Richtee Posted October 8, 2008 Share Posted October 8, 2008 Skylighter plastic bombette... <SNIP> ... these inserts if there's a chance of causing static with all the shaking involved Soo..use cardboard. Cheaper too. And careful about the report comp references... outside of the HE section. Sure way to get a spanking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Posted October 8, 2008 Author Share Posted October 8, 2008 (edited) Skylighter plastic bombette . Are these safe to fill with FP I Want to use a few of these for reports in a 8'' round shell and I'm not to thrilled about pasting an 8'' shell with these inserts if there's a chance of causing static with all the shaking involved Yes, it should be safe, assuming it is the same kind of polystyrene plastic which is standard for most other plastic pyro applications. I can't think of why it would be different. We manufacture plastic salutes by thousands, using gamon casings. Altough, whe have a separate mixer to make the salutes, it is unlikely that static buildup would find anywhere to discharge inside the shell. If you use pre-made flash, be carefull when pouring it into the salute. This is the most dangerous part concerning discharge. edit. Ofcourse, mixing is also a hazard. Edited October 8, 2008 by Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick2354 Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 Sorry for being off topic but I have been making Toilet Paper Shells with good success by just dumping the lift powder at the bottom of my cardboard mortar and placing the shell on top. I have bought a 10 Shot Mortar Rack that should arrive early next week and I am wanting to attach a lift bag with stickmatch (Top fuse them). I tryed placing a length of quickmatch attaching to the lift bag. Which was just plastic bag containg 1/10th of the shell weight. When I Lit it the stickymatch ignited and shot the shell up, BUT it didnt light the fuse to aerial shell (1.8mm Visco primed with BP slurry). The shell ended up falling on to my roof. Can Anyone shed any light on what I did wrong? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 You could try to cut the fuse on an angle, and dip the slurry primed end in some granular BP to make it have a rough surface. Additionally backing down the lift may also work. I never had great luck with TP shells. They always ended up too big. I had to get a 2 1/8" mortar to fire them. Perhaps I should try them again now that I actually have some idea what I'm doing and thinner spiking string. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick2354 Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 I have been cutting the fuse on an angle with a stanley knife. I am just confused as to why Ive made and lit about 30 of them (side fused) without any problem now and now I try to use a lift bag and it fails to light. I may try using priming the visco in granular BP, but I dont see why Ive had so much success with just plain meal when side fused, maybe my lift bag isnt touching the fuse and this is causing igniton failures? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 Has this happened more than once, or just the one time? It could just be a fluke of course. I do find it odd though. Normally there is a large excess of fire around to light anything and everything. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick2354 Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 (edited) It happened twice, but they may still be flukes, I will try one tonight and report back. EDIT: Is their any progress on the max number of replies that you can print out? Edited October 10, 2008 by nick2354 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSidewinder Posted October 10, 2008 Share Posted October 10, 2008 Unfortunately, that has been on the back burner for some time, and may have to stay there. There are resource limits on the software and on our Host, and I don't want to risk exceeding them. I know this is a pain in the ass, but I really don't dare "experiment" on the live forum. I have a test copy of it on a different host, but just haven't had the time to work on it. Real Life sort of intruded this Summer, and it's not going to get any better for some time. *sigh* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Yankie Posted October 11, 2008 Share Posted October 11, 2008 (edited) I had a 3" shell with crossmatched chinese 1/4" time fuse and the rising comet on top lit but the fuse did not. I was very baffled with that one, I spent hours running around in the paddock trying to find it... to no avail.What could possibly have gone wrong? I tryed placing a length of quickmatch attaching to the lift bag. Which was just plastic bag containg 1/10th of the shell weight. When I Lit it the stickymatch ignited and shot the shell up, BUT it didnt light the fuse to aerial shell (1.8mm Visco primed with BP slurry). The shell ended up falling on to my roof. Would it be at all possible that a section of the lift bag tore off and covered the time fuse? (sort of like shrink wrap with the heat) Edited October 11, 2008 by fredbert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted October 11, 2008 Share Posted October 11, 2008 Occasionally you get a bad piece of chinese time fuse. It just happens. Sometimes the tar melts into the core, sometimes there is an air gap. I really doubt the plastic melting over the time fuse thing. I place the lift in a plastic bag for all my ball shells, and most of my canister shells, and have never had a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psyco_1322 Posted October 12, 2008 Share Posted October 12, 2008 Advise on visco, just cut at an angle, dip in NC and them dip into fine bp. Works well for many people with out fail. I had a 3" ball that I made to test some pop glitter stars, and ended up with about 5 extra stars. I decided they would make a nice rising tail and glued all of them around the top of the shell, as I would do any rising effect. The shell shot and worked perfect but not one of those damn stars lit. Strange. The way you crossmatch your time fuse can cause it to fail to light occasionally. If its a punched whole, its been reported that some of the tar can smear across the powder grain and block fire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jadesource Posted October 14, 2008 Share Posted October 14, 2008 Nick try this on your visco fuse split the fuse down the middle a little ways flare it out like a T then dip in NC and your favorite BP works well for me.Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The-T Posted October 14, 2008 Share Posted October 14, 2008 What I do to prime my fuse (using a sharp blade) is just split the fuse a bit. Lights every time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miech Posted October 14, 2008 Share Posted October 14, 2008 That could give you some problems when using thicker visco. When I do not prime the ends of my 3 mm visco the powder will fall out, decreasing the delay with over a second. Unprimed visco does not work for me, it just shoots al my inserts and shells blind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nick2354 Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 I have concluded that the reason my shells failed to light the fuse is because my lift bag wasnt close enough to the fuse. I recently made another one and taped the lift bag to the fuse with 2 strips of masking tape. It went out of the Mortar with fuse lit. Here is a video of one of my shells http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BvfNBw06kDk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sambo Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 I have concluded that the reason my shells failed to light the fuse is because my lift bag wasnt close enough to the fuse. I recently made another one and taped the lift bag to the fuse with 2 strips of masking tape. It went out of the Mortar with fuse lit. Here is a video of one of my shells http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=BvfNBw06kDk That shouldn’t really affect it, the amount of hot gasses produced should light anything in close proximity easily. For example making a mine, the stars and lift are separated, yet the stars light fine. I would put the problem down to priming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 That could give you some problems when using thicker visco. When I do not prime the ends of my 3 mm visco the powder will fall out, decreasing the delay with over a second. Unprimed visco does not work for me, it just shoots al my inserts and shells blind. Hmm what do you mean? The shell bursts? Or no burst? If it bursts, I don't think the issue with "blind shots" is the prime on the visco...is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Miech Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 I've used 3 mm visco on almost all of my inserts, and not priming the visco made the inserts leave the tube without being lit. I've also shot a 2" shell with poorly primed visco, and this one also failed to burst. Therefore I now prime every visco used for arial devices. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwezxc12 Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 (edited) That shouldn’t really affect it, the amount of hot gasses produced should light anything in close proximity easily. For example making a mine, the stars and lift are separated, yet the stars light fine. I would put the problem down to priming. I would have to agree. Attached is a slow motion video I made last winter of 3", 4", 6", and 8" shell launches. For scale, the spruce trees in the background are ~16ft. tall. As you can see, even the 3" mortar throws a ball of burning lift gasses seven or eight ft. out of the tube. The 8" shell made a fireball that topped the trees... Slo-mo shell launch video If you properly primed or cross-matched the shell fuse there is no way it shouldn't light whether is was touching the lift bag or merely adjacent to it. FWIW, I use taped visco for timing and cross-match with single strands of blackmatch on all of my shells, regardless of size - too much work goes into each one to risk a dud. Edited October 15, 2008 by qwezxc12 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted October 15, 2008 Share Posted October 15, 2008 It's hard to beat cross matching for reliability. Even if it takes a couple extra minutes, it's worth it, IMHO.I split mine and dip in an NC/BP/Dark Al slurry. Never had a failure to light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psyco_1322 Posted October 16, 2008 Share Posted October 16, 2008 Richtee, if you would leave that Al powder out of your prime it would cut back on costs a bit. Its not necessary to have metal powders in primes for lighting fuse since its pretty much bp anyways. All you need to do is get fire to the fuse. I wouldn't be surprised if the Al actually raised the need temperature for it to light. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted October 16, 2008 Share Posted October 16, 2008 Richtee, if you would leave that Al powder out of your prime it would cut back on costs a bit. Its not necessary to have metal powders in primes for lighting fuse since its pretty much bp anyways. All you need to do is get fire to the fuse. I wouldn't be surprised if the Al actually raised the need temperature for it to light. True, but I guess I should have mentioned I use that mix for priming some stars as well, so I have it anyway. Thanks for the frugal advice tho...who ain't tryin' to save a buck these days? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puriss Posted October 19, 2008 Share Posted October 19, 2008 (edited) Here is one of three 3" shells from saturday, and the only one I filmed. I made shells containing stars from the same batch two weeks ago and they were good red, these are really pale, almost pink. Someone who knows why?It is a chlorate/carbonate based star. Edited October 19, 2008 by Puriss Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
psyco_1322 Posted October 20, 2008 Share Posted October 20, 2008 Regardless if the stars looked good, the shell itself looked great! I would say you got your 3" balls tuned in very nicely. Congrats. I can not speak on chlorate star comps, sorry. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oskarchem Posted October 20, 2008 Share Posted October 20, 2008 (edited) Could you tell us what comp that is? Maybe it'll help us find the reason of the pale color. Edited October 20, 2008 by oskarchem Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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