Fireworks on the eve

[Updup]

Heres the video of some shells I shot last night, my first two 3" shells were at the end. Enjoy!

 

EDIT: Hey, just so you know, I would hate for that 1080p HD to go to waste, please take the time to select HD.

 

 

 

Also, tell me what I might do for improvments, after all, these were my first 2 big boy shells, and they wern't quite perfect.

 

If you liked them give them a thumbs up [=

Edited December 25, 2010 by Updup

[Seymour]

Updup, they were not perfect, but they were certainly better than my first three inch shells!

 

Definitely shells to be happy with, but you asked for critical evaluation, so here goes

 

Timing of the smaller shells was not too consistent, you could work on that. The bursts of them were very reliable and nice however.

 

The 3" red shell definitely seemed a bit too small up there. This could be because it was fired too high, or because it had a small burst. Probably both.

 

Star sizing was ok, but I did see a few bigger stars lingering at the end. The stars burned very fast. To get a bigger burst it might pay to roll a very slow composition over the top of the primed red stars (like a willow star mix), so that they can have half a second to let the burst expand before the colour lights up. As well you could probably burst it harder.

 

The C8 shell could also be improved with a bit harder burst, but with the longer lasting stars it is less important.

 

I definitely suggest you use less timefuse on those shells. I think I counted about six seconds delay on the C8 shell. That's longer than the delay I put on my 6" shells. I noticed that the C8 shell burst downwards, indicating that it had reached apogee, and got in to the journey back to the ground. Give them no more than three seconds (I give 3" shells two to two and a half seconds), and lower the lift a bit, and they will break a bit lower, looking bigger in the sky.

 

With first shells it's best to under burst and over lift, and then work your way from there. So essentially, I consider the criticism that I've given you to be criticism based on a very successful set of shells, and I've had to put effort in to coming up with stuff.

 

Good Job!

[Updup]

Updup, they were not perfect, but they were certainly better than my first three inch shells!

 

Definitely shells to be happy with, but you asked for critical evaluation, so here goes

 

Timing of the smaller shells was not too consistent, you could work on that. The bursts of them were very reliable and nice however.

 

The 3" red shell definitely seemed a bit too small up there. This could be because it was fired too high, or because it had a small burst. Probably both.

 

Star sizing was ok, but I did see a few bigger stars lingering at the end. The stars burned very fast. To get a bigger burst it might pay to roll a very slow composition over the top of the primed red stars (like a willow star mix), so that they can have half a second to let the burst expand before the colour lights up. As well you could probably burst it harder.

 

The C8 shell could also be improved with a bit harder burst, but with the longer lasting stars it is less important.

 

I definitely suggest you use less timefuse on those shells. I think I counted about six seconds delay on the C8 shell. That's longer than the delay I put on my 6" shells. I noticed that the C8 shell burst downwards, indicating that it had reached apogee, and got in to the journey back to the ground. Give them no more than three seconds (I give 3" shells two to two and a half seconds), and lower the lift a bit, and they will break a bit lower, looking bigger in the sky.

 

With first shells it's best to under burst and over lift, and then work your way from there. So essentially, I consider the criticism that I've given you to be criticism based on a very successful set of shells, and I've had to put effort in to coming up with stuff.

 

Good Job!

 

Thank you! That was a very helpful set of words you wrote there.

 

The issue with the long time fuses was probobly because I cut about 2" of time fuse, intending to slit 1/2" on both ends, but I didn't measure how much I slit them when the time came around to do so, so I only cut them about 3/8" or less on each end, plus, I was using that crappy white time fuse that has a burn rate between 3 and 3.5 seconds per inch (some of you will argue that it burns longer, but I've tested my strand and it burned 3.3 seconds an inch). Thanks for pointing the bit out about the c8 shell breaking down, I didn't pick that up on my own. Frame by frame on the C8 shell shows the delay to be 5 seconds.

 

As far as timing on the little shells goes, they very because I never measure the visco on them, another contributer is the fact that those small shells are almost all built with diffrent methods, at diffrent times, one of them got close to flower potting.

