Wanted; some figures for 8, 10 and 12" ball shells

[Seymour]

I havent a huge deal of experience with large shells, but I've made half a dozen eights, two tens and eight twelves, which have plenty of room to improve but they were alright. Overall though I was happy with the timing, and on some of the twelves had a fair bit of rising effects.

 

http://www.amateurpyro.com/forums/gallery/image/1069-12-shells-with-kyoku-do-and-cows-grazing/

 

Ignoring rising effects, I used timing half a second shorter than what is on the table Dag posted.

 

As has been discussed, you don't neccisarily want the rising effects to get in the way of the shell burst, and this can mean limiting what you put on top of your shell in terms of timing.

 

I think when planing this it is useful to remembe that as the shell approaches apogee, stops, and starts to drift down, you have three seconds where it will burst at around about the right height (and you can compensate with lift of course). For some of the 12" shells with Kyoku do in my gallery, I used nine second timefuse on the shell so as to buy myself time for more rising effects without having to worry about them getting messy with the shell.

 

Marks, Freaky, both very nice shells!

[fredhappy]

In regard to timings on 8"shells I have experience with a couple of 8"s.o.s.

 

I've noticed that these type of shells need short timings on the mothershell, since the insert size is only about 2.5"inch ( i've found this insert caliber to be optimal for 8").

 

8" s.o.s are timed on 2.5 seconds by me. Giving these type of shells longer timings, results in the effect going of way too high.

 

http://youtu.be/TuHSeqYhahI?hd=1

 

This was an 8"s.o.s from me with 14x2.5"inserts.

[Algenco]

everyone has their own idea of how high they want a shell too break, ask 10 shell builders what is the perfect timing for a shell and I dare say no more than 3 will agree

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

As has been discussed, you don't neccisarily want the rising effects to get in the way of the shell burst, and this can mean limiting what you put on top of your shell in terms of timing.

Well yes and no, it has a limit, but you can do the effects short after each other, so timing between the rising effects will be shorter, but it is even nicer than too much time between them.

 

And it's important that each rising effect goes higher than the one before. Using too much timefuse in the shell and bad timing on the rising effects will result in rising effects going of at the same hight as the shell does.

 

Seymour, do you have vids of the shells? I'm eager to see them.

[Arthur]

Thanks for the details. It's silly to start from nothing when there are figures available, but I also agree that no two makers will have the same ideas of perfection.

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

My timings are:

 

4" 2.5-3 sec

5" 3sec

6" 3.5sec

8" 4sec

10" 4.5-5sec

12" 5-6sec

[AirCowPeacock]

Are we working on blocking this kids IP yet?

[marks265]

Are we working on blocking this kids IP yet?

 

I will see Mumbles shortly and of course I will spread the word

[Seymour]

Freaky, while I am coming up with some exeptions to some of your points, I think that your advice is very good and relevant to a large majority of effects and this expertese certainly shows in your fireworks.

 

Well yes and no, it has a limit, but you can do the effects short after each other, so timing between the rising effects will be shorter, but it is even nicer than too much time between them.

 

 

A notable part I think is "yes and no'... because it really depends on the exact specifics, which can of course get so varied. I did try to be rather non commited with my statements about asthetic design ( 'Don't neccisarily', 'this can'), because I was, in short and without repeating what has already been said trying reinforce the variety of exceptions to sound generalisations that occurs in diverse areas of creativity such as this.

 

The example in my mind that I probably should have put in my original post is of rising small flowers displaying either pattern shells of some sort, or a long sequence of colours that you want to keep from overlapping too much, and there is desire to complete the pattern you are copying in full. I know this is a bit of an obscure point, and even more obscure example, but say there was a festival of ten butterflies and three flowers, you might want to get all ten butterflies popping distinctly on the way up, and then have the three petal shell burst. This might be a time you could consider lengthening the main timefuse and adding extra lift and/or taking the loss of beauty of the main shell in order to accomidate other things.

 

My dificulty in coming up with exceptions is, I think, a rather good verification of your points

 

And it's important that each rising effect goes higher than the one before. Using too much timefuse in the shell and bad timing on the rising effects will result in rising effects going of at the same hight as the shell does.

