6" Farfalle with green inner

[Mumbles]

Over Memorial day I got the opportunity to hang out and build with some extremely talented pyros. They were mostly preparing for Winterblast next year and pressing up stars for maltese shells. If you attend, you should be in for a treat. The workshop we were in, the "Garage Mahal", was pyro heaven.

 

I took the opportunity to build a little bit too. I made a 6" farfalle shell with a green inner. When made well, farfalle are one of my favorite effects. This was a tester for some more complex shells I've been dreaming up. I'm planning to make building a more regular part of my life going forward. We fired this at the June RMPG shoot. It worked fairly well, but there is always room for improvement.

 

The farfalle were 1/2" x 3" tubes from Precocious. The fuel was 80% Paulownia BP, 10% sponge Ti, and 10% airfloat to slow it down a bit. The last time I made some, a few of the tubes popped with straight BP + Ti. It may have been some tube wrinkling as well. I pressed them half full, drilled the vent holes, threaded in the blackmatch and pressed the rest over the fuse. I'm a bit uncomfortable with using a drill press on live Ti comp. As it was I over pressed a few and hit the comp a little bit anyway.

 

#5 spolette with normal nosing. 19 inserts to a ring fit pretty well. I didn't pack the inserts in. The space was pretty small and the fuses make it tricky to get in there. I filled with polverone as best as I could while packing in the stars, but there were definitely gaps. That didn't affect the integrity of the shell or anything. Finished solid as a rock. I didn't get any pictures from the rest of the fill, but it's all pretty standard. 1.75" cannule filled with granular BP. Modified emerald green between the farfalle and then about 2" over the top all packed in with polverone.

Pretty standard finishing. Spiked with 32 verticals of doubled up hemp in an offset pattern. Pasted in with 3 x 48" sheets of 70lb virgin kraft in 3 sessions.

The crown after pasting came out bigger than I'm used to due to excess paper from the first pasting. This made priming the spolette and adding a bucked kind of challenging. We cut off some of the paper to get it to have something to adhere to. The spolette was scratched and primed with NC/BP slurry and granular BP, no quickmatch. I used a "top bucket" where both the passfire and leader come in through the top. This was my first time, and I have to admit I kind of liked it. The shell was finished with a lightly glued, dry kraft skirt. The shell weighed in around 5.5lbs, and was lifted with 6oz of commercial BP.

 

Didn't get a great video, but it is what it is.

 

[memo]

that was a bright green, i have never made a farfalle that i was happy with. been using a 1" x 3" tubes with 75 15 10. lots of pops and no farfalle

[pyrokid]

Nice shell! The green looked nice on camera at least!

 

Has anyone ever recovered a burst farfalle? I'm curious if the failure mode is overpressure and rupture at the nozzles, or something else. I've even popped hummers with hot BP.

 

Those tubes from precocious are too nice to use. I'm not worthy. The tubes I bought collect dust while I continue to roll my own.

Edited July 2, 2018 by pyrokid

[Mumbles]

Thanks guys. The green was more well balanced than it appeared. The stars looked like they oversaturated my garbage cell phone camera. It's my fault for not getting a better video or backup video.

 

I was actually fairly happy with these inserts. It was hard to tell if they all lit, but believe they did, however I didn't hear or see any pops. Popping them in the past was the part of the reason I dialed back the BP a little bit, and was part of the impetus behind center fusing them vs. end fusing them. They're a little unusual, but beautiful effect and wish I would see more of them.

 

I have a video of my first farfalle I shot maybe 8-10 years ago. They were made with straight willow BP and Ti, and they were end fused. My feeling is that the clay plug popped out. After they lit, you could hear a handful pop, and then turn into pseudo-serpents and propel off. I didn't stick around long enough to try to find any of the tubes the next day however.

[gregh]

Glad to see that you have a chance to build again mumbles!