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Organic Violet Star


optimus

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Purple Organic Fueled Star:

Name: Baechle System 5: Violet

Description: violet tailless organic fuelled star.

Source: Passfire - Joel Baechle

 

Potassium Perchlorate 40

Ammonium Perchlorate 30

Copper(II) Oxychloride 9 (I used Copper Oxide)

Red Gum 7

Rosin (Colopnony) 7

Strontium Carbonate 5

Dextrin 4

 

WARNING:

Ammonium perchlorate and compositions that contain it are more sensitive to shock than is generally acknowledged.

 

NOTES:

Prime must not contain potassium nitrate unless it is applied with NC lacquer. If nitrate based meal prime is applied with NC, the final outer meal prime must be applied with water in order to avoid an NC fire-block ignition problem. Because of this requirement, the shelf life of AP stars can be limited to only a few months if the nitrate penetrates the NC barrier.

 

I pumped these with 25/75 water/alcohol. They had a concave end, which I smeared with a good NC-bound prime then dipped in BP grains. They burn slowly, and are the best violet star I've tried yet.

 

Action photo

 

Video on its way...

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That is a very nice color. I have not seen a very large amount of star comps outside of the ones posted here, but still I have never seen rosin used in anything. Is it used as a binder or something?
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Wow... absolutely gorgeous. Was that just a star mine, if so, how big?
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That photo is so professional looking!

 

How did you do it? Over exposure or something?

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Indeed, amazing color!

 

Colophony rosin is hard and melts with heat also sold for cleaning soldering iron tips is that right? I think i have some a small quantity for my soldering irons and it's rock hard. As i can remember the label says "Colophonium".

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Indeed, amazing color!

 

Colophony rosin is hard and melts with heat also sold for cleaning soldering iron tips is that right? I think i have some a small quantity for my soldering irons and it's rock hard. As i can remember the label says "Colophonium".

Colophony resin is used for depilating pigs after they are slaughtered (Got a friend from the countryside :D )

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I bought the Rosin specially for this comp (Inoxia.co.uk), and it seemed to work great. I haven't seen many other formulas that call for it, apart from ones in the Baechle system. I'm quite keen to try out more formulas in the system, as it seems it is not nearly as pastel as Veline's. It does require lots of relatively obscure chems, though...

 

ActionTek - it was a starmine cake. A load of 1" mines, with a 2.5" mine to finish. I'll post full details when I enter the device into the mine/cake competition.

 

_DB_ - my camera is not quite a pro model, but it does take lovely pyro photos if you know what you're doing. This was a 34second exposure at F20, ISO100 - Got the whole cake in from start to finish.

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Being a pro photographer may I help?

Ok to take photos like that it is relatively simple if you have a half decent camera. You need to first set the focus to infinity. The little symbol that shows a character like a number 8 on the lens. Then set the camera to have a long open shutter. That is usually the BULB or "B" setting on the camera. Its best to have a slow film too that should cut down on film degredation. Around 100 iso is good. You want a pretty small apature to make sure everything is in focus. Something around F16 upwards.

When you take the photo press the shutter button and expose the film/digital the sparks will leave lovely long lines on the shot.

If you get camera shake then hold a bit of black card in front of lens when you press the shutter button then lift the card for perfect no wobble pictures.

 

If you dont have a BULB setting then just take the photo and see what happens. The shutter will stay open for a few seconds anyway because of the lack of light and you should be able to achieve simular results.

If you want to see someone in the foreground then take the photo using the instructions above and just before you close the shutter have a hand held flash gun and press the test button to flash the subject in front of the lens.

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Rosin...is this the same stuff they use on violin strings? if so i got a load of it from the past.
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I think it's essentially the same substance, but I just found this:

 

"Pure colophony is far too brittle to use on it's own for violin rosin and makes an unpleasant scratchy sound. Therefore it is generally mixed with other substances to modify it's consistency. Most rosin will contain small amounts of oil to plasticize or soften it and sometimes there are additions of alkaline solutions to neutralize the colophony which is quite acid"

 

Not sure whether the impurities would have any adverse effect on a pyrotechnic composition, so if you do try it, make sure you start with very small amounts...

 

I did consider grinding up some violin rosin myself, until I found it could be bought, readily powdered quite cheaply.

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