Burning of potassium permanganate to manganese greensand will often get it going. You are on your own for figuring out how to do that.
Thermite is not the ultimate destructive force some people seem to think it is. If you're trying to totally liquefy the platters you'll probably need to remove them from the drives and put them in something capable of containing the thermite for at least a little while (e.g. graphite crucible). The usual, "put it in a flower pot" will likely either result in a mess or a smallish hole through the platter, which really isn't any better than running a drill through it. The suggestion of using an acetylene torch is far more practical, if you for some reason are really needing to turn platters into blobs. Thanks, Jonathan On Fri, Sep 21, 2018 at 8:45 AM Robert via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > If my memory of O Level chemistry classes is anything to go by, the > idea was that you used a piece of Magnesium ribbon to ignite it. I > don't recall Manganese Dioxide being part of the recipe. > On Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 10:20 PM Eric Smith via cctalk > <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > > > > Anyone have advice on making thermite? Ingredients, sources, proportions? > > > > The internet seems to think that just using aluminum powder with ferric > > oxide is relatively hard to ignite, and that some manganese dioxide would > > help with that. > > > > Without spending too much time shopping, it looks like I can get: > > * aluminum powder, 5 micron, 2 lb for $34 > > * ferric oxide, 10 lb for $27 > > * manganese dioxide, 1 lb for $39 >
