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I've made 3" hummers in the past. From the 3" (2.5") commercially available BS cores. Shot from 3" mortars. They had rammed clay end plugs. They would spin up really fast. ( dual tangential nozzles ) And with the added inertia of the heavy core and clay plugs. They would still be whistling/buzzing on the way down. Long after the fuel was burnt. But, as you've pointed out above. They hit the ground with an authoritative impact. You didn't want anything to be under them when they came down. I always wanted to put a few rows of those in an 8 or 12. But the fallout from them, probably wouldn't be pretty. If they hit anything.

Those tubes are probably better suited to salutes/lampares, bottom shots, or even as mortars themselves. I don't love the idea of a tube like that becoming fallout from the sky if it were to turn into a sky mine. Normally constructed shells made from rolled paper casings and string may not always fully disintegrate, but at worst they tend to flutter down. I've used a lot of things to act as the former for the cannula. As Carbon alluded to, metal is the best choice if available. Off-cuts of copper pipe tend to make pretty convenient sources up to a certain size. Proper metal tubes for larger shells can be somewhat more difficult to happen upon. I've used PVC or other plastic pipe in a pinch before. I generally put at least 1 turn of thin kraft paper over it, or a few turns of tissue paper. Neither will stand up to the fire spreading inside the shell, and help to prevent stars and polverone from biting into the softer material. I've ruined the packing and settling on my fair share of shells before learning that lesson. One tip if you do use something like plastic or metal that has a thicker wall, make sure to pipe sticks out of the shell a couple extra inches and overfill from what looks like level with the contents. You have to fill the void left from the wall of the pipe. A little too much isn't a big deal. It just spreads out and becomes part of the polverone I typically use to level off the tops of shells.

CMC is used to keep the solids in suspension in a black match slurry, not really as a binder. Typically, 4% dextrin and 1% CMC are used. It's very effective at keeping the slurry evenly mixed. PVB is used in making commercial waterproof quickmatch. It is very flexible and completely waterproof (for short times, at least). I've actually bent the bare match into a 'U' and stuck it in a can of water and lit one end. It burned all the way to the other end under the water. The stuff I got was very flat and made up of a gajillion very fine threads. The PVB we buy for pyro as a powder for binding will dry to a piece of tough, flexible plastic if it's dissolved in alcohol and the solution evaporated to dryness. The PVB in the quickmatch I mentioned seems to contain plasticizers. Folks refer to car windshields as a common use for PVB. It's the rubbery layer between two pieces of glass. That PVB has plasticizers too, just like the PVC a shower curtain or an air mattress is made from. The rubbery texture of the flat match led me to think it's got plasticizers in the PVB. A friend of mine had a bum leg and I brought a rocket to his birthday party. I wanted him to be able to light it from his chair. I took a couple of rolls of this waterproof quickmatch and ran it out to the launcher, spiking it to the ground every so often. It snapped, crackled and popped like English crackers all the way to the rocket. This short clip of mediocre video shows it:

Accroide Resin or Gum Yakka are the other names for it

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thank you my friend

If the ends are blowing though, the contents are not consolidated well enough. Spiked hard enough. Although you're using the term plug. The "shell" should have end disks that sit on top of the machine wound cores walls. I would probably use a minimum of double inners and a single outer. 2 strands of 8ply cotton twine is typical for 3-6" shells. Although above 5" I preferred 1mil hemp twine. If your interest is just a sky mine type effect. You do not even need to use a canulle. Fill the fused end of the shell with a layer of BP. Jumble fill/consolidate the rest of the shell with your stars/polverone. Usually the ends of the shells are slightly biased. Fused side stronger, star end weaker. Horsetail shells are made similarly, broken slightly early. As a side note. Don't forget that a "proper" cylinder shell, is meant to break/pattern radially. Which is going to be very difficult to achieve. Using heavy walled cores.

