Orientation rope on cylinder shells?

[JFeve81]

Just wondering if you can put orientation ropes on cylinder shells, if anyone has done it, and how one might attach said rope.

 

I've been thinking about adding one. Not really to help orient the shell but to attach a couple rising effect (small salutes) onto a shell.

 

The only way I could think to attach it would be around the spolette.

 

EDIT: (To clarify) I was thinking I could attach it to the area around the spolette. Not actually to the spolette itself.

Edited April 14, 2013 by JFeve81

[pyrojig]

Im sure you can treat it the same as a round shell .You should be able to thread a loop through the spiking string when making the shell, then attach the drag rope to that. The effects can be then tied on and each effect crossmatched and lowered into the firing tube carefully.

So what size shell is getting the rising dragons tail? ( and how big are your intended salutes going to be? )

[burningRNX]

I should attach it somewhere off center near the side, not around the spolette, there is no real need for it to be dead center when its just for rising effects.

 

 

 

[pyrojig]

Most cylinder shells are oriented upside down in the firing tube compared to ball shells. The loop can be attached to the opposite end of the shell which would now be aiming at the bottom of the tube( spolette aiming up). Your effects can be lowered in first and the shell on top of them, or you can do it the other way, attaching to the top of the shell. There is no real right or wrong way to do these( as long as the effects stay attached to the shell upon lift and accent. )

[Mumbles]

With larger shells, it's common to have a lowering rope. Anything bigger than 4" gets one for me. There isn't any reason you couldn't add effects to that I suppose. I normally add 2 or 3 pieces of twine crossed at the bottom of the shell, bring them up to the top and tie everything into a knot. I then twist everything up and tie another knot in the end. This tends to keep the strings together and from getting tangled. Some people will add some pasted paper or tape over the string to ensure it stays in place, but I normally don't bother. If you add a pasted lift skirt instead of the more well described dry wraps, it's a moot point anyway. After the twine is tied off I add the lift and leader and finish the shell up as normal.

 

I will tell you right now that doing it my way, while easy, will probably lead to issues with the string burning and breaking from the lift. If I were going to do this, I'd add the lowering string to the spiked shell directly before I pasted it in. This is sort of annoying to me because the lowering rope always seems to get in my way, but is probably necessary.