BLAST420 Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 Well the anticapated moment has finnaly come I launched my first ever 3" homemade shell!! (first homemade shell period) I put so much work into this you wouldnt beleave well actually sure you would you do it too!! To start I will show and tell about it real quick and then we will watch! Overall I think it was a complete failure, for which I am going to blame on a couple reasons, first off my lift powder was a failure (I used granulated Black powder) the shell weighed 7oz so if I used a tenth of the shells weight this would be 20g, I used 24g, and you can see for your self how high it got, its burst point was MAYBE 100 ft off ground give or take(I had a perfect fit in the mortar I am sure that wasnt a problem) I only originally ball milled my BP for about 4-5 hours so I am thinking this is the problem. The charcol used is from skylight. My second problem I had was as I remember it none of my stars really ignited or were really red as when I would burn one stationary on the ground. I seemed as only a couple out of the hundred or so stars ignited! (but after reviewing the video it seems as I can see all the stars just not really the color and only for about 1sec.) As for the stars they were cut, I primed both sides with meal before cutting then also primed a good amount after cutting, and continued to roll them in prime. I would guess like 2-3 layers of meal but not exactly sure on how you can judge how many layers are on, or do you spray them and then roll in more meal? I used meal coated rice hulls for a break charge with 1g of stardard 70/30 sodium benoazte whistle mix in the middle of that. I put about 11 layer of 30lb kraft using basiclly the 3-strip method I just made it for a good fit in mortar. I will post the star comp below for reference. Potassium perchlorate 70 Strontium carbonate 15 Red gum 9 Charcoal(airfloat) 2 Dextrin 4 I binded with about 22%alcohol 78% H20 So after all this I am at least happy it left the mortar!! AND it did burst in the air, so I guess I had success at the same time!! But I do have alot to go off from here now, I am now going to be thinking and trying to figure out where I have gone wrong! And opinoins or comments please feel free. I will also post some photos below for reference. http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h73/breimer06/DSC00287.jpghttp://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h73/breimer06/DSC00279.jpg Here's the video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZ3uCmwNYxY Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pudidotdk Posted June 26, 2008 Share Posted June 26, 2008 Well for your first aerial shell you did a lot better than I did But you will probably want to work on pasting your shells more round. Keep it up! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted June 27, 2008 Share Posted June 27, 2008 The lift problem would have been from skylighter charcoal. It's very poor quality. You might also want to consider some very easy to light stars next time, like tiger tail or the spider shell I have posted in the composition section. You also might want to look into altering the orientation of the poles during pasting to help prevent the egg shape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hst45 Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 Hang in there, it 's a long journey to get the wonderful, sky-filling shell we add strive for. I've always done smaller stuff, mostly 2", and they make a great learning platform. The shells are kind of a bitch to make compared to larger shells, but your expenditure in chems is maybe 1/10 of the cost so you can try different things and learn and not break the bank. Keep up the good work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ULTRABUF Posted June 28, 2008 Share Posted June 28, 2008 Good job, that was a very good first attempt. My first several shells failed completely, I had a variety of problems. I specifically remember my first shell, a 2" I believe it was, it shot like 2 feet out of the mortar, fell to the ground and exploded. If I knew then what I do now... anyways yeah nice job. Just keep reading and learning. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richtee Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 Heh... at least it got out of the mortar! Oh my...the memories of my first shell... flowerpot/CATO combo! Cool effect if it wern't for the fires to be put out sigh. Perhaps I should explain a bit. Not having a ball mill at that time, I had no faith in my BP, so I made a small batch of "Benzolift" with it. Turned out closer to flash than Benzo tho... christ what a boom. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Swede Posted July 12, 2008 Share Posted July 12, 2008 Better than the three 2" shells I launched for the fourth. Probably 75% were blown blind. I also did a red, Bleser KP1, I think. My Winokur #23 ignited much better, and had a nice effect. I am going to work more with charcoal stars and other easily ignitable effects. Happily I did get excellent lift from my BP. A lot of it I think is a good sliding fit of the shell to the mortar walls. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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