Need tips for flash powder ground salute (bomb?)

[DoodieSmoothie]

Hi!

 

I'm wondering if the people that have experience in salutes and shells can give me some tips to make my 100g flash powder salute go off as perfect as possible.

I've done a lot of MG/KNO3 salutes lately, but never over 10g. It's a hit or miss every time. Either they have a good or very good report, or they fail to explode (endplugs flies out only)

 

Now on new years eve i made a special bomb. It was 100g and the shell was almost exactly same dimension ratio as the 10g salutes, maybe a bit shorter and that might have been the cause of the failure, but i want to ask some questions about salutes to understand them better. I'm also going to show you pictures of the 10g and 100g salute i made so you can see for your self and tell if i did anything wrong.

 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1gKJeXWnakvzsepSeBC8CcET5QK9wpjeh?usp=sharing

Click link for videos

 

 

I do make my own shells too with strong craft paper and a bit of white/wood glue, and this shell was very soft compared to the other ones i made. It's so sad it didn't go off as it should have, as the 3 and 10g salutes were pretty powerful so i was very excited to test the 100g one

 

So what are your thoughts on it?

- The shell wasn't too thick for the amount of flash powder used.

- The shell was filled 3/4 with flash powder, so the fuse did not ignite from the center.

- KNO3 was finely powdered to meal consistence, and the mesh size of magnesium was 350-400

- End plugs was just thin cardboard glued on to, but as i've been told, the end plugs are usually used to contain the flash powder, not to withstand the pressure to cause the explosion

 

Does the thickness of the shell have anything to say with how loud the report is, or can you still achieve same report with thin shell?

 

I really want to build it again but this time fill the whole shell, and then put a rock or something heavy on top so the pressure doesn't go out the ends but that would be irresponsible as it can fly off anywhere.