crossettes

[pyrochris732]

Exactly how hard is it to make the crossette stars? Id love to add these to my shells this summer. Any good tips or links on how to make em?

 

Thanks,

 

Chris

[Mumbles]

They're easy to make. They're just hard to make function correctly.

 

The best tip is to press a lot, and try to dial them in a few at a time. You'll see what works, and what doesn't. Sticking with traditional methods typically leads to less dialing in. This means really pasting them in vs using masking tape, wax, or gummed tape. The burst is typically where the experimentation comes in. Some have had good success with a mixture of granular BP and flash. Others really like granulated whistle. Rolled shots as outlined in fulcanelli are pretty much the gold standard by which everything else is judged. I'd also suggest priming them well even if the comp lights pretty easily on it's own. It helps to make them more consistent.

 

A lot depends on if you get the cruciform tooling, or the round hole tooling.

 

Good luck getting them perfect in one building season.

[dagabu]

First off, I am not a traditionalist in my methods but would very much like to be some day. For now, I decided to make my "crossettes" the easy way to dial them in and then to use traditional methods later when making shells for club shoots and competition. I did this by deciding to use a splitting comet pump first and them go to a cruciform pump after getting them to break well.

 

I started off by making a pump:

[dagabu]

The next step was pressing the comet then drying it. I then filled them with a variety of stuff that went BOOM! I found that flash made them turn to powder and it was bright. Not good for these charcoal comets. I then filled them with BP, they broke but it looked sloppy and ragged. After that I tried whistle mix. It worked fine as far as the breaks but still had a lot of light output.

 

The final method is a 75% whistle and 25% BP mix. The charcoal takes the light out and the whistle makes them pop nicely. These are not loud when they break and I get three to four segments from each comet.

 

These particular comets are1" round by 1.5" long, have a1/2" X 1/2" deep round hole with a 7/64" (almost 1/8") X 1/4" pin for the fast paper fuse to fit snugly in. The break is then measured out at 1 gram, added into the hole and a chipboard disk is pressed in over the break. the whole comet is then pressed into a 1-1/2" long cap plug as shown.

 

Now, I am not showing you these so that all the tree huggers can take pot shots at me, this is just a quick and dirty way to dial in your crossettes burn and break. I then paste them in after I get them to do what I want them to do.

[Algenco]

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr47/Algenco/cartoons/soapbox.gif

[dagabu]

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/rr47/Algenco/cartoons/soapbox.gif

 

Nice...