Aerial Shells

[psyco_1322]

Naw he uses a couple dabs of hot glue them dusts them with cement. CCI's are supposed to be a hotter primer, why not try them? I might grab sopme of my dads and give them a try.

[qwezxc12]

Well the 209s I got for ~$34 a thousand, so they're not cheap, but when you see a mountain, you gotta try climbing it, I guess... I only rolled them up to 7/16" and they're not pretty, that's for sure. Because of their irregular shape, I couldn't size them very well either:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/rolled209primers.jpg

 

The large pistol primers are a lot easier to start. I needed to constantly whack the bowl to get the shotgun primers to tumble rather than slide; they're really heavy and dense. I hope I have enough comp on them to make a decent looking shell pattern before they pop.

 

Anyway, I've been plugging away at finishing the rest of the shells up. Here's the business end of the Palm shell; I wrapped the comets in masking tape, slit it, then applied hot-glue to the bottom and fanned the tape out while the glue set. I'll tape them up a little more tomorrow:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/PalmBottom.jpg

 

Here's one of the 6in shells with a 2in Mg comet. The 8in has two just like it:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/6inC6MgComet.jpg

 

I also made a few 3in shells as well: two C6 rolled over flash cores, and a Ti streamer. After adding up all the shell weights, I needed to make more lift, too... That's what I get for only managing to do one shoot every other month - I go nuts.

[qwezxc12]

Well for better or worse, it's off to the races...

http://www.apcforum.net/files/8indone.jpg

http://www.apcforum.net/files/DecShells.jpg

 

Videos of success, failure (or both) tomorrow.

[NightHawkInLight]

Well for better or worse, it's off to the races...

Videos of success, failure (or both) tomorrow.

I can't wait. It's sexy to see all those shells ready to fire. I typically try not to fire more than 2 a night on any day other than holidays to keep the neighbors happy. Best of luck.

[mormanman]

I've got a question. How will the comet ignite? Call me blind but I don't get it.

[hst45]

I've got a question. How will the comet ignite? Call me blind but I don't get it.

When the lift charge ignites, it sends a flame-front around the sides of the shell and fills the whole tube with fire, lighting the comets. Take a look at a vid. of a shell launching and run it frame by frame and you'll see a hugh tongue of flame going out of the tube before the shells launches.

[psyco_1322]

^Yep I had the same dumb question and had previoulsy looked at my 3-6foot flames coming out of my tubes in videos and it didnt ever come to me that it would be useful for something, even after seeing comets on shells I still didnt think of the flame lighting them. Damn thats a run-on!

 

Guess those were CCI primers.

 

Haya qwezxc12 how do those numerous amounts of stars beside each other work for rising tails? They come off? I made something like that before but I ran some quick visco down a piece of kraft, added a pinch of bp and a star. Tyed it off and continued that for a good 6in, hoping that it would burn along and drop off stars as it was rising. It failed and lit all the as it got shot and made a fan shaped mine look coming out the gun. If you go to my photobucket its on the first 4" I made, and you can see it in the video. It had some misc. metal and meal stars that got dusted with some radiant green that didnt show up on video.

 

Oh and about them leaders again, that looks like paper fuse in a pipe! What kinda fuse is that and does it act as quick match?

[qwezxc12]

Well the weather worked out, and much smoke was liberated, set free from the captive grains of Black Powder chaining it to the cold earth. Now that I've lost everyone, the shoot was fun and had both success and failure. But this is the Amateur Pyrotechnics & Chemistry Forum after all, and as I'm not getting paid to do this, I don't get all twisted up when things don't go as planned.

 

The successes outweighed the failures, I think:

Lift made with Alder charcoal rocks (the 6 & 8in shells went up with 1/12th the weight of lift instead of 1/10th)

Nothing came back down on our heads or vehicles

I may be close to dialing in my breaks

Some of the 4in and one of the 6in shells were picture perfect

 

On the other hand:

The Palm shell stunk...only 4 of 7 "leaves" lit, they left FAR to sparse a tail, and no *%$! coco-nuts exploded because I didn't cross-match the salutes...I only dipped the fuses in NC and prime. Never again!

My red cores weren't primed enough to take fire from the Reaper Silver stars.

The modification I made to the Lancaster Yellow Glitter turned the stars into complete shit... the only thing worth watching on that shell was the rising comet.

The green ring in the 8in...wasn't.

