Method of Mixing the Ingredients.
2. Method of mixing the Ingredients.—Connected with that of grinding is the operation of mixing the ingredients, and which is considered a principal part of the business of Pyrotechny; and indeed many articles depend as much on the well mixing as on the proportion of their composition; therefore great care should be taken in this part of the work, and particularly so in the composition of sky-rockets. When you have about four or five pounds of ingredients duly prepared for mixing, (which is a sufficient quantity to mix at one time,) first put them together in some vessel convenient for the purpose, then work them about with your hands, till their various natures are pretty well incorporated; after which put them into your lawn sieve with the receiver and top to it, and sift it into some other clean vessel, and if any remains that will not pass through the sieve, grind it again till fine enough; and if it be suffered to pass twice through the sieve it will be more than the trouble the better. For rockets and all fixed works, from which the fire is to play regular, the ingredients must be prepared as above; and we may observe here, that all compositions which contain steel or iron filings must be mixed or shifted with the copper shovel, for the hands are apt to impart a moisture, which is injurious to their nature. Nor will any works which have iron or steel in their charge keep long in damp weather without being properly prepared, as was directed in the preceding Section.
There are several other moulds and apparatus made use of, but as most of them are used in the making of rockets, and some few other articles, and are so immediately connected with the practice thereof, we think their use and application will be better understood when we come to treat of that article in the next Section, rather than by entering their descriptions in this place.
[SECTION IV.]
Division of Fire-Works.
Fire-works are generally divided into two classes, those which compose the first are chiefly squibs, serpents, crackers, sparks, marroons, saucipons, pin-wheels, leaders, gerbes, or roman candles, and (when without any appendages) rockets; these by their requiring but little dexterity in the preparation are called simple, or more properly single fire-works, and are said to be of the first class. Others which are of more difficult constructions, are called compound or complex fire-works, and are said to be of the second class. These consist of suns, moons, stars, wheels, globes, balloons, batteries, flower-pots, fire-pumps, pyramids, &c.; these are generally composed of some of the single pieces, as gerbes, serpents, marroons, saucipons, &c. properly arranged on suitable frames, according to the taste of the operator, and connected with each other by long pipes filled with inflammable composition called leaders, and fired by means of quick-matches or port-fires, and very frequently by common touch-paper. We shall begin our descriptions and instructions, with those of the simple or single kind, which will lead us progressively to those which are more complex, the order we purposed pursuing at the commencement of our Work.
In the subsequent directions we shall have frequent occasion to mention pipes of communication, commonly called leaders, by which the several parts of a compound work are connected with each other; and several other articles of less importance, as touch-paper, quick-match, port-fires, &c.