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Aerial Shells


Chris

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Twotails, try your best to seal the time fuse/spolette to the shell casing. It's the most critical spot. I put much wood glue from the inside and outside and it does the job. I never used hot glue gun, because I doubt in its strength, but others use as well and it works for them.

 

 

This week I made some fireworks :

Two 3" ball shells : 1st has tigertail stars with H3 break, 2nd has emerald green stars with BP hulls.

One 2" can shell with Tigertail stars and few emerald green with H3 break.

Two starmines : One with tigertail, the other with emerald green.

 

:D

post-3895-1252082316_thumb.jpg

Edited by 50AE
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Twotails, try your best to seal the time fuse/spolette to the shell casing. It's the most critical spot. I put much wood glue from the inside and outside and it does the job. I never used hot glue gun, because I doubt in its strength, but others use as well and it works for them.

 

 

This week I made some fireworks :

Two 3" ball shells : 1st has tigertail stars with H3 break, 2nd has emerald green stars with BP hulls.

One 2" can shell with Tigertail stars and few emerald green with H3 break.

Two starmines : One with tigertail, the other with emerald green.

 

:D

 

I used hot glue on both inside and outside the time fuse. I made my own time fuse with a peice of 1/8in chinise visco wrapped in a few layers of masking tape ( I put enough layers so that the fuse was about 1/4in thick).

 

I've heard of using an H3 break before, does it preform well? I know that is Hydroscopic, but it looks like somthing i'll have to give a try.

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Remember that lift is just that, a powder to lift the shell out not smash it out. I have an idea of someone elses that the Chinese use a little extra charcoal to slow the powder down for lift, than the faster powder needed for bursting a shell (think BP made from a mx of 60, 25, 15 Nitre/charcoal/sulphur for lift)-it's a soft lift so the shells go up intact rather than smashed.

 

I've also seen a Chinese shell hemi with fuse tubes in with lots of glue, and even more string simply wound round the outside of the fuse tube to protect the glued joint from the heat and pressure.

Edited by Arthur
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Dunno why one would want to use H3. KP breaks are about equal in power, and don't have all of the incompatabilities that you have to worry about with chlorates. For 50AE, perhaps chlorate is easier-to-obtain/cheaper, and so it's more economical to use H3, rather than KP, MCRH, or either with a bit of a flash booster.
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H3 works better in smaller shells where there is less pressure. I refuse to use flash with KP, simply because it's way to easy to over do it. I avoid H3, just for the chlorate issues.

 

I suspect the flower pot may have come from your improvised timefuse. If the first wrap isn't super tight, it may have allowed a small passage of air. I have lifted shells WAY too hard before, and have never had a flower pot. I'm talking 120g of 4FA for a 6" shell. Wow did that baby fly. 5 seconds later when the burst went off, it was still headed up at a good rate of speed.

 

I've never had a problem with hot glue not holding. I make a generous pile on the inside and out. I also make sure to twist the time fuse around quite a bit to ensure a good seal. I don't know about the using a lower quality lift for chinese shells. In my experience they usually over lifted, and use a finer grain powder, 4FA or smaller. This allows them to get by with less.

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Maby thats what happened, i'll have to try it again with less lift.

I used to wet the side of the time fuse with wood glue, and build a fillet up on the outside and the inside of the shell, like 50AE mentioned.

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see thats what happened, sorry for the poor quality, I took it on my phone.

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see thats what happened, sorry for the poor quality, I took it on my phone.

 

Hmm... looks like more than one thing was wrong there. Nice stars tho ;{)

 

Even a flowerpot should have had more "oomph" than that. What amount of lift did you use? Was in home made powder? And again, your fusing technique?

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Hmm... looks like more than one thing was wrong there. Nice stars tho ;{)

 

Even a flowerpot should have had more "oomph" than that. What amount of lift did you use? Was in home made powder? And again, your fusing technique?

 

 

firstoff, it was maby 100ft(more or less, im not sure) away from the shell. I used 10 to 15g (home milled BP), im not realy sure, becouse i just wanted to get it into the air, it might have been more or less. my shell was plastic, and i think the fire spread into the shell causing pre-ignition. I used homemade timefuse ( 1/8in chinese visco, wraped in masking tape to made 1/4inch) and hotglued around both sides. i used a BPfilled straw, and simmiler construction techniques as shown on ( i think cannonfuse.com.) then from there, split the timefuse, and inserted a peice of 2mm chinise visco that had been primed on each end with BP and NC. i inserted a 8inch secton of fuse(1/8 again) into the bottom, glued in with hotglue, and poured in my lift. i slid the shell into the tube, and was ready to shoot. my tube might be to short to get real distance (18in long, by 3in wide) the tubes i get are from commercal size foodservice film ( plastic wrap from sysco). i go to a culinary school, so i get a almost-endless supply.

