What igniters do you use most?

[dbooksta]

Just curious what "amateurs" tend to use most: Fuse or electric match? And commercial or homemade?

[nater]

Commercial visco for rockets and ground devices and commercial QM for shells. I use commercial e-match a fair amount too, but in conjunction with another type of fuse. I never build e-match directly into a device. I like to use e-match any time I want to be further away to get good video or when dark sky is at a premium and we're trying to have everything on the line prepared and loaded during the day and not waste the time to reload and handlight.

[Oinikis]

i have found a way to make visco type fuse, in big quantities (like rolls of several meters of fuse), easily, and without any machines, like visco machine. basicly from household stuff and BP. and it is very,very reliable like real visco, it just never fails me. so, why not? expecialy when i have no acces to pyro shops.

[schroedinger]

Qinikis mind to share you method? Sounds really interesting

[Asedefecio]

Where I live probably there aren't commercial fuses, so homemade they are.

[jaysgoh]

From beginning I had make everything, non of them buy.. Mind share your visco making method

[Dean411]

I use commercial e match and quickmatch for the most part, however visco still has many uses I choose to employ it for.

[jessoman]

Yeh, Oinikis I wish you would share that method (no intention to de-rail thread)

 

I use christmas tree bulbs, got a pretty efficient method and can make up a fair few in a short time.

[dbooksta]

I use christmas tree bulbs, got a pretty efficient method and can make up a fair few in a short time.

 

Ah ha -- christmas tree bulbs for electric matches, that's clever. Do you just crush the glass tips to expose the filament?

[schroedinger]

yes on those igniters, you crush the tip, fill them with bp. The big problem is that you can easily destroy the tiny wire

[dbooksta]

I can't find the last recipe I used for homemade e-matches, but it was a slurry that dried onto the bridge wire. The pain was constructing the bridge wire. With xmas bulbs the glass keeps the conductors aligned and very close. If we added enough powdered Al to the slurry I wonder if it would conduct and provide enough impedance to reliably ignite. When I use e-matches I want them to be more reliable than fuse, and as you point out depending on the integrity of xmas bulb filament is not a good bet.

[schroedinger]

Well aluminium doesn't sound like a really god idea. Aluminium is very god conductor with a loss resisstant. Better use graphite

[FBpyro]

Firewire initiators! this year though I didn't order them in time so I will make my own using duplex wire and steel wool dipped in NC+BP mix.

[Pyrodood]

I use the 'strip and dip' pyrogen comp described on Passfire, much faster than using a bridgewire and very reliable.

I use guncotton dissolved in acetone to make my NC lacquer, diluted to around 2 1/2%.

Main drawback is requiring conductive lampblack, hard to find. Firefox sells something called 'carbo spheres' that works very well.

Also it requires chlorates, which is the only place I use them.

[bpman]

I use homemade match for almost everything. Piped for leaders, bare for rockets etc. Simple to make, reliable, inexpensive and I like being self reliant.

[starxplor]

Firewire and clip-on's depending on how much time I want to spend prep'iing cakes and how much timing precision I need.