And the 209 primers were a flop...I'll stick to pistol primers, they're cheaper, easier to roll, and their smaller mass must make them easier to cook-off from the burning comp, 'cause hardly any of the shotgun primers did.

 

I haven't downloaded all the videos yet, but here's some so far.

3in C6 to flash-core and the 4in silver to green:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/3inC6toFlash.jpg

http://www.apcforum.net/files/4inReaperSilvertoGreen.jpg

 

Videos:

3in Chrys6 to flash-cores ...Flash-cores are awesome!!!!

 

4in Silver to red (red didn't light)

 

4in Silver to green

 

4in MgAl BP to B-70 (leftover stars from BBQ shoot)

 

 

I'll post more when I upload them. Cheers.

 

Haya qwezxc12 how do those numerous amounts of stars beside each other work for rising tails?....

 

Oh and about them leaders again, that looks like paper fuse in a pipe!  What kinda fuse is that and does it act as quick match?

The small stars look nice on smaller shells (4in and under) I think. I't a good way to use up leftover stars when you don't have enough for another shell or mine. Also, it is paper fuse in the QM pipe. I use fast paper fuse for QM and harvest individual strands of black match for cross-matching. Details in this post

[''']

Impressive shells. The flash cores are wonderful. The shells are realy enjoyable.

 

Have a nice day.

[Zmuro]

Can you share the formula for flash cores and Reaper Silver with us. Really nice shells, looking forward to see the 6" shell.

[psyco_1322]

Love them flash cores! Does C-6 or C-8 burn faster?

 

And could you post that emerald green. I might use it for a radiant green replacement.

[ULTRABUF]

Reeper Silver is 85 meal, 10 aluminum (usually atomized), and 5 dextrin.

[qwezxc12]

BlueSquib,

 

I'd go easy on the compliments...you haven't seen the bad shells, yet In the name of science, I'll post the failures, too.

 

Do you mean the rising color / effect on the Silver shells? If so, it's easy...I hot glued a bunch (fourteen or so) left-over 3/8" red and green stars to the shells. When I don't have enough stars to make a mine or shell, I like to use them up as rising effects. You can see them on the shells in the pre-fire picture I posted on Saturday. The last shell had seven 1/2" D1 glitter stars on it. I have a big bag with left-over mixed stars from four or five different batches - they wouldn't perform the same if put into a shell.

 

Zmuro,

The flashcores are just that: 65:35 slow flash (-325 flake) rolled with 5% dextrin. Roll them outside or with good ventilation and definitely use a good particulate mask - the flake can get everywhere once it's airborne. You'll need to use some alcohol to break the surface tension on the flake Al. I made the Reaper Silver just like ULTRABUF posted and used 20-30μm spherical Al. There's a thread on it by rooster in the formulas section.

 

psyco_1322,

Search this thread for the Emerald Green formula. I posted it after the August shoot I did. And C6 burns faster than C8...if you want to know where the names come from it's the ratio of Charcoal to that of KNO3:

C6 has 33 C to 55 KNO3, or 60%

C8 has 40 C to 49 KNO3, or 81.63%

I guess Chrysanthemum 8.163 doesn't have the same ring to it, huh?

[psyco_1322]

Found the emerald green, its barium nitrate based - dont have any. It looks about like radiant green in color, not that deep of a green.

 

So what if we were to use 70:30 flash? Anyways, how big were those flash cores and did they need priming or did the C-6 light em up?

 

Yah I knew it was a ration thing but I just didnt remember what of, its been a year or so since I read that, and the only formula I had down was C-8. I seen them all on someones site, they had a bunch of star comps they used and some other things.

I think Ill just make up a shell for the PGI competiton next year and label it Chrysanthemum 8.163. Just so Freakman will understand what it is and not mistake C-8 for a prime that I decided to put on the shell description out of the randomness of the world.

[lnstantkarma]

Hi everyone, I've been trying to find a good glitter comp and I used one last time that was bp with sodium bicarbonate and 200 mesh magnalium. It was alright but I'm looking for something more white-silver sparks. I'm going to put in an order to skylighter soon in time for my new years fireworks so I'm fine with buying some aluminum powder, I just don't know what mesh.

