Salute Inserts For Mines

[usatrapper]

Well Ive finished my 3'' multibreak I have been working on. So now its time for my next project. It is a 3'' starmine with tigertail stars and ofca salutes. Anyone have any good ways of making small salutes for use in a 3'' mine? Pics would be nice.

[Ventsi]

Should have said this yesterday, I made about 50 of them. Would have took some pictures/ video for you.

Basically get 1/4" ID tubes, seal one end with a plug/hot glue take all of your tubes and bundle them up with a zip-tie. Funnel in flash, cut enough time fuse for all of them , I used 1/2" 1 sec time fuse pieces, glued in with wood glue, once dry touch prime the time fuse with BP slurry.

[Gunzway]

There's a good tutorial on passfire about 'saettines' which are just small reports used in both mines and shells. The main advantage of them is you save time fuse and as your delay you use black match and saw dust. This definitely saves some money and is idealistic when building many of them.

[Ralph]

i like to do like an exploding spolete I ram in a couple incraments of BP (not super fast) than fill with flash than add a little bit of tissue (not necessary but gives me a little peace of mind) than a drop of hot glue

[dagabu]

Here is my method:

 

Depending on the desired result, I will use either black match for an almost immediate burst, aluminum taped safety fuse for short delays or time fuse for timed delays. The tools I use are (from left to right) time fuse, hole punch, safety fuse, disk punch, disk cutter, tubes, black match, aluminum tape and anvil cutters.

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/tools1.jpg

 

Method 1: Black Match fusing

 

Take a 1/2" ID tube (actual .45") and cut it to 1-2/" long (It's what I scavenged from spend cakes)

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/tools2.jpg

 

Now grab a piece of 1/2" rigid copper tubing around 4" long and chuck it up in your drill press. Take a file and while the press is spinning it around, file the end to a sharp edge. PUSH HARD!! You want to distort the cutting edge just a little so that the disks when cut easily move up the tube.

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/disk%20cutter.jpg

 

The disk should look like this:

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/disk.jpg

 

 

Punch a hole in the center with a leather punch:

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/cutting%20hole.jpg

 

It should look like this:

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/disk%20with%20hole.jpg

 

Take a piece of wood or metal around 3/4" and chuck up a piece around 6" long and file it down until the end is small enough to fit into the tube with space to spare. The disk will need to fit around the tool and inside the tube. This will take some trial and error to get right but it should be just deep enough to fully seat the disk into the tube plus 1/8" for glue to set against the tube walls.

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/ramming%20disk.jpg

 

This is what it will look like when done correctly:

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/black%20match%20in%20disk.jpg

 

 

Now for the tricky part. If you are intending to add any delay to the insert, you have to build it now before inserting the fuse into the insert. Black match can be used to make almost no delay (pops right out of the shell) or hot glue can be used to extend the delay up to 1/2 second.

 

Safety fuse (green canon fuse) can be wrapped with aluminum tape to give a delay up to 3 seconds but is subject to being broken if too long.

 

Time fuse can be extended to time your inserts to several seconds if properly twined (coned) to withstand the break.

 

I have included these three here:

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/three%20fuses.jpg

 

The time fuse still has to be cross matched and primed, the safety fuse should be angle cut and primed but the black match is good to go. Just fill your insert with your comp of choice, ram a disk in the other end, hot glue and enjoy!

 

http://www.pyrobin.com/files/rammed%20disk.jpg

 

D

Edited December 11, 2009 by dagabu

[Swede]

Excellent mini-tutorial! Great photos and descriptions, thanks. I like the improvised copper tube punch.

[dagabu]

Excellent mini-tutorial! Great photos and descriptions, thanks. I like the improvised copper tube punch.

 

Thanks, the copper is more of a saw since it is chucked up and spinning in the drill press, it's to soft to use as a punch (I tried).

 

If I have time I will add some more tuts for other things I have done. I am really into simplicity, reusing and re-purposing.

