ST1DinOH Posted October 29, 2007 Posted October 29, 2007 not to sound too cheesy, but thanks mostly to this site (and a few others) i fired off my first sucessfull shells last night. a few 3's and a few 1.75's. i did have a few faliures but we fixed that and the rest of the night went perfectly. basicly i've decided to stick to butterflying the time fuse on the lift side rather than prime it. we had %100 passfire with nothing but a cross cut and it was the most satisfied i've ever been in the 15 years i've been addicted to pyrotechnics. something self-afirming about spending the time to make something and have it work just as planned. like i said in the topic...not to sound cheesy but i do appreciate the knowledge contained in these forums, and i just wanted to pass it on that you've recruited yet another follower of the fire to the shell building side of the fence. it's gonna be hard to balance my 1.4 addiction with my new found vice but i think i'll find a way to make it work. thanks again for the advise in other threads, i'm officialy addicted, and hopefully i can someday contribute more than questions to this forum.
psyco_1322 Posted October 29, 2007 Posted October 29, 2007 Hay thats nice. I dont think ive seen many higly announce thank you's. Your welcome. And keep cutting those fuses, its the best and most reliable way to go, no matter what anyone says. Hope to see some mmore outta ya.
ST1DinOH Posted October 29, 2007 Author Posted October 29, 2007 Hay thats nice. I dont think ive seen many higly announce thank you's. Your welcome. And keep cutting those fuses, its the best and most reliable way to go, no matter what anyone says. Hope to see some mmore outta ya. oh i don't think i'll be priming any time fuse ever again. i had all orts of trouble getting a prime to work right, but the fire kept getting blown out on the way up. it just wasn't burning hot/quick enough to pass fire to the core of the time fuse and i was getting frustrated. after loosing 2 shells to failures i just got pissed, removed the lift cup, snipped the primed end of the time fuse clean with a pair of anvils cutters and butterflied it with a razor. worked perfectly everytime after that. even got a little tricky on the last one and added some crackle to the lift for a mine effect. going from a bunch of failures to a half dozen sucesses in a row just made my night/month/year. as i said...now i'm fully addicted. 2 of my pyro buddies and i have been trying for a whiel now to get a shell to function properly and now that we've turned the corner we can start having fun (making stars/lift, mass producing shells, incorporating them into our shows, ect...). i've had a lot of great personal accomplishments in this hobby, the first time a single fuse show had %100 passfire, my first e-fire show, ect...but nothing compares to the first time a shell you made breaks at apex and paints the sky with stars you selected. sorry if i sound like a huge dork/noob here but i'm sure at least someone can read this and remember the first time one of thier shells worked. saying "come on, come on, come on..." after a lift and seeing one finaly pop in the sky (as apposed to on the ground or in the river) is much better than wasting all that time and comp on a ground pounder.
Mumbles Posted October 30, 2007 Posted October 30, 2007 Oh don't worry about sounding like a dork, we've all been there. I still mutter under my breath to my shells in some attempt they will work just like in my head. I can't seem to get double petal shells to work. I may have to resort to getting pretty ladies to kiss them before firing them up. Either that or take every precaution possible. About the fusing. You may find it better to place a piece of blackmatch down the butterflied fuse. I've only had 2 shells fail to light. One used visco, and I got glue over the end. The other was crossmatched time fuse, and I think the passfire on the inside got pinched, and failed to give fire. I've never tried time fuse without some sort of prime or crossmatch, but I feel a backup is well worth it instead of hoping the timefuse will light. I tie the butterflied crossmatch shut with dental floss usually. I'm glad you have come over to the dark side. Just hope any girlfriends/wives you currently have or plan to have are quite forgiving, and don't mind the smell of sulfur.
crazyboy25 Posted October 30, 2007 Posted October 30, 2007 Just hope any girlfriends/wives you currently have or plan to have are quite forgiving, and don't mind the smell of sulfur. ha i smell like sulfur all the time no one else seems to notice sometimes i will find myself sniffing my shirt in class but no adverse effects on my social life or lack thereof.
ITCHI Posted October 30, 2007 Posted October 30, 2007 Congratulations ST1DinOH,It didn't take you long to get it going. Maybe one day we will see your name up in lights at the PGI event as the winner of best 16" shell and we can say "I remember when".
psyco_1322 Posted October 30, 2007 Posted October 30, 2007 Just hope any girlfriends/wives you currently have or plan to have are quite forgiving, and don't mind the smell of sulfur. ha i smell like sulfur all the time no one else seems to notice sometimes i will find myself sniffing my shirt in class but no adverse effects on my social life or lack thereof. Yep same here too. My hoodie hangs on the other side of my room and picks up the smell, I kinda like it. Only one to ever say anything was my mother, see said I smelt like weed, I told her she was crazy and couldnt tell the difference between weed and sulfur. Yah cause Im not a stoner.
