Is this rocket hovering?

[Phil]

My rockets last year were much better because I went through the trouble of cooking and grinding down my own ERC. Didn't want to do that this year and I'd knew I'd have to make some compromises with the payload (cutting from ounce to half an ounce of powder). I'm okay with that but it seems like I'm on the very edge here of what this particular fuel can handle, at least in this configuration. I'm using hardwood airfloat because I already had a bunch of it on hand. Instead of making one rocket at a time and testing them like I should have done to get my delay charge above the spindle dialed in, I was eager to hammer a shit load of these out to use up the last of my tubes and the few days I spent making them it was really nice outside.

 

As it turned out my delay increment seems to be too thick for this slower fuel because the rocket seems to hang there for a while before the pop. The problem is as I stated above I already used up all my tubes making a batch of motors. Is there a way I can modify the top of the motors without destroying them to get my reports to go off sooner? I was thinking maybe using a drill bit to make a small hole about an 1/8th inch deep into my delay charge. Would this be a bad idea?

[Arthur]

I've heard of rockets being pressed solid then the spindle hole drilled, and I've read of drilling delay comps in high power rocketry. BUT mechanical processes always involve great care to mitigate the obvious additional hazard. Measure twice then try one with extreme PPE.

[Phil]

Guess it wouldn't hurt to try as you suggest, I'll just manually turn the bit by hand. They're all just motors at this point. I don't like to put the headings on until I think I'm ready to shoot them within the next day or two. I just took my tooling and a ruler out and it seems my delay is about 13/16" and nozzle is 9/16", this is all on a 5/8" ID motor. I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything to reduce the thickness of my nozzles in the future as well?

[Arthur]

Refer to this

 

No doubt there are others on YT. See what you determine to be the correct delay reduction for your task. Remember that he's just holding the delay unit!