1st shells..... feeling the pressure

[NightPainter]

I attended my 1st club shoot as a new member this past weekend. My plan was to meet some of the members of my new club, help out where needed and test my 1st 3" shells and 1" comets during open shooting.

 

I made 7 - 3" paper shells and other than burning stars on the ground and firing a few from some paper tubes nothing had been tested from lift and fusing to break and my prime job.

The shells weighed in between 174 g. - 148 g. all were lifted with 19.5 g. of FFg. I used KP coated rice hulls and 3 g. of whistle fuel (not break), being a little rushed I forgot to weigh the KP and stars.

The stars were everything from D1 to "rubber' stars , a red strobe, PS blue, Veline's Rose and Magenta. All shells had color comets attached.

 

When i arrived at the club shoot Saturday morning our safety guy shows me around and I show him my shells and tell him about them, he gives me the nod to shoot them. It's hot and very few members are in attendance so I figure, great no one will notice if my shells don't work. I send up my 1st shell during daylight with almost no one around, I really want to see how I did. The shell comes out of the gun OK and the comet is lit. It reaches it's peak about 300' and just as it starts to drop It goes off. I get a nice medium strength break with what looks like 100% start ignition. Wow I'm happy.

 

So later some of the club members are watching me setup a small display of my remaining 6 - 3" shells and 50 1" comets plus some other Class C stuff I brought along for fun. Being a little overconfident I was telling some of the curious onlookers how those were my 1st shells and should produce some really nice colors.

 

It was an unusual club shoot because of the high heat the planned display was cancelled and only about 30 members showed up. The club grabbed some class b cakes from the magazine and set it up so that there would be something. I ended up being enlisted to start things off followed by the class b cakes and luckily and out of no where a member who was unable to shoot a class c 4th of July show, arrived late with 2 van loads of fireworks.

 

We start things off and 1/2 my shells blow totally blind and I'm not real happy with the breaks not to mention a little embarrassed. I did shoot video but forgot to point the camera as I was backing away praying I did not have and low breaks or slow burning stars.

 

I am pretty happy with my results. 4 out of 7 shells worked correctly. I need to shorten my time fuse by just a hair, do a much better job priming my stars, and increase my break a little. The red strobes and "rubber" stars need to primed much better, everything else seemed to lite.

[guntoteninfadel]

57%, cant beat that for first time in front of people that actually know whats supposed to happen! Isnt it funny how the darn things work great when nobodys looking..... That old Murphy is a tough one for sure.

[PersonGuyDude]

Nice job, can't wait for my first time manufacturing at a club meet. Gonna be so much fun.

Perhaps your burst could be improved by granulating your KP? This would probably increase density and therefore the amount of actual burst in the shell (compared to rice hulls).

[NightPainter]

57%, cant beat that for first time in front of people that actually know whats supposed to happen! Isnt it funny how the darn things work great when nobodys looking..... That old Murphy is a tough one for sure.

 

Yeah only the safety guy saw the shell which probably worked the best. What I'm pissed about was having the video camera on but not pointed in the right direction. I was so concerned with watching every detail forgot I had the damn thing in my hand.

 

 

Here's a little interesting side note on safety. I'm the only person using the 3" guns on Saturday and Friday all they were used for was to hold some large commercial Roman Candles. As I'm loading one of my shells I don't like where it's bottoming out at. So I pull the gun out of the rack and turn it upside down.....out pops an unexploded shell. So I check them all and end up finding an unexploded 3" commercial salute. That could have been ugly lifting one of my shells on top of a live salute. I'll never assume a gun is clean.

 

Nice job, can't wait for my first time manufacturing at a club meet. Gonna be so much fun.

Perhaps your burst could be improved by granulating your KP? This would probably increase density and therefore the amount of actual burst in the shell (compared to rice hulls).

 

Thanks I'll consider that in the future.

 

I was thinking more on the lines of increasing the whistle maybe to 4 g. I was using whistle fuel instead of whistle break. The breaks were pretty good I was not unhappy with any of them, just needed a bit more pop for my liking.