"Cannule" neat thank you Z. Thank you both actually. That answers my question and comes with some bonus wisdom directly from the experience of some very accomplished pyros. My "cannules" for this size have typically been a plain toilet paper roll. Except I would glue them in place and use it for additional support to keep the bottom from getting blown thru at launch. I know the casing is thicker than is necessary, but I have dozens of these tubes in 3 and 5 ft lengths and I'm continuing to accumulate more from a couple businesses in town. So my thinking was to buy an appropriate sized mortar, make myself a hug for forming end plugs and experiment from there. I actually make 2, 3, and 4 inch cylinders and they all always start from a pre-made cardboard tube leftover from some other application. Its pretty straightforward. Plug it, fill it,wrap it in paper, then wrap with string, and again with paper. (For some reason my 4 inch diam, 2.5 lb, bottom fused cans seem to be more reliable and controlled than my 1.91 inch diameter 80 gram shells. But you are correct mr carbon in That I often end up with a "sky mine" where just the ends blow off... I'm still new enough that I consider that a success. On this particular shell, I've made the end extra thick and plan to add a few grams of flash to my usual BP burst. And I'm trying a new stronger string so hopefully this one will have enough juice to make confetti out of all that cardboard and paper. I guess we'll found out this weekend...hopefully

18lbs kno3 4lbs AF charcoal 3lbs sulfur 1lb 12oz dex 6.6lbs boiling water 3 mesh screen

Typically a brass or copper thin walled tube, is used for the canulle " former". Its important for it to be perfectly centered in the shell, during filling/consolidation. I have in the past made custom sized ones as needed. From plastic soda bottles. You can not consolidate the shells as firmly, with them. As the metal ones, because the shell contents will bite into them. A few turns of paper . . . Is a minimum of 1 turn of 70# virgin kraft. Per inch of nominal diameter. Dry for the case and an equal amount/weight of pasted/broken virgin kraft for the paste wrap. Assuming your building pasted American/Italian styled cylinder shells. With that machine wound core you're better off building a salute or a sky mine.

The sort of tube structure you are talking about is called "Cannule" this term may help you later for study. The burst charge usually coarse Granulated bp is poured through this Cannule at the center of shell and it is later removed, so you have nothing to do with its thickness. Outer shell casing as I can see in your image is heavy walled generally it consists of few turns of Kraft and later it is spiked to reinforce it and pasted with few turns of kraft paper. This link may help you in understanding function of Cannule.

This may be a silly question but, when one is assembling a cylinder shell, the burst is contained within the center of the shell via some sort of tube structure.(At least mine are). My question is, is the column in the center only there to keep the burst charge where we want it? Or should I make a stronger walled center tube to provide extra confinement of the burst within the larger shell. So is a simple rolled piece of paper sufficient or should I use a heavier paper rolled thicker with some glue?

I ordered myself a dead blow. I hope I picked a good one. Its a 24oz filled with Steel shot. The head is hardened plastic one one side and brass on the other. I also got an arbor press, although I'm not sure how I'm gunna incorporate it with my current tooling set up

Are there any other names in common use for red gum? Maybe the biologic name or the common name of the plant could search usefully. Here's a starter with some other words that may aid your search. Red gum (Australia) - Wikipedia

This is one of the main producers in Australia. http://www.australianexporters.net/companyID16.htm I can't get their direct website to load at the moment, but it's http://www.users.on.net/yakilo

It is worth inserting a piece of copper instead of the electrode if any parameter has been changed. And observe in that test electrode what the coating is like. In a more acidic solution, smaller PbO2 crystals form. But you can also dissolve PbO2 with too much nitric acid. It's possible that the electrode is red because some lead dioxide is deposited, but the nitric acid dissolves it, leaving only a copper with small amount of mixed PbO2 coating. This is a typical process where detailed questions need to be worked out.

Nope look at the the video closely

Can anyone provide an Australian online retailer for Red Gum? I assumed I'd have no issue finding a supplier, seeing that it is exclusively produced here but seems I was poorly mistaken. It's a bit of a drive from where I am to find any Grass trees that produce the stuff but that is my next option.

