My 4th of July show

[californiapyro]

Hey all! Here's what I made for 4th of July:

 

 

Hope you like. Comments, questions, critiques welcome.

 

-Hunter

[JFeve81]

The shells looked pretty good. Comets where nice. What glitter comp were you using?

[californiapyro]

Buttered popcorn glitter was the comp

[pyroman2498]

Those were really nice cali, I'm gonna have to give that buttered popcorn glitter a try cause it was super pretty.

Keep up the good work

 

Stay Safe

 

~Steven

[LTUPyro]

Very nice shells and comets! What red comp you used at 1:35? Edited July 6, 2013 by LTUPyro

[Seymour]

That last shell was stunning, I think the strobe and colour complimented fantastically (formulas?). I think overall your shells were very nice, but I think there are limits that you cannot get past when using cut stars in spherical shells. Even with a great burst and pasting they can drift out of shape a little. Not enough to ruin them, but there is room for improvement. I've found that I have to roll them to get them perfectly formed in the sky (or close to).

[Bobosan]

yeah, liked the comets but lift seemed light. Shells were great.

[californiapyro]

@pyroman thanks a lot! Hope you had a great 4th

 

@LTU it's buell red, comp as follows:

 

Potassium Perchlorate 35%

Strontium Carbonate 25%

Magnalium (100 mesh) 14%

Parlon 13%

Red Gum 7%

Dextrin 6%

 

that was the red used in all of my shells for this vid.

 

@seymour I agree completely. I had to do all the building for these from scratch in less than a week, so rolling all of my stars was out of the question. As such, I had about a 50/50 mix of rolled and pumped. In the future I will aim for using only round stars in shells such as these, for the reasons you mentioned.

 

The red comp was buell, same as above, and the strobe was Bleser #26, as follows:

 

Barium Nitrate…….51

Potassium Nitrate…7

Magnalium(100-200mesh)….18

Sulphur……..19

Dextrin…..5

 

@bobosan the lift was fine, what you didn't see was I blew the mortar on every comet except 2 (ha!) I was using the only tubes at my disposal, cheap spiral-wound ones, and I guess they didn't hold up. Whoops!

 

Thanks for the comments everyone!

[Seymour]

@bobosan the lift was fine, what you didn't see was I blew the mortar on every comet except 2 (ha!) I was using the only tubes at my disposal, cheap spiral-wound ones, and I guess they didn't hold up. Whoops!

 

I've had this problem too, and think a lot of it is the soft paper and ridged inside persuades the comet to get jammed at an angle. A hell of a lot of Chinese comet effects in cakes and candles either use big ball stars or comets pressed a good deal smaller than required and rolled in prime so they are sort of big enough, but no way can they possibly jam, however sneakily they tumble out the tube.

 

Also selling 2" candles with 1" comets has profit margin advantages.

 

What size comets did you use? how tight fit?

[californiapyro]

mm, that seems a likely explanation. I was using 1-3/4" comets in 2" tubes, so plenty of room to get jammed.

 

The easy solution I see to this is to use proper mortars from now on. That's interesting though, I can see how the chinese would run into this problem since they have to use paper.

 

And here I thought it was my fault... all my pyro friends were saying "leave it to Hunter to flowerpot a comet"

[dynomike1]

I've had this problem too, and think a lot of it is the soft paper and ridged inside persuades the comet to get jammed at an angle.

 

 

 

I had that problem with some 3". Some of them didnt get up but about 15-20' I was also surprised to not see any Crossittes.

Edited July 6, 2013 by dynomike1

[californiapyro]

I was pressed for time otherwise there wouldve been more crossettes. The last comet in the vid was one, with just way too short delay

[dynomike1]

I had three 3" left over so i shot yesterday evening or dusk dark. I don't know how my time fuse got messed up, but some of my 3" went up and came about 1/2 way down before they broke. I am thinking that my black match caused this and it burnt out to the end of the time fuse before it broke. i did some extensive testing today and 1oz. of bp that i made, don't ask what size, in a 3" had a 11.5 sec. time to apex. Must have been the Potassium nitrate. I too was pressed for time. Edited July 7, 2013 by dynomike1

[fredhappy]

#californiapyro: well done, it looks like you put in a lot of work. Making all this stuff is so darn labour intensive,I can see you have been busy.

 

I second the buttered popcorn glitter, that is a very nice glitter indeed. I am sure it is even more pretty in person. Too bad antimony trisulphide is on my shit list...that stuff does do wonders for glitter comps. I see you use buel red too, it is one of my favourite carbonate reds, it is a very good formulae..

 

So yeah...try to wean yourself off of the pumped stars, and start rolling. It is difficult in the beginning, but in the end rolling has many advantages. You are able to make a large substantial uniform batch, and the symetry of your shells will improve drastically.

 

I envy you guys with all that lovely space you've got there...man.. ..

 

All in all, thanks for sharing your show.

 

keep up the good work.

 

best

 

fred

[californiapyro]

Fred,

I do love that glitter. The large comets were super pretty with it, too. It's a shame most of the mortars shattered, causing the fragmenting you see on video. The buell comp is one of my faves, next to indy red. I picked up 50 LB of strontium carbonate a while back, so I'm trying to use it up, besides.

 

I like rolled stars best. There's nothing prettier than perfectly spherical, uniform stars. Sadly a few of the batches I rolled over the past week were rushed and had problems with uniformity. In the future I'll be spending more time ensuring tight color changes and uniform size. Pumped stars are awful convenient with the tools I have, but I understand how they can be detrimental to round breaks.

 

Thanks a lot for your feedback, Fred!

 

-Hunter

Edited July 7, 2013 by californiapyro

[dynomike1]

I had three 3" left over so i shot yesterday evening or dusk dark. I don't know how my time fuse got messed up, but some of my 3" went up and came about 1/2 way down before they broke. I am thinking that my black match caused this and it burnt out to the end of the time fuse before it broke. i did some extensive testing today and 1oz. of bp that i made, don't ask what size, in a 3" had a 11.5 sec. time to apex. Must have been the Potassium nitrate. I too was pressed for time.

Let me correct that. My stupid wife started timing when i lit it. The actual time to apex was 4sec. for a 3" shell with 1oz. of powder.

[Dean411]

nice job Cali