Made my first stars!

[PoorBoy]

I think you're confusing the term "core". There are star rolling cores, and burst cores. They are not interchangable. They have pretty much opposite ideal properties. For rolling stars you'll want to look for something round. Not all bird seed is good. The seed you're looking for is called millet. They sell it for human consumption too.

 

I've never heard accounts of lead raining down. From what I gather it more often than not melts and vaporizes from the heat of the comp.

 

 

Yea, I didn't know they weren't interchangeable lol. Being my first rolled stars i just grabbed my burst cores and made new stars effectively named "Sets fire to picnic blankets." I know now and thanks mumbles im off to get millet. Just wondering, does sodium bicarb give off more yellow with introduction of a chlorine donor the way carbonates do, like barium carb. I'm gonna try it to satisfy curiosity.

[Mumbles]

Not in the same way. The yellow emitter is atomic sodium, whereas the red, green, and blue emitters are all monochlorides. Chlorine does have secondary effects, but they are less noticable in sodium yellows.

[Bonny]

Yea, I didn't know they weren't interchangeable lol. Being my first rolled stars i just grabbed my burst cores and made new stars effectively named "Sets fire to picnic blankets." I know now and thanks mumbles im off to get millet. Just wondering, does sodium bicarb give off more yellow with introduction of a chlorine donor the way carbonates do, like barium carb. I'm gonna try it to satisfy curiosity.

 

 

I've also used peppercorns, which are very good for learning to rolls stars.You can also try Quinoa (?) seeds or grains. they work quite well as cores. Be careful if using very small cores on the amount you start with. I used 1/4 or 1/2 cup once of quinoa seeds and I ended up with hundreds, if not thousands of small blue stars...still have a few ziploc bags full.

[dagabu]

i use small dragon eggs from those crackling balls(can make my own but i havent bothered :/ ) or small bits of stars

 

Magic Whip has crackle that makes great cores plus gives you that nice sound at the end. I give my kids some to play with and have them strip it off the sticky tape. Each whip gives me four batches of stars.

[lodcomm]

I have used #7 lead shot for star rolling cores and it works just fine. I have however noticed that in tiger tails, and in D1 glitter it does not vapourize at all. And yes it will rain down on bystanders if they are underneath the burst radius. It has been my experience that this causes harm to no-one at all, no more harm than the bird-shot (#7 lead) falling from the sky onto me any everyone else when we are out shooting skeet. In 30 years of skeet shooting and bird hunting I have never heard of a single person injured in the least from falling lead shot. That being said, I would agree that it is fairly unprofessional and all around amateurish to have star cores of any kind falling on your viewers.

 

The main advantage of using lead shot as cores, is that it is about the most forgiving core for a person just learning to roll stars to have success with. Its weight helps keep the early forming stars from clumping together.

 

I roll most of my stars on bird seed (millet). The main advantage is: its cheap!. An added advantage is that it essentially DOES burn up with the burning star. It takes a bit of patience to get them started, (ie: very light touch with the water mister), but once they get started they roll along just as happy as can be.

 

 

Here are some shots of some D1 glitter stars I rolled on Birdseed cores

Edited September 2, 2009 by lodcomm

[FrankRizzo]

I use #9 shot as my star cores and they burn up without any fallout. I find that 90% of the time the fallout is from the burst carrier.

[PoorBoy]

Quick question pertaining to h3. I know most people would put it on a carrier, but how would it work if screened and placed in a shell as powder? To narrow down my question assume that we are talking about equal masses of h3 in a shell. what would break harder? powdered h3 or an equal mass of h3 rolled onto carriers?

[Mumbles]

Wont work very well at all. Besides just being a propellant, the burst also holds all the stars in there firmly. A soft loosely confined powder wont confine anything. Packing it in might work, but you'll end up using way more H3 than needed, and might slow the burst too much by removing all the air gaps.

 

What you can do, is granulate the powder, and use that to fill in the burst area. This will work, and might break the shell a bit harder, but you'll end up using a lot more powder than you would if coated on some sort of medium. As you can see, an equal amount of H3 will not break a shell at all. If you used an equal mass, one shell wouldn't be full, and might flower pot.

[PoorBoy]

Wont work very well at all. Besides just being a propellant, the burst also holds all the stars in there firmly. A soft loosely confined powder wont confine anything. Packing it in might work, but you'll end up using way more H3 than needed, and might slow the burst too much by removing all the air gaps.

 

What you can do, is granulate the powder, and use that to fill in the burst area. This will work, and might break the shell a bit harder, but you'll end up using a lot more powder than you would if coated on some sort of medium. As you can see, an equal amount of H3 will not break a shell at all. If you used an equal mass, one shell wouldn't be full, and might flower pot.

