
So there are two recipes I've used, one with wax and one without. They each have their pros and cons. The common elements are potassium nitrate and sugar. Potassium nitrate can be found in a certain brand of stump remover (it removes stumps). Spectracide is one. The ingredients list should say 99% potassium nitrate, KNO3. It's critical that it's 99% potassium nitrate, as anything else will either not work or emit more dangerous fumes. FWIW KNO3 is basically harmless in small quantities, since in smoke form you're basically breathing parts of what is a rather good fertilizer. 1 pound, i.e. one container, should be enough for your purposes.
Sugar - common table sugar is good enough for your purposes. If you want a potentially smoother burn, grind it up in a coffee maker or in a mortar and pestle.
The potassium nitrate in both recipes should not have any clumps, so crush it down to granular or powder form.
In both recipes you'll need to mix the amounts of potassium nitrate and sugar together in a container to make a mostly homogeneous mixture of the two, to enhance a smooth burn.
Recipe 1:
40 grams wax
40 grams sugar
60 grams potassium nitrate.
The wax can be from a regular candle, birthday candle, whatever. I prefer colorless candles. Warning: melted wax is incredibly annoying to remove from a pan, since a slight sheen remains unless you scrub with lots of soap, or heat up water in the skillet you used to melt the wax until it's boiling and throw the contents in the toilet. Or you can follow this page: http://cookingcircuits.com/
Basically, you melt the wax in a skillet over low, taking care to remove the wick if it's a candle. Then mix in the sugar and potassium nitrate mix, until the whole mixture is pourable. Pour it into some sort of wooden tube capped at the end with thick tape and some napkins to absorb what might leak through. You can also use PVC. Warning, the mixture will be very hot, and will cool slowly, making it hard to handle the tube. Don't use a cardboard paper tube, it's too thin. Unless you wrap that in some thick tape. Before it cools completely, put in some matches, flammable end out, or fuse, or sparklers, into the end of the tube. This will make it easier to ignite the wax. Once it's cooled, wrap the whole thing in aluminum and make a smaller opening at the end with the matches, to prevent too much oxygen from entering the burning end.
Recipe 2:
This recipe is basically underpowered rocket fuel without the iron oxide that acts as a catalyst. To make it burn less powerfully, add a few more grams of sugar than in this recipe. Thing is, this one is a bit more complicated and can potentially send flames shooting five feet high if you are an idiot.
60 grams potassium nitrate
30 grams sugar (optional: grind it up)
10.8 grams corn syrup (Karo, use the light kind)
This burns a bit more furiously and much hotter. If you used PVC as your tube, the tube will either become pliable or pieces of the inside wall will fly out during the burn.