 

D

[andyboy]

This is one way to do it:

 

 

One side of the tube is rammed with kitty-litter and a hole is punched straight through. A piece of blackmatch is inserted through the holes.

 

 

 

 

Add BP with 10% Spherical Aluminum (I use my homemade stuff, a vid of the machine is avaliable on youtube:

)

 

 

 

 

 

Ram the BP.

 

 

 

 

It is then filled with 1/2 gram of flash-powder, this is more then enough to produce a loud report.

 

 

 

A piece of toilet-paper is placed on top of the flash and the tubes are glued shut with hot-glue.

 

[firetech]

Does anyone want to make a tutorial for the maltese slurry method? Edited December 11, 2009 by firetech

[andyboy]

Does one want to make a tutorial for the maltese slurry method?

 

 

Are you asking if you should make it or if someone feels compelled to make it?

 

I would sure love to see a tutorial on it, haven't seen it elsewhere. (It's when you have the timing on the outside right?)

[firetech]

Someone else. I really don't know how to do it correctly.

[dagabu]

Does anyone want to make a tutorial for the maltese slurry method?

 

Forgive my ignorance, do you mean Saettines, siatenes or citeens or lambetti? I have not seen a slurry yet. Can you walk us through it?

 

D

 

Are these what you mean?

Edited December 11, 2009 by dagabu

[firetech]

A hole is drilled in the side of the case before it is filled and that hole is covered and filled with some slurry (of whatever delay mix is necessary) until a globule of the slurry is exposed inside the tube. The time delay depends on the thickness of the tube's walls. Mumbles knows better than I do...He explained it to me.

[Mumbles]

You're missing the most fun part. Because it's Maltese, the hole is drilled (punched actually) after the case is rolled, filled, spiked, pasted, and filled with flashy goodness. I can try to give some more information later. If anyone feels inspired, I posted a file a little while ago on this. It's a tutorial produced by Karlfoxmann from UKPS. It's not all inclusive, but it's a start.

[firetech]

You're sarcasm really advertises this method wonderfully... Anyway, yes I am inspired. A question though: In one shell, where these little guys are fitted (lets say about 24), would this method really only be good for one ring of timing? Or could you use this for 3 separately timed rings, except with the thicker wall for each longer delay. I really don't know how to describe this well...

 

That file would be really usedful.

[dagabu]

the hole is drilled (punched actually) after the case is rolled, filled, spiked, pasted, and filled with flashy goodness.

 

Yumm! I can hardly wait!! Can't I use a dull drill bit? Please?

 

D

[Mumbles]

Here is my previous post. It contains the file, and a few links to UKPS.

 

http://www.apcforum.net/forums/index.php?s...ost&p=54650

 

The concept is pretty simple overall. There are two schools of thought on the matter. You can vary the tube thickness, or you can vary the delay composition. The delay composition is a slowed blackpowder. Gum Arabic, Red Gum, or Barium carbonate are generally used at up to 25%. Gum Arabic is the traditional delay agent. The delay composition is buttered on the hole. Despite my earlier sarcastic comment, I really suggest drilling/punching the hole before filling the shell.

 

Now I will take a small break. I've been struggling with this and maybe you guys have some ideas. I've been debating about the tubes. The maltese use hand rolled tubes (to my knowledge). You will see in the file I linked to above. I feel like the pictures I've seen of the real have the inserts all pasted in after the spiking. Like I said before, the maltese punch the tube after they are finished, I wasn't kidding about that. I don't know how to replicate this without obviously punching afterwards. Here is my thinking on this matter;

 

1. Hand rolled tubes, like in the file. Use a disk internally on top of the liner. Cover the bottom of it with glue, and drop it on. Use plenty of glue to fold down the flaps, tounge type folds one layer at a time so there is a solid seal. Fill with flash, repeat the disk and folding down of paper, spike (maybe more disks), and you're good to go.