 

I was supprised that the three inch lift wasn't very loud, on almost all of my old little shells the lift was louder than the break (Granted, the break is farther away). I used 1/10 the shell weight for lift, which turned out to be 15 for the red shell and 17.4 for the C8, I'm thinking I'll go down to 1/11 for my next few shells, and see where to go from there.

 

Break was around 5-6 grams of whistle for both of them, and I had 12 layers of three strip (Before you go crazy Seymour, I have nothing better to do . I guess my whistle isn't quite as good as some of you, because from just listening to you it sounded like 5 grams was on the heavy side, maybe I should have gone with 16 layers of pasting as well though.

 

Rolling some TT around stars sounds like a plan, makes the break bigger and is cheaper [=. The red stars I didn't design to go in my 3", I was intending to put some long burning indigo to silver streamer stars, but I never got them primed to a point where they would light consistently, I think I'm going to have to wash the prime I have off and try somthing a bit tougher. So the red stars were just too small, maybe 1/4" with prime. As far as the C8 goes, I cut those at 1/2" and they still went too fast for my liking, although now that I've gotten charcoal streamer stars to work I'm going to give TT another shot (for those of you who don't know, TT and I have been on bad grounds since my first shells) and that should give me a longer burning effect (Could I throw some Ti in TT? Or Al maybe?)

 

Thanks again.

Edited December 25, 2010 by Updup

[dagabu]

Bravo! The ladies seemed to enjoy that a lot too. Nice job on the shells, they looked great.

[Updup]

Bravo! The ladies seemed to enjoy that a lot too. Nice job on the shells, they looked great.

 

Thank you! And yes, they were a whoopen and hollerin' but as I was editing the video above they got tired of hearing themselfs whoop and holler so much =P

[Seymour]

You certainly can add Titanium or Aluminium to TT, though the less reactive Aluminium grades may not light up.

 

and I had 12 layers of three strip (Before you go crazy Seymour

 

ha ha, I have to admit that there are times when I would have put so much effort in to a shell to consider three strip. It does elegantly give the shell an even coating. However as you have picked up, I'm quite keen to let people know that there are easier ways with good results

 

Thank you! And yes, they were a whoopen and hollerin' but as I was editing the video above they got tired of hearing themselfs whoop and holler so much =P

 

My family and friends often say "I wish I had shut up" when I play my videos. I guess people don't like hearing their own voice. I personally am quite happy with cries of delight in my videos too!

 

What's the indigo formula, and what have you been priming it with? If they reliably light on the ground, but fail to light at speed, you could do the charcoal streamer trick so that when they light they are not moving fast. You might want to put them in a bigger shell too... but hey, big shells are good

Edited December 26, 2010 by Seymour

[Updup]

You certainly can add Titanium or Aluminium to TT, though the less reactive Aluminium grades may not light up.

 

 

 

ha ha, I have to admit that there are times when I would have put so much effort in to a shell to consider three strip. It does elegantly give the shell an even coating. However as you have picked up, I'm quite keen to let people know that there are easier ways with good results

 

 

 

My family and friends often say "I wish I had shut up" when I play my videos. I guess people don't like hearing their own voice. I personally am quite happy with cries of delight in my videos too!

 

What's the indigo formula, and what have you been priming it with? If they reliably light on the ground, but fail to light at speed, you could do the charcoal streamer trick so that when they light they are not moving fast. You might want to put them in a bigger shell too... but hey, big shells are good

 

My family is the same =D

 

The skylighter indigo, I used the primes they told me to, but just didn't use enough, it seems 40 grams total (there are 2 primes, one BP based and one KCIO4 based) of prime for 100 grams of star comp works well, I just didnt use enough on the indigo stars.

 

oh and Mom and Dad are going to NZ in march for a motorcycle trip, any tips? What are some good places to stay? Thanks [=

[TheSidewinder]

Hey, if the audience is appreciative.... the shells are perfect.

[Updup]

Hey, if the audience is appreciative.... the shells are perfect.

 

Or they don't know a good shell from a bad

[dagabu]

Thank God mine still love me, they are down right harsh on commercial shells but still appreciate all the work that goes into any homemade shell.