cplmac Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Well I took all of my leftover stars and made a 5" bag mine today. About a pound or so of stars, half pound or so of hot prime rice hulls, 3 oz. of lift, and about 150 grams of dragon eggs. To date the LOUDEST thing I have made. When the sun comes up tomorrow and I find my mortar I'll post a picture of what's left of it. We walked the yard for a good 10 minutes and could not find a single piece of it. I took the extra two minutes to walk in the house and get a decent length scab wire to give myself more than thirty feet of seperation from the mine when I hit the squib, which without question kept me out of the hospital. I'm not exactly sure what caused it to detonate like it did, but was a massive explosion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheSidewinder Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Methinks you used way too much lift? M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mardec Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 I once had my commet cannon blow up form some stupid reason: It was a fine cannon, fired many thing over 300 meters, 1,2 " diameter; 50" long. Fires commet so high you can't beleve it. One day I fired a D1 commet from poor chems out of it with 20 grams of really really really poor bp. It was Green mix on rice hulls to to speak. (I think it actually was) And it fired with the loudest fucking pyro boom I ever heard. I whent to take a look. The base was still in one pice./ about 10 " up the fuse hole the tube broke in 2. If searched days how so poor chems could make such an explosion. And I found why. The fucking Al had stearine coating, which blocks dextrins function pretty bad. So I could smash the commets in powder very easy. Should have tested this before firing. So in short, the commet broke to powder, powder was aerosolled in hot bp gasses and burned extremly fast. On top of that the Al probably gave a flash effect. I don't know if this happened with you.. (My cannon was once fired with 30 grams of rather high quality bp so it could hold a lot..) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
qwezxc12 Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 Ummm...perhaps the combo of a 1/2 lb of burst + 3oz. of lift (a bit much ) set off the dragon's eggs in the mortar instead of lifting them out...150g of Dragon's Eggs will make a hell of a bang if they didn't disperse. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al93535 Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 227 grams of break powder on rice hulls? Then an additional 84 grams of lift powder eh? Why the rice hulls? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frozentech Posted June 3, 2007 Share Posted June 3, 2007 just out of curiosity, any chlorate stars in that bag of scraps ? I blew out a tube when a shell with blue chlorate stars flowerpotted ( or rather, exploded spectacularly ). I've had 2 other flower pots with other stars that just looked like nice starmines. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cplmac Posted June 4, 2007 Author Share Posted June 4, 2007 The rice hulls had a hot BP mix, not hot for speed but hot for temperature if that makes any sense. The mix I coated them with had 10% red gum so they burn really slow. Anyways, I fused the squib into the star and rice hull cluster so I could get good ignition on the stars. I figured out what happened today when discussing it with a pyro buddy of mine. Like FT said, I did indeed have quite a bit of heavy chlorate stars. At any rate, chlorate can go high order pretty easily when combined with certain fuels, of which I had many in that mine, sulfur, red gum, Al, etc etc etc. 3oz of lift for a HEAVY 5" mine is not to much, it's high for normal shells but for a heavy mine it's about right. We concluded that we had a high order chlorate detonation probably similar to cheddite. All I can say is I'm REALLY glad I took the time to get the longer scab wire. http://pyrobin.com/files/onside.jpg That should work, I uploaded it to pyrobin. That Kodak easy share is a friggin nightmare. Holy crap, sorry. Man that is bigger than the actual picture. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fizeau Posted June 4, 2007 Share Posted June 4, 2007 I think chlorates are always good for a bad surprise...Nice to hear that you are OK. Btw, I can not open the pictures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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