 

2. Commercial tubes. Use disks over the ends, glued on like before. Seal around the edge with masking tape or gummed tape to fire proof. Use strapping tape to spike the whole thing in. Start just above the slurry portion, and wrap it with a single strip so that the tape ends just on the other side of the slurry. You could probably spike it too just as easily. I was also thinking about pasting both ends with pasted paper. You just have to contain it enough for the flash to shatter the tube instead of pop out the ends.

 

Back to the technique. The slurry is buttered on the outside so that is pushes through the inside. As soon as the fire breaks through it will light the flash, so there isn't really an issue with not equal slurry on each. This again is where I get confused, and could use some ideas. There are three things that come to mind to make it efficient and functional:

 

1. Tom Schroeder from Passfire recommended these bars used to control paint thickness. This would be run over the exterior of the tube so that the slurry is of even thickness, and has the same delay on all similar tubes. Add granular BP like one of the next two examples.

 

2. Dip the slurry coated exterior in fine grain BP and trust that the granules will be against the tube surface burn relatively instantly in comparison with the delay, so any variation in the slurry on the exterior would be negated.

 

3. Scape the exterior of the tube clean, so that the slurry is flush with the exterior. Allow the stuff to dry for a few days. Brush on a BP/NC slurry, and again dip in granular BP so there will again be a very similar delay.

 

As you can see, the tubes are primed with granular BP as a prime.

 

Like I said earlier, there are two schools of thought on this. Vary the tube thickness, or vary the delay. Now, obviously the Maltese are masters at this. The maltese, from what I can understand have generated a mixture of tube thickness and formulas to generate a series of reports. I've seen them as large as 10 distinct timings. There are videos on youtube. I do not know for sure that they were done with this fusing method or spolettes or what. I would stick with either modifying tube thickness or formula (tube thickness is easier and linear) until you get it dialed in. I bet you could ram spolettes made from BP with various levels of additives to try to dial in the speeds, and allow you to calculate timings so that your rings break on regular intervals. I do not know if adding the above retardants will slow BP linearly.

[firetech]

I hope we've all seen this.

Check out his channel while you're at it.

http://www.youtube.com/user/redjetcar#p/u/6/moCc0Ld2Er0

[usatrapper]

That was the best shell I have ever seen ...............

[Mumbles]

I was going to ask this in another thread, but I think you guys know I have alterior motives for this.

 

How does 6:3:1 burn in the open? Slaggy or clean? speed?

[Pretty green flame]

6:3:1 burns, when milled, relatively cleanly leaving only little slag in the form of small black grains on the surface. The burn speed is.... medium, faster than screened greenmix, slower than meal powder, if you can make out anything from that Can't describe it really.

[yellowcard]

@ Andyboy, that's a very clever method you're using. Never seen it before. I suppose you drill the holes a few mm big so the gasses en flames can come out so that it doesn't explodes before the fire reaches the flash ?

I am definitly going to try this one out.

[dagabu]

They look like a Z-bomb with report!

 

D

[andyboy]

@ Andyboy, that's a very clever method you're using. Never seen it before. I suppose you drill the holes a few mm big so the gasses en flames can come out so that it doesn't explodes before the fire reaches the flash ?

I am definitly going to try this one out.

 

 

Don't remember where I got the inspiration but I think it's been done (hasn't everything) long before I did it. The holes should be a bit oversized but I like to make them just the right size that I get a kind of rocket (stinger) noise from them before they explode. I have a bad clip I just posted on youtube of them:

 

 

The best part is that they are really easy to time, just ram 1 more scoop of powder then you had in the previous buzz-bomb and 1 more for the next and so on.

 

 

Nice to see that you liked them, I think they are nice but it's a lot of work and I think there are easier ways, I think of it as therapy work for rainy days.

[Pyropow3r]

I was going to ask this in another thread, but I think you guys know I have alterior motives for this.

 

How does 6:3:1 burn in the open? Slaggy or clean? speed?

 

 

Burns reasonably clean leaves a small scorch mark on the pavement and the burn rate is a moderate burn rate (you could easily burst a shell with it if you granulated it)