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willow diadem stars


bigbuck

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i am getting ready to roll willow diadem stars, do the roll quite easily or should they be pumped? also the formula I got does not give a suitable prime since they have a high percentage of charcoal will a simple bp prime do the trick? I have read many different opinions on bp for prime, does it need to contain a binder? I am assuming so to make it stick, I have ball milled both with and without dextrin, going to use 75/25 water/alc for solvent the formula is from bill Richardson

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I'd be happy to help but could you please post the formula so we know what we're dealing with?

 

Chances are they will roll fine. BP should work for prime, you could also add a small amount of aluminum or silicon or something to heat it up then a dusting of BP over top. Yes, the prime needs a binder.

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airfloat 39.1

potassium nitrate 31.2

sulfur 10.7

dextrin or sgrs 7

ferro ti med mesh 4.5

ferro ti fine mesh 4.5

titanium sponge medium mesh 3

 

sorry for all the questions but i think a dumb one is one i diddent ask and BTW thank you for the help azo

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No problem, happy to help when I can.

 

Straight BP is probably fine for that. I would still use a hotter prime if I could though since it's 12% metal, won't hurt it anyways. You can always try rolling up a handful with straight BP prime to test it.

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Sure! Fencepost, pinball, monocapa, etc. any of those would work. They are hot enough to work for perchlorate colors so they should work for the diadem.

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The Pyrotechnic Compositions database section is for tried and tested formulas. It's being moved because of that.

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Yes, I ball-milled the comp without the metals. I used red oak charcoal. I was looking to produce fire that was like rain. 9 of these shells at once worked pretty well to do it.

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Dave, did those burn to the ground? Hard to tell in the dark.

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OldMarine, those ones did- just. But we did the rocket over a cliff on Lake Erie. That was my first successful batch after many stinkers it took to get it figured out. When I did my flight of them, I used a longer spindle for the rockets, and they burned out just above the ground. Here's the flight of them up close and personal. It was quite a thing to be under them :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHOLPDTjliM

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Dave, would these be suited more to a long spindle BP rocket to get them on up there? I can get around 500ft from a nozzleless 3# rocket easily with a 4" heading

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i tried rolling willow diadem tonight and it seems with sgrs they take a bit more solvent to dampen them but only about 60% of my cores picked up comp, i am using 40-80 mesh titanium sponge and the stars do not seem to be picking up the coarser material, is this normal when star cores are small? or maybe I am doing something wrong????????, going to let small stars dry overnight and put second layer on tomorrow after work and see if as they get larger they will pick up coarser material, any suggestions?

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Big buck I've had this same issue with the 40-80 mesh ti on other comps. I believe the comp I was rolling was milled too fine and would completely cover any wetness on the stars before the ti could stick. I was going to use coarser comp so this doesn't happen again but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Ive also had the idea to granulate my comp so it would have the same size as the ti. I'd also like to know if anyone else has ideas on this? Edited by NeighborJ
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