2 inch changing gerb/fountain

[fredhappy]

I love fountains/gerbs. The bigger the better..

 

I am fortunate to have a pyro friend with excellent lathe skills. He made some 2"and 3"fountain tooling for me. This weekend we decided to try out the 2"tooling. Unfortunately the rammers on the 3"tooling were too long and needed to be shortened a bit.

 

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

 

For every effect 2 increments were pressed, with the exception of the crackling finale, that was only one increment.

 

first: coarse steel. Very pretty, looked like magma. I loved this effect.

 

second: coarse aluminium. This did not work and slagged the nozzle a bit.

 

third: 4/5 mm silver streamer stars with ecka aluminium. The stars blew the slag from the nozzle..very nice effect.

 

fourth: 6 mm yellow stars .Much to our surprise the stars were being spat out like a machinegun. Next time larger stars.

 

fifht: my friend brought some lead based round crackling stars with a daendelion compo, this gave a great finale..

Edited October 22, 2012 by fredhappy

[DanielC]

Hey Fred, That looked great. I would like to get more info on the deggs used in your finale. I make a lot for star cores, but never used them for much else. Were they small bits in matrix stars or or just prime coated? I've tried primed deggs in mines, but never had that cool dragon flower effect.

Thanks...D

[californiapyro]

that was awesome! What was your base fuel? Also, it looked like there was no convergence on the spindle, did that affect how easy it was to make? I'm assuming it was pressed, right? although the tube is quite thin

[ExplosiveCoek]

The spindle has a 1% taper if I'm correct, it's quite hard to see in the pict.z

 

The DE are primed with a special comp to retain the Ti, after which they are primed with meal. No matrix stars of course, how would that be even possible in a fountain with such a small nozzle .. These are just regular DE with Ti. Nothing fancy.

[fredhappy]

#daniel C. The dragon eggs were lead based and prime coated, just as explosivecoek says in his comment. My experience with crackling is that the eggs always ignite in both matrix stars and fountains. Be it primed or unprimed. Actually making a working mine is a bit harder, and relies more on effective priming. I make my eggs with bismuth trioxide, and they perform the same in both fountains and matrix comets.

 

#california pyro: I always try to test out as much as possible when I make something. The first 2 effects were 6 3 1, then degn#11 ( 6 1 1 ) then 5 1 1 . All fuels worked ok. I am looking for a relatively smoke free basemix, because smoke tends to distract a bit from the effect. The amount of smoke was very acceptable with both 6 1 1 and 5 1 1 . I liked degn#11 6 1 1 , and will use that fuel next time.

 

In regard to the spindle, there was a very small convergence I think. The tube may look thin, but is very tough, there were no issues with that, other then pressing gently and closely watching both tube and manometer.

Edited October 22, 2012 by fredhappy

[Mortartube]

I really like the fast ejection of the yellow stars. Keep it like that and do a whole gerb like it/ It's excellent!