Small rocket help

[Zippiot]

I am trying to make small to tiny rockets (less than 6 inches tall), and am having some trouble...

I use rcandy usually but am experimenting with rnx (and have plenty of blakc powder too) and I cannot get it to light with my badly made homemade fuse. The commercial fuses are too thick and my fuses choke when entering the nozzle throat.

Does anyone have a good thin fuse recipe?

OR any experience in small rocket?

 

EDIT: thanks for the re-direct but I cannot remember you name and I closed the old window...

[teknix]

Just fill the core of the rocket with black powder and then tape the fuse to the outside of the nozzle in contact with the BP. It will ignite the BP and travel up the core and ignite it all at once.

[d4j0n]

You try 1/16" visco? How small is small (dia)?

[Sason.net]

yes, i think that thin visco will be the best solution for your problem, it is very reliable and it doesnt "choke when entering the nozzle

[Mr.Dan]

You can also take a bit of black powder add 5% charcoal and get it wet until it becomes a very thick paste put this in the nozzle hole and let dry. Then just do as teknix said, by tapeing a fuse to it a little extra BP around the fuse will help insure ignition of the BP and charcoal mix. The extra charcoal is shot into the core of the tube and should all ignite at once.

[moonshot]

I am trying to make small to tiny rockets (less than 6 inches tall), and am having some trouble...

I use rcandy usually but am experimenting with rnx (and have plenty of blakc powder too) and I cannot get it to light with my badly made homemade fuse. The commercial fuses are too thick and my fuses choke when entering the nozzle throat.

Does anyone have a good thin fuse recipe?

OR any experience in small rocket?

 

EDIT: thanks for the re-direct but I cannot remember you name and I closed the old window...

I started making bottle rockets lately and use the chinese tissue paper fuse to light them. Its very small diameter but gives good flame. Most of the pyro fuse outfits sell it and it's cheap compared to visco. Heres the smallest rocket i've made so far.

http://i107.photobucket.com/albums/m314/di...07/S3011375.jpg

[pa_pyro]

I make all of my small rockets(1/4" I.D. about 4" length) black powder end-burners. I don't think KnO3/sucrose core burners give enough thrust to lift the rocket.

[Yankie]

What I do is get some of that really thin glossy/seethrough paper, i think its used for lining baking trays, but I cut a strip about 2-2.5cms wide and as long as you want then make a meal powder slurry so its like thin paint and just paint the strip with one or two coats of the black powder. fold it in half lengthways then twist it between your fingers and hang it out to dry. hang it to dry somewhere and voila a very thin very reliable fuse, (ranging between 0.5 - 1mm thick depending on the reliability/thickness desired)

 

p.s. if you dont have any blac powder you can always crush up math heads super fine then do the same as above.

[Swede]

Would it be possible to do sugery on visco with a razor blade? I'm thinking a long, very tapering diagonal cut (or more than one cut) at the end, and inserting the now much smaller tip of the fuse into the nozzle. The fire should still make it to the fuel. Otherwise, I like the idea of simply blobbing a bit of BP into the nozzle and firing that.

[TheSidewinder]

Yes, you can, but it may depend on the visco.

 

I've had some that woked perfectly doing that, yet had another roll where the powder all "fell out" and didn't work worth squat.

 

I was using it with some 1/4" bottle rockets I made back in '05 (using Wolter's tooling set and Steve Majdali's Super Bottle Rocket tubes),

[Firebrandlou]

I don't know if you make your own black match or not, but doing so will give you control of how thick your fuse is and how hot it burns.

 

I make match by pulling strings through a catsup bottle filled with bp. Normally I pull eight strings through the bottle, but the little cap that fits over the yorker tip has a small hole 1/16" in dia that I drilled that is perfect for pulling 2-3 strings through it. It makes a thin even match perfect for small devices.

 

For hard to light devices I dip the end of the match in NC then in a little ti or coarse al. The resulting sparks rarely fail to light the most stubborn of devices.

 

For fuse I use 75-15-10 +5 dex, +1 CMC.

[psyco_1322]

Wow that is some thick BM then, catsup bottles usually have about a 1/4" hole is them.

 

Hows that cute little tooling work Sidewinder? I seen some at the convention, thought it was kinda pricey for that small of tooling so I grabbed the 1lb strobe, lol. Got any videos of em?

[TheSidewinder]

I wish I did have video!! And the tooling *IS* very nice, though admittedly pricey. Anyway...

 

The last time I was able to use it for more than one rocket, I was at a friend's cabin in Wisconsin back in '06. I pounded up 20 of them (took a long damn time, too, lol), using the Madjali tubes, some of my hottest BP I had made to date, and used relatively expensive bamboo skewers. But it was only 20 and I wanted to see how good I could get them. The skewers were razor-edge straight, too, which I'm convinced gave the results I got. It was also a gorgeous sunny day, very high pressure system overhead, and not so much as a rustle of leaves. No headers of any sort, either, just a bulkhead of nozzle mix so they simply burned out. Rammed them with gusto, since those tubes can take an amzing amount of pressure without rupturing.

 

Anyway, I shot all 20 in about a half hour. With the weather conditions, they went STRAIGHT up, and came STRAIGHT down. One of them landed within 6 inches of the launch tube (1/4" copper pipe that cabin owner had, very straight and he took the trouble to "plumb" it straight up for me since there were trees very nearby.

 

And the one farthest away from the launch tube? 30 feet.

 

Best damn day I had in a long time, lol!

 

M

[DeepOvertone]

Are yall talking about the tubes from cannonfuse.com? I had ordered some of those tubes pretty much as soon as they came available on the website. I sent a sample off to wolter and had him turn all sorts of goodies up. A spindled base, a flat base for spoulettes, a funnel that fits the OD of those tubes, a couple drifts... Turned out great(no pun intended). Its fun to have a company make a custom product for you then later see it in production on their website and have other people using all around the world!!

[TheSidewinder]

Not sure if Steve Majdali is associated with Cannonfuse. They might well be the same tubes: parallel wound, and creme-colored very much like New England Paper's tubes.

 

Impossible to crush with the fingers: takes a good pair of pliers.

 

And if it's called the "Super Bottle Rocket" tooling, yes that's the one I have though mine was one of the first production runs. No funnel or second base, just a spindled base with two rammers.

[Mumbles]

Cannonfuse is spiral wound as well.

[DeepOvertone]

Yes cannonfuse is spiral wound but id say impossible to crush with fingers. How do I go about checking out these tubes from this other guy? Does he have a website? Does he sell any other items?

[TheSidewinder]

Steve Majdali?

 

I think he has a website, but not sure what it is.

 

I bought my tubes from him at the PGI in '05 or '06. Memory is slipping, I can remember buying them, just not WHEN.

[Mumbles]

All the references to the SBR tooling came from his set of articles in the PGI bulletin, and from his advertisements in the back. I haven't seen any site really. His tooling is sold by wolter too I believe.