Random Thread #1

[Mumbles]

Yeah, sorry guys, I've been very busy as of late. All of that will be over as of tomorrow (hopefully) though.

 

Crazyboy, your PM box is full. I tried replying several times tonight. Anyway, long store short, urea isn't neccesary, and the temps are in Celcius.

[crazyboy25]

Crazyboy, your PM box is full. I tried replying several times tonight. Anyway, long store short, urea isn't neccesary, and the temps are in Celcius.

thanks a bunch i emptied alot of that crap out now.

[mormanman]

I'm just wandering. Is Armstrong's mix a HE.

[tentacles]

qwezxc12: if you get some of those perforated sheets, I'd definitely be up for buying some pieces from you -i know they come in pretty big hunks. The ones I was looking at were all like 32x48 or so. The plastic ones were about the same price as metal, and sometimes a bit cheaper.

 

I'd be interested in like, 1/8" 3/16" 1/4" 5/16" maybe 3/8" 12x12" pieces or so.

[qwezxc12]

tentacles,

 

If I go the spendy route, I'll undoubtedly offer up pieces of the bigger sheets...I assumed that I'd be making 12"x12" screening frames, too.

 

I'll keep you in mind.

[Mumbles]

If you just drill the holes yourself into a plastic container it is a lot easier and faster. The very small sizes are kind of a pain, but with a dremel it goes reasonably fast. Ask Al93535 for some pics of his.

[asilentbob]

Deadman, PMd you.

 

Mormanman, armstrongs is tricky as i understand it... it can very easily transition to detonation in very small ammounts... very very very small ammounts. Haha and yeah we should all get to gether to shoot stuff off... the easiest way would probably be for us all to join the PAT/fireants. I'm joining shortly. IIRC they are having trouble getting insurance because a texas display company is scared of individuals getting brave and forming small display companys and thus becomming competition. They would very much like to have a monopoly of the texas displays... as i understand it. So the big company tells their insurance company to not insur the PAT/fireants or else the big company will drop that insurance company and find another... bleh. We would have to talk to the President/VP of PAT about bringing homemade shells, but im reasonably sure we can under certain circumstances.

[qwezxc12]

Every year, our group at work puts together a BBQ for ourselves and family...beer, horseshoes, ribs, etc. This year, I wanted to put together a small show for everyone. Despite my travel schedule at work, I'm still trying to pull it off. Current plan is for 16 queues with 48 items / shots for the main show and 10 queues with 25 shots for the finale, though I may have to scale it back if I cannot finish everything in time. This was yesterday's view of several days previous production getting a final dry in the sun:

30 red/blue Go-getters, 70 Green & steel Go-getters, 1800g 5:1 BP rice crispies burst, 1200 g of 60:40 whistle/BP burst, 1" Blond Streamer comets, 1300g of 1/2" D1 glitter stars, 500g of lampblack willow star, and assorted 3/8" stars in Yellow, Red, Green, Blue, Violet, some with Ti and/or coarse MgAl. Not pictured...an ass-load of Chrys6 and Al flitter stars.

http://www.apcforum.net/files/IMG_0001.jpg

 

Now I just have to prime all my stars, press some rockets and gerbs...and roll canisters, and make QM, and make more lift, and diaper about 2 lbs. of flash, and make wheat paste, and build more mortar racks, and, and, and maybe I won't get it all done...

 

I'll try to get someone to film it.

Wish me luck.

[BigBang]

May luck be with you.

 

Do you have a bowl roller or nascar? Or are you, gasp, hand rolling?

[mormanman]

bowl roller

 

What is that? Like a star roller?

And goodluck. QM isn't that hard to make. Just use painter's tape for the tube sucured with some masking tape.

[Swany]

Greetings fellow pyros, I think it is that time of year again-- at least for those of us young 'uns.

 

School time!

