Talk:Amatol

Making ratios unambiguous
I feel this article needs to more clearly define what it means by the ratios here : Typical ratios of TNT to ammonium nitrate... so I assume 20/80 mean 20% TNT and 80 % Amatol ? This appears to be the intention as preceding this TNT is mentioned before Amatol. It could be idiot-proofed by "(e.g. 20% TNT and 80% Amatol)" to remove the possibility of ambiguity in interpretation.

But - further down there follows : "However, the lowest grades of amatol (eg 20/80) could not..." What does "lowest grades" mean ? If we assume 20/80 means 80% Amatol as per above, 80% would seem to be a high grade...

Typical British ammunition described as 60/40 Amatol meant 60% Amatol, 40% TNT and was effective. So I dont understand the statement here "Amatol allowed existing supplies of TNT to be "padded out considerably, with little reduction in the destructive power of the final product -so long as the amount of TNT in the mixture did not fall below 60%". ?? Rcbutcher (talk) 12:13, 8 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Amatol is the mixture. 20/80 means 20% TNT and 80% ammonium nitrate (not 80% Amatol).  Low grade means less explosive power per kg.  "so long as the amount of TNT did not fall below 60%" seems to mean that 20 kg of 60/40 Amatol has almost the same explosive power as 20kg of TNT. --Rumping (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Colour?
the article states from white to gray but a account from the time when which this was often used states it as yellow brown. http://www.greatwardifferent.com/Great_War/Balloon/Balloon.htm I do not know the accuracy of either this page nor the person that stated white to grey; I assume this is because modern amatol has this colour. Anyway, i've added this to the talk page in case someone wants to make sense of that particular detail. 75.156.147.1 (talk) 19:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Name
The 'Amatol' name comes from Ammonium toluene —Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.40.251.94 (talk) 14:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)
 * The phrase Ammonium toluene doesn't seem to be used in other web reference docs, but the Wiki article on toluene states that toluene is a raw material of trinitrotoluene (TNT). So I've added the contributor's point, namely that amatol originates from the words ammonium and toluene - while also amending u/l-case mix of grammar to lowercase amatol wherever mid sentence. Also I've split the intro into 'short Intro' plus 'Manufacture and uses' as the start was too top heavy. Pete Hobbs (talk) 13:41, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Difference between Amatol and Schneiderite ?
According to various sources, there seems to be some differences between Amatol and Schneiderite : Amatol is TNT + ammonium nitrate ; schneiderite is dinitronaphtalene + ammonium nitrate. See for example : here or here. It could perhaps be a "false friend" ? Tpe.g5.stan (talk) 12:28, 12 July 2023 (UTC)