Gonna try my first shells!

[stug161]

I am happy with the red stars I have pumped lately. They take fire real well, and seem to burn quite well. I have a variety of smaller Hemis I ordered a while back, but I want to start with something worth my time. I ordered 25 3" paper Hemis. I also have gummed paper coming. And HDPE mortars!! I still havent bit the bullet and gotten my ball mill, so I am going to use Goex 2f powder for my lift. (My unmilled granulated meal requires 3 grams to lift a 3 gram star 30 feet! Not bad, but not enough) I plan on using rice krispy covered with my meal for the burst, maybe with some flash booster. I would like to send up a few blank shells to test the lift. Maybe I can practice my masking tape covered visco time fuse, with a small flash report, surrounded with colored chalk so i can see the height real well. I hope I can get the pasting down. I have read every article I can. So every three strip set I put counts as two layers? And I want 12 layers? Thats 18 pieces of tape right? Rice krispy is easy to get(wal mart) Will it work ok? Atleast to start? Am I missing anything?

 

Thanks, Robert

[TheEskimo]

Might want to test your burst on the ground. Make your shell, but substitute dogfood for the stars. Put in your burst, and booster, and paste as for a regular shell. Test in a secluded area, and see how loud the burst is, and how far the dogfood goes. Your burst sounds like it might be a little weak, considering it's essentially greenmix on crispies.

And here's a nice ball mill...It's a little expensive, but I find it works great for me, and is a lot tougher than the cheap Harbour-Freight ones.

http://www.pyrodirect.com/ccp0-prodshow/039-1500.html

[flying fish]

Not a bad idea (though you better wear saftey glasses and stand well back unless you want to be blinded by dog food), though I'm not usually so worried about break as I am lift. The lift you really want to figure out before sending up the real thing...Unless you are OK with the possibility of it exploding on the ground (and I suppose you technically *should* be OK with it exploding on the ground...gotta assume the worst will happen and plan accordingly, I mean safety-wise). Break calibration is of course very nice to have. Too weak, and your stars drop instead of spreading out. Too strong, and your stars go bye-bye. If you do decide to use a flash booster, start small...maybe less than gram. I find around 1 gram or so to be perfect for a 3" plastic ball shell, but that's without any pasting. Edited August 17, 2009 by flying fish

[stug161]

I will definatly try that! I dont want all my precious stars to blow blind. Maybe i can mortar and pestle some goex to coat my krispies. I am also curious about adding a comet. I see some pictures that have it on the top, and some on the side. does the fuse run under it? Is there a straight forward way to add say a tiger tail comet to a shell?

 

Thanks, Robert

[flying fish]

For ball shells, they can simply be attached to the top of the shell with hot glue, usually offset a bit from the center now that I think about it (I believe this improves ignightability)... The sides of the comet are usually partially wrapped, to lengthen the burn time and prevent the comet from getting to the hot glue and melting itself off of the shell. The lift charge usually ignights them no problem, as long as it is an easy-lighting composition. I think canister shells are a little trickier, since the flame from the lift is not as prominent on the top side of a can shell as compared to the top side of a ball shell. I'm pretty sure they pipe quickmatch to the comet in that case, but I'm not sure. Edited August 17, 2009 by flying fish

[Arthur]

Good BP is a great start to making shells that go up as far as you want then burst as big as you want. Lift BP is sometimes slightly slower than break BP.

 

Put the stars in a bottle and get the BP right or you will waste the stars. Til you are really good at BP stick to the fast common charcoals in your country. Willow, Alder are good pine is great too and can come from timber pallets or untreated building timber, so it is really easy to get the wood. There will be a charcoal supplier for pyro close enough to you if you do not want to make charcoal,

[stug161]

Ok. If your gonna go, better go all out right? I got some rice hulls coming, along with a few other chemicals I hadnt gotten yet( American Pyro Supply has a very nice sell going on right now)! I have also decided to get my ball mill. I guess the harbor freight two barrell model is what I will go with. Cant wait for it to come in!

 

Robert

[Bonny]

I started with 1" shells (and still shoot some). I never wasted time/chems dialing in "dummy shells". If in doubt, add a few extra grams of lift. If you can, do some testing over water. When I moved up to 3", same deal, no dummy shells, just shot over water, and then adjusted. If you start small, you will have a pretty good idea how the lift will work. Keep in mind I did a lot of reading here and elsewhere to roughly calculate lift amounts first. Arthur is right though, get some good BP going first. Then start experimenting with shells and lift charges.

[PoorBoy]

I never used rice hulls i actually use rice crispies cereal. Its better for conserving bp because the puffed rice takes up more volume. As for me I fired one dummy shell, I just wanted to see how high it would go with couple handfulls of bp I underestimated my bp cause i have heard if you use a cheap ball mill it needs like 18 hrs and i only milled for 4hrs. Needless to say it was good bp because the dummy shell came back from orbit what felt like a minute later. In hind sight total flight was less than 10 seconds but more than 6. I forgot about stopwatch due to entertaining backyard balistics. If you have decent bp like mine you should not need more than half oz for lift if shell is 2" or smaller. I found half oz was a good place to start for adjustments. I gave time fuse 3 secs of delay from cross match to cross match and had good results. I gotta say im happy for ya cause i know my first shell was a huge rush. Good Luck