Rolling stars without a star roller

[Ubehage]

I found this old video of japanese pyrotechnicians. At 4:12, he shows an alternative way of rolling stars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0UQfnEvqxI

[DaMounty]

I started to sweat along with the guy in the video.

 

DaM

[mikeee]

There are many people that use this method with a deep bowl and add a wet slurry of comp

added to the stars and roll them around in the bowl until the stars pick up the wet comp. This method

actually works quite well and produces very good consistent sized stars. This would be the the basic

Toro method using a wet slurry to produce the stars, nice method for making color changing stars. You

have to let the stars dry after building up each layer and repeat the process until you get the size of stars

needed. Color changing stars really makes for an impressive fireworks shell.

[Mumbles]

Toro can be done with both a star roller and by hand. Most seem to have migrated to star rollers, I'm sure for less manual labor and for better automation.

http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/topic/11182-toro-star-rolling-explained/?hl=%2Btoro+%2Bstars

[Seymour]

With the quantity he is rolling, all that arm motion with his back arched over looks like a solid punishment for his body to me.

 

I tend to hand roll with toro with small quantities (under 2kg). I don't find that star rollers work as well unless there is a good mass of stars in them. Similarly hand rolling does not work very well with a large mass of stars, or at least it's not physically easy.

 

I'm a bit of a slut when it comes to hand rolling. I'll roll the stars in a bowl, bucket, tub... whatever works and is available. So long as the corners have a curvature that is less than the stars, so that the stars can pick up all the composition, I'm happy. However in practice there is always some composition left when rolling. It can be minimised, but it's nothing to worry about too much. But if my container is round, square, cylindrical... it's all good.

Out of paranoia caused by seeing shiny metal bowls in the sun ignite compositions due to focussed light, I would definitely suggest avoiding the use of stainless or other shiny bowls in the sun.

 

Three tips that I think are important to stress;

 

- Don't add too much slurry. If you do, recovery is extremely difficult, and sizing and timing for colour changes can be forever lost. You can always add more slurry if you added too little, but you can't remove it once it's mixed with the stars.

 

- Make sure the slurry is quite thin (wet). With larger stars it can be more viscous. Similar to my first point, too wet slurry just means a thinner layer, but too thick and your stars get an uneven application of composition, and can go from lovely spheres to lumpy nuggets in one step. It takes many layers to get them round again, and you can largely forget about accurate timing for colour changes if this occurs.

 

- Get your hands dirty. If stars are sticking together, which often happens when they are the first stars to come in contact with the slurry, the best way to address this is to reach in there and spread those stars out and mix them with the rest of the stars by hand. I like to put the stars and slurry in to the mixing container, mix them vigorously with my hand and some swirling of the container, and then swirl them around a bit before adding the powder and swirling them until it's all picked up. So I guess the 'hands in the stars' approach is really for the initial mixing of the slurry, but at least for small batches, it helps a lot for getting an even layer quite quickly.

 

The whole process of adding a layer, from dry stars needing to be grown, to those stars with another layer drying in the sun, can take about two minutes with sufficient practice. This method takes a while due to the drying between layers, but the time spent actively rolling with toro can be quite minimal, up there with traditional spray rolling, if not quicker.

 

For my first two points, it could be a good idea to break my rules and push the boundaries with a batch of stars that are not too precious. Nothing demonstrates why not to add too much slurry or too thick slurry as well as doing it and then struggling with the aftermath.

[Ubehage]

 

For my first two points, it could be a good idea to break my rules and push the boundaries with a batch of stars that are not too precious. Nothing demonstrates why not to add too much slurry or too thick slurry as well as doing it and then struggling with the aftermath.

Amen to that. Knowledge is gold, but experience is Platinum