Random Thread #1

[asilentbob]

psyco_1322, you are somewhat under the club license so long as you follow the rules, but I'd much rather transport shells, stars, inserts, etc in someone elses dedicated mobile mag instead of keeping them in the car we would be going in. It would allow more free space for packing the car and really driving several hundred miles with shells in the same car just doesn't feel safe.

 

http://www.solar-balloons.com/

I am making/have made a few of the trashbag solar balloon styles on this site. Havn't had a bright clear day to really test them out yet, but they are pretty damn cool. The thin (.5mil recommended) black trashbags are cut up and taped together to make shapes, then they are filled up with air from a fan, the breeze, an air compressor, etc. The sun heats the black trashbags which heat the air inside of them. Then the hot air rises and lifts the balloon into the sky. One of that guys balloons traveled IIRC 700+ miles in 6 hours.

 

I have one 4 bag long sock, one 12 bag long sock, one 4 bag tetroon, and I'm working on finishing one 20 (5x4) bag tetroon. I'm thinking that I'll try using the huge one for raising an antenna for my radio scanner, and eventually my HAM radio when ever I get one. Also got my printed out HAM radio license in the mail from the FCC today .

 

I'm thinking that I might do something similar with trashbags for maker faire... maybe multiple projects... dunno. I can get 40 .5mil 40gal trashbags for like $2-4 so its might cheap. If I end up wanting to do this for maker faire I think I might have to find a supplier that will sell continuous rolls of .5mil or so black hdpe to use instead. Also I'm going to need a lot more masking tape lol. But yeah... these are soooo easy to build...

 

On a related note, its pretty easy to make a similar balloon thats powered off a wax/sawdust fuel or similar using trash bags and some light fireproofed wood or wire. Video instructions available on youtube. Something to do for the 4th perhaps.

[_DB_]

Yea man, Opeth ftw. Their new cd Watershed is awesome fyi, in case you havent gotten it.

Yeah I like it. I found it on a music blog weeks before it came out.

[XinE895]

I guess I'm going to ask to be spoon fed a little here but in my defense I'm in a hurry to make some shells and I have no time to look at 100+ pages of the shells thread looking for the answers to my questions.

 

I want to make a couple 3" and a few 4" shells, just to try out before my show this year because I have the space in my racks. But I've never made anything larger then consumer sized. I have plastic hemi's for the 4"

 

Questions pertain to 4" Shells

 

-What should an average 4" shell weigh?

-How much lift should I use? (does the standard ratio work or do I need more)

-What time should I set the time fuse for?

-Is the simple BP coated hulls sprinkled with a little flash still going to be enough to break these shells good?

[Pretty green flame]

Questions pertain to 4" Shells

 

-What should an average 4" shell weigh?

-How much lift should I use? (does the standard ratio work or do I need more)

-What time should I set the time fuse for?

-Is the simple BP coated hulls sprinkled with a little flash still going to be enough to break these shells good?

1: Does it matter?

 

2: Well this depends on your BP, 1/16th of the weight is too little in my opinion, even with excellent BP.

 

3: 3.5secs for a 4", 3secs for a 3"

 

4: BP on rice hulls + flash will work fine (depends on how much flash you will be using, 3g should be good IMO)

[psyco_1322]

Interesting bag launching thing you found there asilentbob. I think if I get completely bored I would forget about it, so ill have to try it sometime when Im not so bored.

[kingvitamin]

Hey gang. just stopping by to wish you my best this fourth of july.

[justanotherpyro]

I guess I'm going to ask to be spoon fed a little here but in my defense I'm in a hurry to make some shells and I have no time to look at 100+ pages of the shells thread looking for the answers to my questions.

 

I want to make a couple 3" and a few 4" shells, just to try out before my show this year because I have the space in my racks. But I've never made anything larger then consumer sized. I have plastic hemi's for the 4"

 

Questions pertain to 4" Shells

 

-What should an average 4" shell weigh?

-How much lift should I use? (does the standard ratio work or do I need more)

-What time should I set the time fuse for?

-Is the simple BP coated hulls sprinkled with a little flash still going to be enough to break these shells good?

There are alot of variables which is why you can't really find the answers per say to those questions but I can give you some generalizations.

 

My 4" shells usually (ballpark) weigh 250-500g. It depends on the stars. TT shells weigh a lot less than other compositions in general.

 

I time 4"ers for 3.5 seconds as well.

