It being a fine day and the atmosphere already suposedly full of sulphur from Iceland blowing up I decided to do some dipping.
I had premade some split pine spills and had also prepared a hundred or so halved tobacconists spills to do. Although I haven't yet done the research I want to on the oat straw versions, as held in the Bryant and May collection, I decided to cut up a few of the stems Toddy had kindly sent and dip those to see how well they worked.
I had saved and cleaned a small tin as this was the nearest thing I had to one of the sulphur melting pots as originally used. I marked on the inside the depth I wanted the pointed ends of the spills to be covered to and put in about a ounce of sulphur powder
This I melted over a low flame, making sure the wind was blowing any fumes away from me etc. A gentle swirling action helped the process. I added more sulphur until the mark was reached.
Using a large container made the actual dipping
extremely quick and easy. I occasionally had to heat the sulphur some more when it began to solidify but since I merely had to grab a spill and dip it vertically until it hit the bottom and the throw it onto the ground (they more or less went hard by the time they landed) before grabbing the next each only took a couple of seconds to do. Those that landed on another spill with the sulpur coated tip did sometimes stick slightly so I took to policing them up after every 50 or so to make reduce the number of times this happened. I could have just thrown them further but this seemed less hassle.
In the end I made this lot in just over 30 minutes
Each of the single ended piles has 10 matches in it while there are 25 of the double ended matches and about 20 of the dipped oat straws.
When dipping the straws the sulphur didn't stick to the outside very well so I double dipped a couple, seen at the left of the pile, bottom right.
When I tested the matches, using some firework slow match for consistancy the single dipped oat straws proved very difficult to light, the double dipped was significantly easier but went out as soon as the flame had consumed the sulphur.
The matches made from the commercial spills work well but not so good as the thicker home split spills which once lit burned very well indeed, were very hard to blow out while some sulphur remained (much more so than a safety match or candle, being not far off what you get with a life boat match).
I've made bundles of 25 for conveniance and that lot should last me a while, certainly until I can do some more research and want to make some more.
If anyone in the UK would care to try a few before deciding to make their own, please let me know.
ATB
Tom