 

I fused the tube like this:

..........|.................|

..........|.................|

..........|.................|

..........|.................|

..........|.................|

..........|.................|

..........|.....____ ...|

..........|.../........\...|

..........| .|.........|...|

..........| .|.........|...|

..........| .| ........|...|

..........| ....\ ..../....|

..........| ......\ /......|

..........| .......|.......|

..........| 000 .|.000 |

..........| 000000 ---<------

------------------------------------

 

you get the basic idea.

Edited by Twotails
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You're tubes are perfect, no issues there.

 

3" plastic shells were always kind of loose in tubes for my preferences. The flower pot probably didn't seem as impressive because of the loose fit, and loose lift powder. There is nothing wrong with doing it that way, but in the future you might find you need to use more lift than if it was attached and confined.

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My videos from pyro picnic, enyoy ^_^

 

 

Good stuff! Keep it coming!

 

 

Here's the video I promised. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qy74aeYjBc...re=channel_page

 

One shell didn't light though, I kept it for the next shooting.

The 2" was over break. And I had put golden powder as lift, which maybe absorbed moisture with time and the shell didn't go very high.

 

50AE,

 

You should really find a more reliable and SAFER method for lighting your things. You're going to have something fire unexpectedly early if you keep using strands of bare match as fuse. Some one might end up eating a shell or starmine... and that would not be very pretty.

 

If you want to use BM for whatever reason, run your quick match leader all the way up and out of the mortar and use a thick single strand of match. Multiple strands have a tendency to jump fire even in the open. And seal your pipe good with some tape or string like you where doing, so fire can't "hop" in.

 

I shot my first 6" shell the other day on my birthday :) Its was pretty bad...but I just wanted to try. I'll get some things up and showing soon. I've been working on my car a lot recently and haven't touched much pyro since the convention.

Edited by psyco_1322
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psycho, thanks very much for letting me know. Currently, I'm trying to get visco, but I'm also making an electric igniting system.
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50AE , AFAIK firework shops in Bulgaria sell visco at 0.20 for 12cm. You might want to look into that. Thats how I got my first visco. That was a few years back when I was just getting into this stuff though, of course I used it to make a B*^B , something I regretted later on.
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They still sell it, though you need a license now. A guy I know has some connections with a licensed pyro, so he can get big rolls of visco for me.
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  • 3 weeks later...

In looking up some ideas for an upcoming shell I came across this video:

 

How would you like to be able to time inserts like that? :blink:

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:wacko: I havest the same thought NightHawk. I guess that just proves the consistency and accuracy of time fuse.

 

And btw, I can't wait to see that 5'' you're putting up soon.

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Here is my 6" ball shell prefire photos.As far,the shell weights 900gr without pasting.Also i use 3gr fp for booster.The stars are brocade horse tail.

 

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/3158/dsc02553600x450.jpg

http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/5036/dsc02549600x450.jpg

http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/8572/dsc02552600x450.jpg

 

More photos from the finished shell soon..and the video soon :)

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:wacko: I havest the same thought NightHawk. I guess that just proves the consistency and accuracy of time fuse.

 

And btw, I can't wait to see that 5'' you're putting up soon.

The timing was likely not time fuse, but a method often used for timing by smearing BP slurry into a hole puncture on the insert. I've never tried it, But I imagine it to be a PITA. It is how beraq are commonly timed. For my timing I use 1.7s/inch visco wrapped in masking tape. The faster the fuse, the more accurately you can cut it for the proper burn time. Regardless, It would be incredible to do it to that fine of accuracy.

 

It makes two of us that want to see my 5" go up. Every time I work on a big project such as this shell I'm worried about missing it on camera. I'll have to get several focused on it if I can. The shoot I want to fire it at is going to be chaos due to a quite large class C competition, I just hope they have everything far enough apart to not disrupt the B line.

 

Nice shell there George. I like the pictures :D

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Oh no way. That's to precise for the slurry delay method. Not even the maltese are that good. Even rings of identical inserts still have a variability of +/- maybe .2 seconds. Thats timefuse or spolettes I can almost guarantee. The name in the title "Bebbuxu" means snail in maltese. About the only difference between that an a triple rondelle is the use of color pupadelles or rosettes. Tom Rebenclau, a rocket master, has made some very accurate time fuse cutters that would easily replicate that. They can be approximated with a piece of copper pipe, a few steel nuts, and a threaded screw.
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