If you enjoy sitting around your fireplace and watching colorful
flames dance, you’ll be happy to know you can color your own
flames quite cheaply. Basically, there are three methods of
coloring fireplace flames. You can soak the logs in an alcohol
solution which contains certain chemicals. Or you can soak the
logs in a water solution containing certain chemicals and then
dry them. And finally, you can just throw certain chemicals
into the flames.
The various chemicals or salts required for
certain colors of flames are as follows:
potassium sulphate ( 3 parts) and potassium nitrate (1 part)
for violet flames
strontium chloride for red flames
calcium chloride for blue flames
magnesium sulphate (Epson Salts) for white flames
baronsalts (borax) for yellowish-green flames
copper sulphate (blue vitrol) for green flames
sodium chloride (table salt) for yellow flames
You may also treat pinecones, coarse sawdust or cork waste and
throw them into the fireplace to color the fire. They are far
easier to treat and take less time to dry.
Here are two methods
for treating bases such as course sawdust, pinecones and cork
waste.
Best for sawdust - Dissolve the chemical in water. Stir
in your base. When the solution is completely absorbed, spread
the base out in a thin layer to dry.
Best for cork-based chips - Add 1 pint of liquid glue to 7 parts
of water. Crush the chemical to a fine powder and add 1 pound
of the powder to each gallon of glue-water. Put into the liquid
as much of the sawdust, cork waste or pinecones that it will
take, stirring and adding more base until all the liquid has
been absorbed. Spread out on a rack to dry.
It is better to treat separate portions of your base with the
solution of a single chemical than to treat the base in a single
mixture of various chemicals. After drying the separately
treated portions of sawdust or cork waste, you can then mix them
together in order to achieve distinctly colored flames.
There is no fixed proportion of chemicals to be used to a given
amount of water. As much of the powdered chemical should be
mixed with water as will dissolve, until you have a saturated
solution. The only exception is ordinary table salt (sodium
chloride), in which case you should use 1/2 ounce of salt to
each pint of water.
Coarse hardwood sawdust is better than pine or other softwood
sawdust as a base. Cork waste also makes an excellent base.
Great for outdoor fire pits