5 inch slow gold

[fredhappy]

A 5 inch slowgold I ve made and shot recently. Grape charcoal was used. I've made another batch of these stars with pine charcoal. I'm quite curious what the difference will be.

 

Timing of the shells and size of comets was ok. Boosted with about 6 grams of 70/30 hotflash. Pasted with 4 layers of 3 strip 80 lb kraft and wheat paste.

 

I am quite pleased with this one.

[ExplosiveCoek]

Very nice, what was the size of your stars?

[fredhappy]

Very nice, what was the size of your stars?

 

 

12mm stars, made with a starplate and pressed with a 10 tons press. Thickly primed with slow meal with some Silicon and Mg/Al.

[lokys]

 realy nice break! it look's biger than 5 inch. good job! 

[Bonny]

Timing of the shells and size of comets was ok. Boosted with about 6 grams of 70/30 hotflash. Pasted with 4 layers of 3 strip 80 lb kraft and wheat paste.

 

I am quite pleased with this one.

 

Very nice shell, I love brocades.

As for the pasting, using the 3 strip method (unless I'm confused) it means you actually pasted the shell with 8 layers of 80lb kraft as each pass is 2 layers.

 

Heavily priming is a good habit to get into, but I've fired a lot of (cut) slow gold stars without priming and have had no problems. It sems to take fire as easy as BP. I now prime them in BP as I cut them, but a hotter prime is not needed.

[fredhappy]

Very nice shell, I love brocades.

As for the pasting, using the 3 strip method (unless I'm confused) it means you actually pasted the shell with 8 layers of 80lb kraft as each pass is 2 layers.

 

Heavily priming is a good habit to get into, but I've fired a lot of (cut) slow gold stars without priming and have had no problems. It sems to take fire as easy as BP. I now prime them in BP as I cut them, but a hotter prime is not needed.

 

Yes Bonny , that is correct. A total of 8 layers of paper was applied with the 3 strip method.2 layers with each pass. The 3 strip method is the most efficient way of quickly pasting a shell in my opinion.

 

I know slow gold stars will probably take fire easily, but I prime them heavily anyway. I like boosting with 70/30 hotflash, and even the most easy to light stars can be blown blind this way, trust me, I found out the hard way......

 

These brocade formulaes are just beautiful. I've got another batch of those Hardt's goldenstreamer brocade drying right now. They are real high in percentage of Fe/Ti , so I am most curious how they will turn out in a shell.

Edited November 15, 2010 by fredhappy

[Bonny]

Yes Bonny , that is correct. A total of 8 layers of paper was applied with the 3 strip method.2 layers with each pass. The 3 strip method is the most efficient way of quickly pasting a shell in my opinion.

 

i could never seem to get the 3 strip method figured out very well... I just paste overlapping layers Ned style as listed in the Skylighter tutorials.

[fredhappy]

i could never seem to get the 3 strip method figured out very well... I just paste overlapping layers Ned style as listed in the Skylighter tutorials.

 

Hehe...tell me about it. I've had a very experienced fellow pyro show me how it's done in person. Once you get the hang of it you can paste really fast, especially with the kraft/wheatpaste method.

 

Boosting with 70/30 cuts down significantly on the pasting. 4 passes round the hemisphere is all it takes to get a nice round break when you use 70/30 hotflash. Especially when you want to make lots of shells this is a big plus. Some of the guys here make

beautiful elaborate pieces of art from their shells. I just like to shoot lots of 'em, so I try to speed up the building process as much as I can.....to each his own....