 

For the first time in a long while I am actually looking forward to it. Last year I took the tests for AP bio and AP chem, taught myself the classes. Must've been lucky cause I scored 5's on both. Anyhow, that freed up some schedule room, so this year I am taking

 

American Literature

Applied Psychology

Physics (No AP at our school)

T.A. for AP Chemistry (and an off block right after, for a university class)

AP Literature

AP US. History

AP Economics

AP Calculus

 

This is going to be my junior year, I will be one credit short of graduating at the end of the year (but I have more than is required by the state) but, I will fill my senior year with university classes and stuff like welding and ceramics, spanish IV, et cetera. Should keep me busy, as I will be running cross country, ice hockey, and track. Plus all the other extracurricular stuff.

 

So, hows everyone else feeling bout school?

[asilentbob]

Good luck!

 

You make me jealous... I really need to get a roller made... I'm the kind of guy who would like to make 5kg of stars and set them aside to use randomly.

[qwezxc12]

May luck be with you.

 

Do you have a bowl roller or nascar? Or are you, gasp, hand rolling?

I have a bowl roller; it's a windshield wiper motor with the gear reducer assembly running off of the +12VDC HDD lead from an ATX P/S. The bowl capacity is a little small, but it was my first attempt. Most of the stars pictured are pumped. I'm bad enough at rolling as it is...I can't imagine how it would suck to make any sort of quantity hand-rolling.

I did get my 4" and 6" cans made tonight, though...

http://www.apcforum.net/files/4incans.jpg

 

I found out I need to buy a 5" mortar for a 6in case former...Hand-rolling six turns and affixing the tabs without a former sucks.

 

snip...I'm the kind of guy who would like to make 5kg of stars and set them aside to use randomly.

We think alike...I'm finally using up the last of those 1/2" FireFly #3 stars I made last year. I thought they'd last forever

[DeAdFX]

SNIP

 

So, hows everyone else feeling bout school?

my my thats quite an impressive list of classes. ap....

 

School. I am feeling more depressed than happy going back to school. I will be taking physics and I hear the teacher is so - so. The professor is smart as hell but is a fairly lousy teacher. I don't have a full schedule either. I am uncertain what else to take. I have enough science classes lined up I should probably take some art/religion/philophsy/history/filler/. My new roommates are going to be awesome. We are really good friends. I am thinking of restarting my unsucessful rocketry club but our school has no engineering department (no lathes/weilders/hydraullic presses/etc). ughhh

 

I think I would work better with an apperticeship. To bad I don't know of any professional chemists.

[mormanman]

Anyone here live in Finland, I need a favor.

[tentacles]

qwezxc12: From my limited experience with FrankRizzo's star roller from hobbyfireworks, it is easier in large batches with a bigger drum.. The comparison between a bucket and the large drum is amazing. I rolled a bunch of willow a couple weeks ago and it came out great! I know it uses an offset drive so it jiggles the drum to help keep stars from sticking together. Also has a variable speed for fine control. Sometimes a little faster or slower can really make all the difference.

 

I also like that the rolled stars are already half dry compared to cut (pumped is way too much trouble imo). And nice and hard, too.

[jacob]

This thread has inspired me to finaly build a star roller, and since my brother wrecked his car i now have a good windshield wiper motor for free, i think i'm going to make one like siffup's pictured here .

[crazyboy25]

i want top make proper whistle rockets with red iron oxide but i cant seem to find how much solvent to use i found this formula:

 

70% KClO4

 

30% NaC7H5O2

 

+3% Paraffin oil or Vaseline

 

+1% Fe2O3

 

and for solvent they just kinda say "enough" ummm how much solvent would i need for a 100g batch?

i also found this but it says sodium salicate not benzoate will this work?

