vh718 Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 this is a real interesting video, but what really caught my attention was 3:40-4:20. He places a pile of dragon eggs on a piece of paper and they explode unconfined. ive heard of BP being coated on stars and using that instead of burst in a shell, but my guess is the ones in the video were coated in a slow flash or regular flash because of the way they reacted.
FREAKYDUTCHMEN Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) Those stars came out of a rocket header probably. In commercial rockets stars and burst are always dumped in together, then the stars will be dusted and look silver/grey. If stars would really be coated with flash powder, they would only be jetting (if they would lit). Edited April 15, 2012 by FREAKYDUTCHMEN
dagabu Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Those stars came out of a rocket header probably. In commercial rockets stars and burst are always dumped in together, then the stars will be dusted and look silver/grey. If stars would really be coated with flash powder, they would only be jetting (if they would lit). Sorry but the statement about flash not being used is not a true statement at all. Small Chinese shells are flash broken all the time, it is the only way that they can get a big break from such a small shell with such a lousy container. At least three years ago, we had the same discussion here and after WSM pointed us to the right test for Perchlorates, it was tested and found that most small shells did in fact have flash to some extent (from 100% of the break to just a dusting over BP coated rice hulls) in them to facilitate the break. I purchased a bottle of methylene blue and performed tests on stick rockets (Wild Geese, Texas, Big Burst) break charge and cakes (Blonde Joke, Big Top) and reloadables (Excalibur, Rubicon) and all of the shells had Perchlorates and Aluminum, i.e. Flash. -dag
Potassiumchlorate Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 I recently bought and fired a 30 shot commercial cake with 30mm shells. Those bangs were tremendous. It simply can't be anything but flash in them.
FREAKYDUTCHMEN Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Sorry but the statement about flash not being used is not a true statement at all. -dagWho said that?
warthog Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) Last year I cut open a lot of old festival balls (1.75") that had lost most of their lift charges in storage. ALL of those had stars covered in flash and flash charges for breaks, there wasn't a rice hull to be found in any of them, everything was coated in a fine, silvery flash powder coating. I used the stars n bombettes in a reloadable cake I made, the bombettes were also flash broken. I can't call this a conclusive testing of all Chinese Festival Balls but I can say that each and every one of those I stripped for stars was indeed flash broken. Edited April 15, 2012 by warthog
Chuleo Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Don't believe everything shown in this lousy German show is real. If you undestand what they say you know what I mean
Potassiumchlorate Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Don't believe everything shown in this lousy German show is real. If you undestand what they say you know what I mean Do they really pronounce it Pyrotechniker with stress on the first syllable? Already there it seems weird.
dagabu Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 (edited) Who said that? Hmmmm, did I misread what you meant? Did you mean rolled coating like in a star roller or wet coated? It sure looked like there was a lot of loose flash in the file pile to me. -dag Edited April 15, 2012 by dagabu
Mumbles Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Dag, what Freakydutchman likely meant is that the stars came out of an already completed device. In typical manufacture the stars, flash powder, and any additional burst compositions are mixed together freely with no separation of components to give kind of a "splash" break as opposed to a defined flower. When doing this the stars will be coated with the flash powder and appear silver. This same effect can be seen if you've ever seen some of Ned Gorski's break powder where he takes BP coated hulls, and "dusts" them with slow flash. They take on a noticeably silver color as the flash powder sticks. The same will be true of the flash in the break. If you disassembled a rocket, the stars would probably look silver due to the coating of flash on the surface. The silver color and stuck flash is however not the primary bursting powder, and not due to a layer of flash being deliberately rolled onto the stars. I got the impression Freakydutchman wasn't disputing the use of flash powder in the break, but rather that it was deliberately rolled as a layer on the star. The color is just due to a light surface coating. I couldn't get a good enough look at what they dumped out to tell if there was considerable powder or burst in there, but I'd suspect there was by the way they exploded.
dagabu Posted April 15, 2012 Posted April 15, 2012 Dag, what Freakydutchman likely meant is that the stars came out of an already completed device. In typical manufacture the stars, flash powder, and any additional burst compositions are mixed together freely with no separation of components to give kind of a "splash" break as opposed to a defined flower. When doing this the stars will be coated with the flash powder and appear silver. Gotcha! My apologies. -dag
pyrojig Posted April 16, 2012 Posted April 16, 2012 (edited) It seems that they use kp and flash burst charges due to the relatively cheap raw materials they have in abundance( China). I was surprised to find that perch and kno3 where about the same cost over there. Over here it is much diff. There is more of a supply and demand that sets the price. Plus they deal with such massive amounts of raw bulk chems . Many bombettes I have inspected where flash broke with slow flash as well. It seems to be a very common burst charge over there. Edited April 16, 2012 by pyrojig
FREAKYDUTCHMEN Posted April 16, 2012 Posted April 16, 2012 Dag, what Freakydutchman likely meant is that the stars came out of an already completed device. In typical manufacture the stars, flash powder, and any additional burst compositions are mixed together freely with no separation of components to give kind of a "splash" break as opposed to a defined flower. When doing this the stars will be coated with the flash powder and appear silver. This same effect can be seen if you've ever seen some of Ned Gorski's break powder where he takes BP coated hulls, and "dusts" them with slow flash. They take on a noticeably silver color as the flash powder sticks. The same will be true of the flash in the break. If you disassembled a rocket, the stars would probably look silver due to the coating of flash on the surface. The silver color and stuck flash is however not the primary bursting powder, and not due to a layer of flash being deliberately rolled onto the stars. I got the impression Freakydutchman wasn't disputing the use of flash powder in the break, but rather that it was deliberately rolled as a layer on the star. The color is just due to a light surface coating. I couldn't get a good enough look at what they dumped out to tell if there was considerable powder or burst in there, but I'd suspect there was by the way they exploded. Thanks for clarifying my post Mumbles, I meant that indeed.Small shells and IMO bigger shells as well can't do without flash.
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