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RWB Visco Dangerous


OldMarine

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I was reviewing video my brother took of last night's rockets and noticed 2 that left the rack as soon as the punk touched the fuse. Looking at stills it can be plainly seen that the NC coating burned almost instantly outracing the powder core by at least eight seconds. I had the fuse cut to 10 second burn lengths. I think I'll go back to the cheap chinese stuff.

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Sometimes the fuse get worked to much and loosen some powder and creates a little faster burn than normal or the core of the fuse is not packed tight enough. Now that is of course my IMO, but if you remember a lot of manufacture fireworks say to place firework on the ground before lighting, I assume it is so if it pre-ignites minimal harm is caused, again IMHO. If I recall M-80 were known to do that once in awhile. It is possible that any visco fuse you use could do that. That is, if that is the type of fuse you are talking about otherwise I'm just full of it :P ...................Pat

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This is the heavy Red/White and Blue American visco. It's the lacquer coating that is burning at about 6 seconds per foot versus the 25 second per foot of the powder core. I just tossed the remainder of that roll into the burn barrel.

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I've used the RWB American visco almost exclusively (used it on ~100 shells) and never had an issue with it, if anything it burns too slow. Maybe you got a bad batch or maybe I've gotten lucky.

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I buy American Products every time I get the chance but the red white and blue or red lacquered visco are absolute garbage in my opinion.

 

The green Chinese visco that is imported from Kingshine, I believe, burns at an extremely consistent rate year after year, batch after batch with no exception.

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I had a 60'roll of the rwb that was bad. I don't remember where I bought it but the entire roll burned like that. I have some I just received from Cannonfuse that seems to be fine. I cut several pieces from different sections of the roll to be sure. This fuse feels a little smaller in diameter and more flexible than the other. I like it for the slow burn rate when hand lighting so the other batch caught me off guard and too danged close when the rocket launched.
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OldMarine is right. I've had the NC lacquer on American visco (from cannonfuse.com) burn off. It burns pretty quickly and smokelessly, and sometimes singes the string wrapping on the fuse. The NC only seems to burn off when it's heated for several seconds without the powder core lighting.

If you have the fuse go through a nozzle that's barely larger than it (the nozzles on my rockets are 3.175mm or 1/8", about the same as the visco) then you should be fine, as the NC doesn't burn well without air. Wrapping some tape tightly around the fuse should help to prevent this. Another option for lighting some types of fireworks is using a short section of American visco taped to some fast fuse. The visco makes it so your hand doesn't get sprayed too much with sparks.

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Depends on the kind of NC they use... rifle powders seem to have no trouble burning inside the sealed enclosure of a chamber...

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Depends on the kind of NC they use... rifle powders seem to have no trouble burning inside the sealed enclosure of a chamber...

This is very, very true. Not all NC is the same (ex. different nitration levels) and not all construction methods are the same (ex. different coating thicknesses or different solvents); I would be willing to bet that as long as we are all talking about the same visco from the same manufacturer (I also got mine from Cannonfuse) that the rolls would be fairly consistent. Again, I haven't had any issues with mine (besides being borderline too slow) so it's interesting to hear that others have.

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Depends on the kind of NC they use... rifle powders seem to have no trouble burning inside the sealed enclosure of a chamber...

No trouble burning inside the chamber, and outside of it, it burns a lot less violently. The pressure buildup, and containment of the energy makes it accelerate through the NC at an amazing rate. A lot of it is down to the additives used.

B!

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