 

The break can be finicky otherwise everyone would get great breaks all the time. If you paste several layers with fiberglass reinforced gummed tape on a plastic shell it will break much better and harder than if you didn't paste at all (obviously). It will also take less flash to achieve a good break if you paste it well. I use 10g of flash to break my 4" shells because I like a really hard break, the catch is that it can shatter stars at times. I would suggest 5g of flash as a start and then modify it from there.

[_DB_]

I started a YouTube channel for my pyro vids - LINK

 

I've only got two up so far, but will add more when/if I do anything pyro-related.

[flying fish]

So more on my Glitter shells:

 

My latest prototype was a 1.75" ball shell, broken weakly so that the stars spread in a typical willow pattern (rather than traveling in more of a line). The effect was beautiful, but there was too much fallout. An unsetteling amount of glowing stuff managed to touch down. The formula was Win 22, made with a relatively slow blackpowder (commercial airfloat, 1.5 hours in a coin/ tumbler mill).

 

Would I be correct in assuming that increasing the breaking speed will decrease the fallout?

[XinE895]

Thanks Pretty green flame and justanotherpyro for your answers they both helped a lot.

 

I'll be shooting them on the 12th so I'll make a post with the results.

[justanotherpyro]

So more on my Glitter shells:

 

My latest prototype was a 1.75" ball shell, broken weakly so that the stars spread in a typical willow pattern (rather than traveling in more of a line).  The effect was beautiful, but there was too much fallout.  An unsetteling amount of glowing stuff managed to touch down.  The formula was Win 22, made with a relatively slow blackpowder (commercial airfloat, 1.5 hours in a coin/ tumbler mill). 

 

Would I be correct in assuming that increasing the breaking speed will decrease the fallout?

You would be correct to an extent. Glitters work by shedding off layers as they fly through the air and at higher speeds this works better. However, there are a few things you may try to modify the formula so that it will work for a willow effect. You can decrease the Bicarbonate, increase BP speed, increase the mesh of the metal(or maybe 75:25 325mesh flake: 600mesh german dark or something similar) or a combination of all of the above. I recently have done a lot of experimenting with Bicarb gllitters and upping the Bicarb gives more of a glitter at the cost of increasing burntime and potential fallout so if you decrease it too much you risk losing the glitter effect. These might be a few things to tweak to get the effect that you want though.

[mormanman]

You would be correct to an extent. Glitters work by shedding off layers as they fly through the air and at higher speeds this works better. However, there are a few things you may try to modify the formula so that it will work for a willow effect. You can decrease the Bicarbonate, increase BP speed, increase the mesh of the metal(or maybe 75:25 325mesh flake: 600mesh german dark or something similar) or a combination of all of the above. I recently have done a lot of experimenting with Bicarb gllitters and upping the Bicarb gives more of a glitter at the cost of increasing burntime and potential fallout so if you decrease it too much you risk losing the glitter effect. These might be a few things to tweak to get the effect that you want though.

I would try the increased Bicarb and if what your saying is true then why not just make the stars smaller. I think it would be a cooler effect.

[justanotherpyro]

You would be correct to an extent. Glitters work by shedding off layers as they fly through the air and at higher speeds this works better. However, there are a few things you may try to modify the formula so that it will work for a willow effect. You can decrease the Bicarbonate, increase BP speed, increase the mesh of the metal(or maybe 75:25 325mesh flake: 600mesh german dark or something similar) or a combination of all of the above. I recently have done a lot of experimenting with Bicarb gllitters and upping the Bicarb gives more of a glitter at the cost of increasing burntime and potential fallout so if you decrease it too much you risk losing the glitter effect. These might be a few things to tweak to get the effect that you want though.

I would try the increased Bicarb and if what your saying is true then why not just make the stars smaller. I think it would be a cooler effect.

If you keep adding more and more bicarb the problem is that you get to the point that a 1/4" star may burn as long as a 1/2" star but it doesn't burn completely and creates molten fallout. I wanted to use severely increased bicarb 1/2 stars in a 6" but they don't burn completely, and also the increased bicarb drastically reduces their ability to take fire easily, if you add too much that is. Its all balances. Many people can't get glitters to function correctly because they burn too fast so I recommend adding bicarb, but you can only take it so far.

[flying fish]

I will be able to fire a couple more test shells tonight, so I will try stronger break charges and also fire them higher. I don't want to mess with the stars much (not that I would actually have time before the 4th to make a new batch anyway), so I'm stuck with only being able to adjust other factors for now.

 

Of course, when I get the opportunity I would like to play with the ratios to get something that is slow enough to glitter for a considerable time, but still able to break up to the point of little or no fallout.