The PbO2 electrodeposition can happen really fast way. You can see deposits within an hour, but you have to be careful to make it happen as slowly as possible. https://www.bitchute.com/video/b7DoUveEIwDX In poor quality, such an electrode can be made very quickly, even within 1-2 hours, but they also fall apart quickly. Depending on the electrode, they usually allow up to 36 hours coating time required for these electrodes. The ones on YouTube that show anodes quickly made from welding electrodes have so far quickly disintegrated for everyone here in a chlorate or perchlorate cell. One problem is that the solution slowly seeps through the lead dioxide layer, and the graphite begins to wear away and eventually the anode are crashed. Or if the lead dioxide coating is of poor quality, it will wear off.

At the beginning, you can make a quick alpha coating, but very thinly. The beta coating should be applied as slowly as possible. There are the following problems: 1. the factory setup are using high density 1.6-1.75g/cm3, high purity graphite which is a light-graied, very hard material. Welding carbon rod are soft material compared to it. 2 problem Here wold be the first alpha coating will be the best Alkaline Lead Tartrate (Alpha Lead Dioxide bath) without pinhole problems. This gives a denser structural pre coating. 100g Potassium Sodium Tartrate, KNaC4H4 O6.4H2O 50g Sodium Hydroxide, NaOH 96g Lead Oxide, PbO Dissolve in the order listed in distilled water to make 2 liters of solution. Heat to 60C to complete solution of Lead Oxide. Cool and filter through sintered glass. Bath pH is about 13. For beta coating Lead Nitrate PbNO3 375g/l Copper Nitrate CuNO3 14g/l TritonX 100 0.5g/l Nitric acid 5g/l pH controlled with nitric acid: pH 1.5-6.0 Solution temperature 70-90°C Anode current density: 10 to 100 mA /cm2 1.46V is required for the formation of the dioxide layer Current maximum 2.2V 0.4A Download the Chlorates and Perchlorates archive from here the APC forum, it includes detailed studies on the homemade lead dioxide anode. The problem with homemade lead dioxide anodes is that the perchlorate solution seeps through the poles and quickly disintegrates attacking the graphite and the anode are demaged. This is where the problem will arise when making perchlorate. However, it works well in a pH controlled chlorate cell. But you must not use too many amperes in the chlorate, perchlorate because the electrode will fall apart. You have undertaken a very difficult task.

I'm giving 2 volts, and the amperage is 0.7A. The pH is just a little above 1, something between 1.2 and 1.3. I checked it when I started, and when it was over. Both times the pH remained the same! I saw it two days ago (2 weeks after the electrodeposition) and the gray areas stayed the same, while the orange ones were oxidized. Do you think would be a good idea to let the electrodeposition happen for, like, 8 hours? Because one hour or another, the lead needs to start coating the electrode, right?

The pH must keep under pH6 this is important, use small amount of HNO3. Keep it hot the solution. The coating should be dark gray. The rate of formation of the coating itself is encouraging. If the solution is not acidic enough, unwanted substances may precipitate. Or maybe you measured something wrong, maybe too much copper but it's also possible that the raw material is contaminated. Copper can also precipitate if the solution is not acidic enough add to it more nitric acid. If there is any material that doesn't belong there, it tends to precipitate out at the beginning. If you use a little more volts at the beginning you can create a very thin alpha coating on which the beta can then be coated.

Hi guys! I was trying to follow the instructions @mx5kevin told to make PbO2 in this post: But something odd happened. The electrode forming was first covered by copper, than by a white color, and after that a shy gray, as you can see in the pictures: This happened in about 3 hours. The concentration of lead nitrate was 250g/liter, I was not using TritonX and the current was 0.7ma. Those were the differences. Do you guys have any idea what was going on? I'm thinking that the readish color is lead oxide, and not copper

The 'formula' to create complete fireworks has already been provided.