ST1DinOH Posted October 30, 2007 Author Posted October 30, 2007 Oh don't worry about sounding like a dork, we've all been there. I still mutter under my breath to my shells in some attempt they will work just like in my head. I can't seem to get double petal shells to work. I may have to resort to getting pretty ladies to kiss them before firing them up. Either that or take every precaution possible. About the fusing. You may find it better to place a piece of blackmatch down the butterflied fuse. I've only had 2 shells fail to light. One used visco, and I got glue over the end. The other was crossmatched time fuse, and I think the passfire on the inside got pinched, and failed to give fire. I've never tried time fuse without some sort of prime or crossmatch, but I feel a backup is well worth it instead of hoping the timefuse will light. I tie the butterflied crossmatch shut with dental floss usually. I'm glad you have come over to the dark side. Just hope any girlfriends/wives you currently have or plan to have are quite forgiving, and don't mind the smell of sulfur. as far as getting hot women to kiss your shells i think thats a great idea. now i can justify hiring a stripper for all my shoots in the future. nice work. as far as crossmatching the time fuse with black match i think i'll be sticking with the butterflied tip dusted with flash for now, at least untill i get a shell that fails to pass fire. i'm affraid to change anything right now and would rather stick to the "if ain't broke, don't fix it" mantra infear that i'd wind up back sliding into the frustration of seeing a shell thudding into a cornfield again. thats a painfull experience, don't want to suffer through that anymore. as far as women go my pyro groupies love that smell. in fact before i go bar hopping i usually run my finger around the inside of a HDPE gun and dab it on like cologne. works everytime. last big show we did there were all kinds of groupies there lovin on me after the show...then again that might have had something to do with the 3 kegs and the full bar. but i like to think it was sweat, maumee river, and sulfer that had them all twitterpaited. Congratulations ST1DinOH,It didn't take you long to get it going. Maybe one day we will see your name up in lights at the PGI event as the winner of best 16" shell and we can say "I remember when". well i can't hog all the credit, this whole venture has been a colaberation between myself and 2 other pyro u guys i've been skylighting with for 3 or 4 years now. we've been toying around with shell building since newyears (almost a year now) and we've finaly turned the corner on a night of sucessfull builds. it was great just getting together and shooting some cakes and hand mades, but even better when the shells finaly starting working correctly. it was quite a night. rather fitting too as we were saying goodbye to a shoot site we've been rather fond of which won't be available to us anymore when the family living there moves this weekend. as far as launching a shell at PGI...baby steps to the 16 inch shell i'm just now getting the hang of 3's to get the time fuse right, next i'll try my hand at some 4's and by this time next year we should be plateaued at paper 6's. right now we're just shooting plastic but i'm not that impressed with the breaks we are getting. i've always heard that plastic shells don't break that hard, and paper shells are better. just taking things one step at a time for now. honestly the next step is getting chems and rolling stars. i'd imagine stars harvested from 1.75's look like crap at the height of a 6 inch shell apex
Tweetybird88 Posted October 30, 2007 Posted October 30, 2007 Just hope any girlfriends/wives you currently have or plan to have are quite forgiving, and don't mind the smell of sulfur. ha i smell like sulfur all the time no one else seems to notice sometimes i will find myself sniffing my shirt in class but no adverse effects on my social life or lack thereof. Yep same here too. My hoodie hangs on the other side of my room and picks up the smell, I kinda like it. Only one to ever say anything was my mother, see said I smelt like weed, I told her she was crazy and couldnt tell the difference between weed and sulfur. Yah cause Im not a stoner. That happened to me once. I was out shooting some work with friends and smelt like burnt bp without knowing it. When my dad picked me up he gave me a lecture about the dangers of drugs and thought I was still high because I was just laughing at him. It took a while to explain the whole situation and have him realize I don't take drugs.
oskarchem Posted October 31, 2007 Posted October 31, 2007 Mumbels I'm sorry to say that you have no life, "Maiking Hot girls kiss my shells" lol... But well what can I say do WE have a life?? Evry body in my class thinks I'm a nerd because I know stuff that you stat learning in 3 years, and the teachers look at me like a terrorist.. Well I think that from a certain point in pyro people stop having a life...
Mumbles Posted November 1, 2007 Posted November 1, 2007 You only stop having a life if you believe it. Just because what I do isn't "normal", doesn't mean I don't have a life. Despite what you guys may think my day does not fully revolve around pyrotechnics and the forum, though it is close at times. I find the best plan of action with people is to not let them know about it. If you go around bragging about stuff of course your classmates and teachers will think you're a fucking moron. If they think you're a terrorist, you must have done something to give them that idea obviously. Do what you do, and let it be that. If they don't like it, they can go fuck themselves. This is getting a bit off the subject though.
andyboy Posted November 1, 2007 Posted November 1, 2007 Awesome to hear that story of yours, it took me back in time and I could almost smell the dissapointment when my first shells fell to the ground without lighting, then some shells that lit and burned to long... And the shells that broke 3 meters above the ground And then finally, the perfect lift, great break and the sence of "I don't need to buy your shitty fireworks, my homemade stuff is so much better it hurts" tingeling in my entire body.
oskarchem Posted November 1, 2007 Posted November 1, 2007 I don't really go braggimg about it, but you know when the chem teacher sais that you make a orange gaz with Iodine.... and not HNO3+Cu.... you get the point right (then evry body knows that yournot the standard student)... And once the teacher asks how do you know this you probably get the point.But you'r right let's get ack to the subject.
Mumbles Posted November 2, 2007 Posted November 2, 2007 "common knowledge" is the end all answer when someone asks you how you know something.
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