 

In two of my 12" shells, the ones with the ascending splitting comets, I burst them at about the same height as the top of the rising effects, and since the burst was a palm of other 1.5" comets initially, it was in some ways a continuation of the effect, and I think that was acceptable. However the delay on the main petal was probably a bit too long, and the burst was far too weak. All the beauty and tension of a surprise petal is lost if it does not appear still with good velocity and roundness, and judging by the limp spread of the palm core, they never had good velocity to start with.

 

However, even though I think I got away with it in that case, I do think my twelves could all have done with a second less delay. They were certainly on the way down, though had they been more assertively burst, I don't think it would have mattered so much. Also, as I mentioned in my first post I believe extra lift would help. Due to some worry about how the barges were going to take the recoil as it was, I did not put this in to action.

 

 

 

Seymour, do you have vids of the shells? I'm eager to see them

 

I have no videos of them personally, but I have spent a little while trawling though youtube finding other peoples videos. Considering the effort I put in to them, and the fact that these four shells were my first 12" shells, I should really contact the account owners and get myself a copy.

 

 

At 10.47 I believe one of my shell of shells with ascending horsetails with salutes is launched.

 

 

You get a moment of my ascending branching comets with the Delayed Orange and Brocade with Palm core burst of the 12" on the left at 10.50, with one of my 10" Kamuro with Purple inner petal popping on the right. Considering the two tens were my first serious attempts at Double Petals I ran out of burst three quarters through loading them, and in shamefully lazy ghetto style blended burst and rice to bulk it up and fill the rest of the shell, I am happy that It came out without any really serious defects. The other 10" is in storage. At 11.03 there is a brief (Helicopter filmed ) shot of my floral SOS burst.

 

 

Above, at 10.30, is a better video of my other ascending branching comets with the Delayed Orange and Brocade with Palm core 12" (or maybe the same one?).

 

 

My other 12" SOS was thrown up on friday, launching at 4.17.

 

The timing for the rising efects for the ascending was achieved by giving the 5" ascending horsetails one, two, three and four centimeter timefuses, each containing one 10mm and one 12mm timefused salute (hundred grams or so...), with a pair on top of the shell unattached with some stars for a matching mine on the second one. It seemed to me that by putting timed salutes in poka type ascending small floewers you could easily get around the difficulty of stringing many salutes along a cord and spacing them the way Shimizu describes, as well as using a lot less timefuse.

 

It sort of depends on what I'm doing. For rising flowers I'd probably leave more time between the final rising effect and the main break of the shell. If they're rising salutes, then it probably doesn't matter. For the rising split comets you can probably get them a little closer to the main break as well. On a personal level, I feel like you should allow time for all of the rising effects to develop before the main break. It just happens that rising flowers take a little longer to fully develop.

 

You summed up a lot of what I think here, and it has been hard to come up with examples and points sometimes without repeating you. I agree that generally splitting comets can go off a bit closer to the main burst than some other effects, though I think here the main shells effect determines things a lot, and (as with all other rising effects too) they may compliment or detract from the shell if they don't have that pause. Generally, the more complex the shell the more I would desire it to have a moment alone.

 

One other cool effect I've seen in videos is a progressive timing. Where the rising effects increase in frequency until the shell breaks.

 

I really like this idea, and when I finally get around to building some more big balls I think I should give this a try. The opposite effect also appeals to me, where the pace of the effects slows with the shell, hopefully giving a roughly even spread across the distance the shell rises, and I am always keen for a wee bit of a false anticlimax to get some tension in the air before something big.

 

 

I honestly can't remember the timing I used on the one split comet shell I made.

 

Yeah, me too.

 

The more shots - the more awesome!

 

Mark, Yup

[burningRNX]

Thanks for those vids Seymour, they were amazing pieces of work.

I like the way your putting salute's in your horsetails, I've tryed to circumvent the problem of a long rope by putting salute's in splitcomets.

 

@ Freaky D:

Those timings, were these with 1/14 lift?

Edited October 28, 2012 by burningRNX

[FREAKYDUTCHMEN]

You mean the amount of lift under this shell? Yes I always take 1/14th or 1/15th. This one was 10kgs and had 650 grams of 2FA liftpowder. But personally I don't like to put 2FA under a 12", I'd rather use 6-12 mesh BP (±3mm). Then I can go with something like 500grams, maybe even less.

 

Nice shells seymour, the rising effects were close to perfect, just at the end they showed up a little bad. There are many ways to do it of course..