 

On another note...I was playing with ideas on how to get my Ammonium Perchlorate/ copper powder stars to light. Instead of finding the chems for an exotic high temp prime, I just added an extra 10% of the following mixture: 50% KCLO4 50% Lampblack. This made the stars fairly easy to light (would do with just a KP prime), however when I tried the star it seemed that it burned purple instead of blue. It was in daylight, so I can't tell for sure yet. It would make sense that the color would be altered by the lampblack. Plus, purple stars that light are a hell of a lot better than blue stars that don't!

[pudidotdk]

flyingfish, if the prime disturbs color, use another binder than that of the star. For example if using a dextrin/water bound star composition, the prime could be bound with NC.

[FrKoNaLeaSh1010]

does anyone know the average time and temperature to dry severely clumpy kno3 in an oven. anyone know the melting point because i dont want it to take 2 days at 170F to dry?

[ULTRABUF]

Turns out my friend's family whose house I am shooting at wont be lighting their stuff till sunday so my 4th is going to be filled with 1.3 rather than my stuff. That means twice the fun.

[frogy]

does anyone know the average time and temperature to dry severely clumpy kno3 in an oven. anyone know the melting point because i dont want it to take 2 days at 170F to dry?

I think I was drying it at 250°F in a glass casserole dish... Without any problems.

 

I normally do a grind, dry, dissolve, filter, boil down, dry, grind, dry process of purification (if truly needed 99.5+%)

 

I don't really get the boil-down part... I'm thinking that I should put way-too much KNO3 in, then boil to dissolve, and filter while boiling... Then cool to precipitate the crystals.

[flying fish]

flyingfish, if the prime disturbs color, use another binder than that of the star. For example if using a dextrin/water bound star composition, the prime could be bound with NC.

Thanks for the suggestion. After my last post I had a bunch that didn't light when testing in a stargun, so I guess they will need more than just a KP prime, so I may have to use something more exotic after all. It is still an improvement over the original formula that I was using, which took about a full second with a mapp gas torch to light! This one lights the instant the flame touches it...so it at least has a chance if I can give it a semi-hot prime.

 

I also managed to eliminate the fallout problem with my Win 22 star shells. I cut the stars up into smaller pieces, broke the shell harder, and sent it up a tad bit higher. It still put on an impressive display, but nothing was still glowing by the time it hit the ground.

[Swede]

does anyone know the average time and temperature to dry severely clumpy kno3 in an oven. anyone know the melting point because i dont want it to take 2 days at 170F to dry?

Melts at 334C or 633 f. so you can crank up the oven a bit without fear.

[mormanman]

I went out to the shop and I was like, hey I need to make some stuff for tomorrow. I'm going out to a friend of mine's land and shoot some LPG tanks with a 50 cal. I know DANGER. They been doing it for years, and a buddy is bringing his MP5, he works for the FBI BTW. And so I was going to try some double pedals believe it or not and then just some 3" and 2" shells and 1" comets. So I look at my jar for my lift powder and was like crap. So I made a lot more. Now they're drying. Fun stuff.

 

Edit+++++

Just made 48' of BM for QM. And a bunch of D1 stars.

[crazyboy25]

This is ridiculous. In todays newspaper there is an article about how toxic fireworks shows are and environmentally friendly fireworks. They called perchlorate a hormone altering substance.

 

Plus in yesterdays paper I read an article about how a firework show occurred near birds nest so a local environmental group sued.

 

And reading all these posts about peoples fireworks is making me depressed I can't make them or even buy anything bigger then a fountain.

[Swede]

Where do you live? Since I didn't get as much made for the 4th as I wanted to, I dropped by a local mega fireworks warehouse and stocked up on 1.4g. The fun for the buck was WAY high. Got a reloadable mortar and a dozen shells cheap, and they were potent and colorful. Some of the ground fountains astounded me with their displays.

 

This is Texas by the way, where environmentalists whining about fireworks would probably get a lighted 4 ounce rocket shoved u-know-where.

[crazyboy25]

Where do you live?

California

[flying fish]

I've always got the impression that California was one of those places that cracks down on everything fun (including possibly fun itself)...

 

I do agree that 1.4g is good bang for the buck. I can't remember what the shells were called that I got this year (some obnoxious name), but they were very similar to excals in terms of performance.

 

I added in 3 1.75" Shells of my own full of Winokur 22 glitter. I thought I had enough stars for 5 shells, but somehow ran out after only 3 shells. I also only had enough yellow visco leader fuse for 4 shells. I'll have to REALLY plan ahead next year if I want homemade shells to be a major part of my show. They shells worked perfectly though, and everyone was impressed with them, so I'm happy.