I've been searching and the formula I'm looking at is: (winokur silver A)

Potassium Nitrate 55

 

Aluminum, atom, spher, 120-325 mesh, 20 micron 10

 

Sulfur 10

 

Charcoal Airfloat 10

 

Barium Carbonate 5

 

Iron(III) Oxide, red 5

 

Barium Nitrate 5

The closest thing I can find to the al used here on skylighter is 80-325

CH0120 http://www.skylighter.com/mall/chemicals.asp?Sort=A

 

I don't want to use Sb2S3 it's expensive and I've heard bad things about it

basically what I would like to know will I get a nice trail of silver sparks with this mix or any other?

[mormanman]

Can you make a Saturn Canister Shell type deal?

I don't have any hemi's, I only have canister shells.

[psyco_1322]

I can put saturn missles in a canister shell does that count? lol

[Mumbles]

Mormanman, I ask you one question. What shape are planets? I think this will answer your general question.

 

I think about as close as you can get is a comet shell with colored pistil. It will look something like this. It's kinda saturn-like, but far from true. http://www.passfire.com/archives/issue2_2/comet_ex.jpg

[mormanman]

Mormanman, I ask you one question. What shape are planets? I think this will answer your general question.

 

I think about as close as you can get is a comet shell with colored pistil. It will look something like this. It's kinda saturn-like, but far from true. http://www.passfire.com/archives/issue2_2/comet_ex.jpg

Round but I was just wondering. Thanks.

[qwezxc12]

So what if we were to use 70:30 flash?  Anyways, how big were those flash cores and did they need priming or did the  C-6 light em up?

I under-oxidized them as I wanted them to trail or stream a little as the stars burnt out...I suppose the 5% difference in fuel/oxidizer doesn't make an appreciable difference. The stars were @ 1/4" - they're the pile spread out and drying on the left:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/IMG_1426nCustomn.JPG

 

and I step primed (50:50 BP meal/flash mix) the last two increments as I rolled them.

 

Edit: Actually FWIW, I believe 65:35 is close to stoichiometric; 70:30 is over-oxidized for speed in salutes.

[Zmuro]

3" canister shell with D1 stars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3IJkwmduS28

[qwezxc12]

Nice can. The glitter was excellent! That's why I like D1 so much...it's cheap, needs no SbS3, and looks awesome.

 

I also agree with BlueSquib - your shoot locale is great. The echos from the lift and the shell rock.

[Karlos]

Hallo. What do you thing? Which kind(type) of strobe composition was used for shells on the wideo? AP composition or BaN composition.

I thing that flicker frequency is low.

Do you know any green strobe composition with Barium nitrate and PVC?

Potasium bichromate is cancerogenic, and BHC too.

 

Look: http://n-joy.cz/video/strobe/FWxckJc6zEC30adN/

 

Thanks, Karel.

[qwezxc12]

I finished converting the rest of the shell video from the weekend before last...so now for the bad and the ugly:

 

This is the 4in shell with stars rolled over shotgun primers. The primers appear to have too much mass and didn't get hot enough to cook off like pistol primers do. The rising comet is the same as what filled the 8in shell:

4in shell - 209 primers

 

Here's the 6in with modified Lancaster Yellow Glitter - here's a lesson: don't screw with a comp and make modifications to a large batch without testing first...you can see why:

6in shell

 

This is the Palm shell. I looked closely when converting the video and you can see at least one of the coconuts (1-1/2" FeTi salutes) nuked during the burst...that's probably why three of the green "palm leaves" didn't light - they either blew blind or were pulverized. I'll be working on getting this right. Please excuse my language :

6in Palm

 

Lastly, the 8in. In retrospect, I never should have made this after ruining the yellow glitter meant for it - I hurriedly made a pile of 1in charcoal comets and some green comets for a ring...the charcoal comets should have been far less oxidized for a longer burn, -36 mesh charcoal is too large and either the prime on the green was too thin or they were not hard enough to survive the break (I'm thinking this):

8in shell

 

I am happy about a few things, though...

 

The timing was spot on; I planned for a 6 sec delay and from lift to break was 5.95 sec.

 

The time difference from seeing the break to hearing it was .98 seconds or just under 1100 ft. As I was 270 ft away from the mortar, that puts the shell somewhere around 1050 in altitude at break...looks like I can lower the lift amount from 1/12th the weight of the shell to closer to the "oz. per lb." rule.

 

Now I just need to get home so I can make a better one.

[NightHawkInLight]

Well the 8" was really nice even if it wasn't perfect. That's a great looking green on that and the palm too.