MWJ Posted February 25, 2014 Posted February 25, 2014 I'm making some charcoal star comp. (C -8, TT, TW, C-6 and some W). I know stars need to burn slow and I'm not sure if I should ball mill it after screening or not. Ball milling my bp made it a lot faster. So any input will be very helpful. Thanks people,Mike
Shadowcat1969 Posted February 25, 2014 Posted February 25, 2014 I haven't made TT, but the others that I have done I have never ball milled, just make sure they are really well integrated with screen mixing. Ball milling will reduce particle sizes of somethings that you WANT to remain coarse in some of those, like, for instance an 80 mesh charcoal that you add for longer/larger orange sparks.
nater Posted February 25, 2014 Posted February 25, 2014 Ball milling streamers makes a different effect than screen mixing, ball milling tends to give short, bushier tails. I screen mix my star comps,but I recommend making batch each way and see which you prefer.
pyrokid Posted February 25, 2014 Posted February 25, 2014 Nater is right on here. In my experience with charcoal comps, the unmilled variety have longer tails that are also coarser, on account of the larger particle size. It's been since summer, but I feel like my unmilled stars burned slightly more vigorously than the milled ones. I do have trouble maintaining consistent solvent content when making charcoal stars, so that could be a factor as well.
Mumbles Posted February 25, 2014 Posted February 25, 2014 I always milled my streamers, but only for 20-30 min or so. That had more to do with having prilled KNO3 than any sort of performance factor though.
MWJ Posted February 26, 2014 Author Posted February 26, 2014 Thanks, What about granulating it? I just made 4 batches of comp. So before I pump my stars I want to get the most out of them. Heres a video of my C-8 charcoal stars. Fireworks Movie DVD.wmv
psyco_1322 Posted February 26, 2014 Posted February 26, 2014 As long as your chemicals are all finely powdered, I don't see much reason to ball mill charcoal comps. It kind of takes away from the reason you are making them to start with, for long hanging, long tailed stars. You could find more of a difference in the charcoal you use. I just screen mix the comps a good 3-4 times and then use it as is.
nater Posted February 26, 2014 Posted February 26, 2014 I pump most of my stars. I screen mix it 3 or 4 times, dampen, fill the plates, press, dry and prime. After dampening, I screen once or twice to get the moisture distributed evenly, but I am not really granulating the comp.
MWJ Posted February 26, 2014 Author Posted February 26, 2014 Great! Thanks that's what I did with those last stars I made.
marks265 Posted March 1, 2014 Posted March 1, 2014 Also, if you do mill your composition and want to get a longer tail back to your star just add more charcoal to the composition. This will give you a denser and fuller tail along with restoring some of the length. Using different charcoals and maybe even batches of charcoals will give slightly different results. When it comes to these types of stars it is really up to the builder for what they would like to end up with. "I'm not sure if I should ball mill it after screening or not." If you're going to ball mill the composition I would skip the screening. At least after screening the grinding media out of the composition.
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