 

 

Thanks mumbles, Yea i knew i would use more powder to fill the same volume, i was just curious as to in what form it would cause a harder break. What i understood from your post is that granulated would break hardest, second to that is h3 on a carrier, and third is packed or loose powder for slowest burn rate. Does anybody know of a good improvised burst carrier. I need to order rice hulls but due to laziness and expensive S&H i haven't done so yet. I've used puffed rice and it had very little fallout at a 9:1 ratio (BP:Puffed Rice). I considered dry white rice but i think it would be too dense to be more effective than puffed rice, althought i bet it wouldn't have any fallout. Just thought somebody may have tried something that beat puffed rice. Otherwise im testing H3 on puffed rice and or dry rice, because I dont feel like waiting on rice hulls to come in the mail. Any body know of a local store that sells rice hulls (as far as I know its basicaly a pyro item, publix and homedepot don't have them lol).

 

EDIT: Grammar

Edited September 10, 2009 by PoorBoy

[KruseMissile]

Magic Whip has crackle that makes great cores plus gives you that nice sound at the end. I give my kids some to play with and have them strip it off the sticky tape. Each whip gives me four batches of stars.

 

 

Magic whip?? for some reason i think of Cool Whip lol

[Ventsi]

Its basicly dragon eggs rolled in a paper sleeve with a slow fuse trough it.

No whipped cream sorry.

[Mumbles]

Any respectable homebrew shop for beer or wine will have rice hulls. Tthat would be a spot to check.

 

Other than that, I've heard of people having decent success with vermiculite or grass seed. 4:1 BP:puffed rice is normally sufficient for most applications by the way.

[Bonny]

Any respectable homebrew shop for beer or wine will have rice hulls. Tthat would be a spot to check.

 

Other than that, I've heard of people having decent success with vermiculite or grass seed. 4:1 BP:puffed rice is normally sufficient for most applications by the way.

 

 

Vermiculite works just fine. that was my only burst carrier for a few years, until I ran out and used rice crispies (puffed rice) creeal. Vermiculite can be bought at almost any garden centre or (hardware) store with a gardening centre. It is also very cheap too.

[FrankRizzo]

Rice Kripies cereal and Cheerios breakfast cereals have also been used successfully as a burst carrier. They also have the advantage of being biodegradable.

[TheEskimo]

I use grasseed. It's cheap, and every hardware store wil have bags of it. I also like to think that it will fill in the holes in the lawn from...errr....uhhhh.......experiments gone slightly wrong??

Question about the vermiculite. How fine is the vermiculite that you guys use? I found a bag in my barn, and I was going to use it, until I saw that it was like the size of sand grains, or smaller. Is this a normal size, or is there a bigger size available?

[PoorBoy]

Rice Crispies is is what I was refering to as puffed rice lol, something about the 3 faces on the blue box so cheerful the are border lined psychotic or maniacal... Its almost as if they were envisioning some one coating their cerial in BP for some diabolical plan of one day quaking the neighborhood with a 12" shell lol. By the way thanks mumbles i did not know 4:1 was the ideal ratio, I was using 9:1, I guess that was over kill lol. Thanks for the tip on a brewing stores, I never thought of that. Grass seed sounds like a good one too, I likewise have some voids or missing land from experiments lol. Lots of good info thanks guys.

[dagabu]

I just got done rolling a batch of D1 Glitter stars (talk about a bear!) on millet seed. It felt really lite and wouldnt grab the mix well at all. I dont like rice krispies or vermiculite either because of the weight or lack of.

 

I had a bag of #11 (holy cow that stuff is small) that I got from a garage sale about 25 years ago and used that I used to start cores and did a bang up job of it too!

 

I threw them into a mine and let them go in a parking lot to see if the lead would come down. Nada, nothing, zilch, there was no fall out except for the cushioning cup. I still don't like to use lead but if I found #11 again... Well there goes my Green Peace membership!

 

Dave

[Bonny]

I just got done rolling a batch of D1 Glitter stars (talk about a bear!) on millet seed. It felt really lite and wouldnt grab the mix well at all. I dont like rice krispies or vermiculite either because of the weight or lack of.

 

I had a bag of #11 (holy cow that stuff is small) that I got from a garage sale about 25 years ago and used that I used to start cores and did a bang up job of it too!

 

I threw them into a mine and let them go in a parking lot to see if the lead would come down. Nada, nothing, zilch, there was no fall out except for the cushioning cup. I still don't like to use lead but if I found #11 again... Well there goes my Green Peace membership!

 

Dave

 

I have no trouble with rice crispies in my "nascar style" star roller. With the vermiculite, I soak it in bowl, then shake (or washing machine spin) in a mesh bag to dry. After that put it in a ziploc and shake it up with the BP+dex for the first 4 increments and a final shake with straight BP (5:1).

@TheEskimo: The vermiculite I had ranged in size from dust to 1/4"+ size pcs. Just sieve out the fine crap.

[TheEskimo]

Thanks, Bonny...that sounds just like my stuff. Time to get out the screens.....