2 4 inch NYE shells

[Job]

First, I would like to wish everyone a happy and safe 2015.

 

I'm pretty much a lurker on the forum, but today I thought I would share some of my own creations.

 

I shot these two shells last New Years Eve. The first is a 4 Inch ball shell with Red, Green, Purple, Blue, and Yellow stars. The red looks a bit purple in the video and brighter than the rest, but they were more balanced in real life.

 

 

The second shell was a 4 inch Cylinder shell with 27 N1 Glitter Crossettes. This was my first real attempt at a crossette shell and although it's not perfect, I'm quite pleased with the result.

 

 

Some of the crossettes did pop, but didn't break into four pieces or the pieces didn't light. Could anyone tell me a possible cause for this? They were 17mm crossettes and for the break I used 0,2 grams of 7/3 flash and topped it of with BP granules.

 

Let me know what you think.

 

Edit: video's embedded properly

Edited January 3, 2015 by Job

[Mumbles]

I thought the crossette shell looked pretty good for a first try. What sort of tooling did you use to make the comets?

 

Crossettes do not necessarily need to break into 4 equal pieces. When in a shell, breaking together, the exact number of pieces doesn't really bother me. There is a complicated way to get exactly 4 pieces (or however many you want), but I wont get into that here. It's something that will sort of fix itself anyway, when you get more practice and get the burst down just right for yourself.

 

As far as the comets not breaking, this is more common. Generally what seems to happen is something called "jetting". Basically the break charge goes off, but doesn't break the comet. Instead it shoots out the open end of the insert. Sometimes you can see the comet fly off in a different direction, or sometimes it seems to blow itself out. There are a few ways to fix this. You can use a stronger burst, or you need to better contain the burst. This can mean using more resilient rolled shots (if you did in the first place). If you're using a tooling that has a tit or a pin on it, you can try using a fuse in this hole or using a faster fuse. Basically you want to get the fire into the cavity before the bottom burns through in this case.

[pyroman2498]

those looked god but I do have one suggestion , I felt like those crossettes hung to long , but that's just my taste for things .

if you want it to brake into 4 pieces there is a pump that can help , ive only seen a few sold and Tom. R has one of them but he made his . ( Next time he is up at the club shoot im going to see if I can use his tools and for him to teach me his secrets , although he says he is an open book )

 

Anyways Good looking shells , keep up the good work

 

Stay Safe and Stay Green

 

~Steven

[mkn]

I liked the shells ! crossettes looked nice, I'm no help on improving them, my first gogetter shell had 22 of the 23 getters blind.......sigh....

Matt

[gregh]

I think the crossettes hung so long because they were N1, which is slow burning.

 

Matt, we have all been there, shells have completely blown blind or stars crushed in the burst. I had a lot of extended family in last Thanksgiving and made a 4 inch "palm" with 1 inch C6 titanium stars. It made a nice little cloud of white sparks, like a very lame salute. Needless to say, they weren't impressed...

[Job]

Thanks for the compliments!

 

I made the crossettes with homemade tooling. I cut and filed the cross out of some square brass. I'll see if I can upload a picture.

 

When loading the break charge in the crossettes, I did insert a piece of blackmatch into the hole made by the pin. I could make this pin a bit longer so there would be more containment of the breakcharge.

 

After building and firing this shell, I really came to respect the incredible timing precision of, for example, TR's crossettes. I pressed my crossettes and cut them all down to the same length, but they don't nearly burst at the same time.