven’t yet found that to be a problem.
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