Potassium Perchlorate powder (oxidizer) 76 grams 3040 grams

 

Potassium Perchlorate powder (oxidizer) 76 grams

Sodium Salicylate powder (fuel) 23 grams

Iron Oxide (catalyst) 1 grams

Vaseline (stabilizer) 3 grams

Naphtha (Vaseline solvent) 25 milliliters

[qwezxc12]

qwezxc12: From my limited experience with FrankRizzo's hobbyfireworks star roller, it is easier in large batches with a bigger drum.. The comparison between a bucket and the large drum is amazing. I rolled a bunch of willow a couple weeks ago and it came out great! I know it uses an offset drive so it jiggles the drum to help keep stars from sticking together. Also has a variable speed for fine control. Sometimes a little faster or slower can really make all the difference.

 

I also like that the rolled stars are already half dry compared to cut (pumped is way too much trouble imo). And nice and hard, too.

Ummm...Frank Rizzo runs Hobbyfireworks? I guess you learn something every day... Surprising who hangs out here with us aspirants...

 

Does the offset cam help keep star sizes more consistent or just help prevent clumping? Maybe I'll try increasing the size of my roller bucket and add a bump roller.

 

Jacob...my set-up is pretty much like siffup's, with the exception of mounting the motor. Mine is flat mounted to a board that I can tilt varying the angle of the rolling bowl, rather than mounted to a flat surface with angles.

[DeAdFX]

Well I use around 20 or so grams of xylene which is probably ~25 mL (Xylene is less dense than water...) per 100 grams of whistle mix. I don't know if it is excessive or not but it suits me just fine. I usually wait a 1-24 hours before pressing rockets to let a little solvent volatilize. You could use less solvent so you don't have to wait but then your trading ease of use for time... I use vaseline too...

 

As for Sodium Salicylicate it will work too but I use these ratios for my whistle comp/rocket.

 

75% KClO4

25% Sodium sally

+3% Vaseline

+1% catalyst (which I never use because they end up catoing 100%)

+~20% solvent by weight

[crazyboy25]

75% KClO4

25% Sodium sally

+3% Vaseline

+1% catalyst (which I never use because they end up catoing 100%)

+~20% solvent by weight

i DONT have sodium sally i have benzoate and i was wondering if ratios need to be changed when substituting sally for benzoate also what do you mean it always CATOs are you saying to use that formula or not also the first formula is for benzoate with lacquer thinner/Toluene the second one uses naphtha from skylighter which i have but it only mentions sally so i was wondering if formula 2 would work if sodium sally was substituted with benzoate

[tentacles]

jacob: You might consider a "NASCAR" star roller like on passfire, in some cases you can just drop a tire on your ball mill rollers and have at it.

 

qwe: no, I meant that the star roller FrankRizzo has, is made by hobbyfireworks.

[jacob]

A NASCAR roller is pretty much just a rolling tire right, in that case i might try that, which one do you think will work better, a nascar or bowl roller? and qwezxc, do you mean you lay the bucket flat on the bord and suport it with casters, or what? i'm confused.

[Mumbles]

I'm somewhat excited for school. 4 science classes and a History of the Ancient Mediteranean class. O Chem lab, Inorg chem, Physics, and biochem. Hopefully the school year will be better as opposed to the summer in which about every conceievable bad thing happened to me. Some of which was at least partially my fault, but yeah.

 

Normal benzoate rockets are just 70:30 Perc:Benz. About 25mL is right about what you should use. DeadFX, one thing. Normally you should let all the solvent evaporate before pressing. The surface area obviously greatly decreases when pressing, and thus will greatly slow the evaporation.

 

The ofset cam bounces the barrel a bit. This helps to cycle the stars from the bottom to the top. Otherwise all the big stars would stay on top, and the smaller ones would sink to the bottom. This would mean they would preferentially take up water and comp to make the size difference even larger. It does, like you said, help to break up clumps in the early stages of rolling.

[qwezxc12]

...qwezxc, do you mean you lay the bucket flat on the bord and suport it with casters, or what? i'm confused.

I don't have a picture of it, but it's mounted something like this, allowing the angle of the bowl to be varied by tilting the mounting board. It makes dumping finished stars out of the bowl easy:

http://www.apcforum.net/files/roller.jpg