JFeve81 Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae157/AlienInferno/Fireworks/2013-07-20195809.jpg I've finally gotten around to making larger sized shells. Previously I had been making 2.5" shells. I managed to make up four 4" shells for the fourth. But since it was so dry and we allready had to put out one grass fire I decided to wait and fire them until after we got some rain for safety reasons. Well we finally got some rain, quite a lot actually. But last night after an afternoon shower I fired the 4 shells I had made. 2 ball shells and 2 canisters. The 2 ball shells performed well but could have used better pasting and a little booster as well but overall I'm happy with them. I did use some fast visco I had to ignite these ( I was trying to get rid of some) so the tails lit prematurely and burned out before the shell fired. One of the canisters worked great. It had 4 grams of 70/30 flash as a booster and boy did it blow big. The other canister failed to ignite the burst and came back down. It's a little unnerving having something of this size come back down and not know where it's going to land. All you can do is pray it doesn't hit you when it does I guess. Found it this morning somewhere around 250-300 feet away from where the mortar was. Made a nice indention in the ground as well. But here are the videos of the three that worked. 4" ball shell. Half red / Half white. Parlon bound formulas from Skylighter cut at about 1/4". Red did not have a tail. White had a little FeTi mixed in for a tail. 7 to 1 BP coated hulls for burst. Homemade screen granulated BP for lift. Lift used eastern red cedar charcoal and was -10 + 20 mesh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed3jI5EHBFc 4" ball shell. Shell of Shells. This one I was just using up some crap 1.4 shells. These were the really small ones (1" ?) plastic casings. I removed the lift and just mixed them in with the burst. 7 to 1 BP coated hulls for burst. Homemade screen granulated BP for lift. Lift used eastern red cedar charcoal and was -10 + 20 mesh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J3JxMXMn8A 4" canister shell. Had an outer ring of Farfalle. Made with 3/8" ID, 5/8" OD tubes. 75/15/10 mixed with FeTi. In testing they produced a nice big spray but in the air you can see it's almost non-existent. Once I get some actual Ti I will try this again. Inner stars were Win 19 cut at about 1/4". Lift and burst were my homemade screen granulated BP (-10 + 20). The burst had an additional 4 grams of 70/30 flash as a booster. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHWlWiywjx4 My other 4" canister shell that came down contained 2 rings of salutes and some of the Win 19 stars placed on top to help fill in the spaces in the shell and help fill the sky before the rings burst. But sadly it did come back down but thank God no one was hurt, either me or my 3 person audience. Safety distances were in place though so all ended well. Will dissect this shell to see what might have caused it to not fire then rebuild it to fire another day. This is how I found it.http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae157/AlienInferno/Fireworks/2013-07-21094904.jpg This is how it hit the ground (fit in the hole)http://i967.photobucket.com/albums/ae157/AlienInferno/Fireworks/2013-07-21094930.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VikingPyrotechnics Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 Nice shells :-)To bad for the last one.....The Farfalle looks good to me I got a 5" Farfalle to Report that i want to shoot... But it´s pretty dry these days Kepp up the good work !Greets VP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fredhappy Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 (edited) #jfeve: Looks like you had fun, so well done. Too bad about the canister, but the positive thing is you'd calculated safety distances correctly and all ended well. Safety is always no 1, so you did good on that. keep it up, fred Edited July 21, 2013 by fredhappy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mikeee Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 Jfeve81. What type of passfire technic did you use going to the burst charge of the 4" cyclinder shell?Time fuse or spolette? I have used cheap time fuse which caused me problems in the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobosan Posted July 21, 2013 Share Posted July 21, 2013 Nice Farfalle. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pyrokid Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 That farfalle shell had some nice punch to it! Good work! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFeve81 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 Jfeve81. What type of passfire technic did you use going to the burst charge of the 4" cyclinder shell?Time fuse or spolette? I have used cheap time fuse which caused me problems in the past. Spolette. Followed Fulcanelli's articles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFeve81 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 That farfalle shell had some nice punch to it! Good work! Should have heard it in person. Could have used another second or so of timeing on it IMO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WonderBoy Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 Looked like some nice shells. I like farfalle a lot. Did your spolette burn through, but not light the contents of the shell, or did the spolette itself fail to take fire? Followed Fulcanelli's articles. Can you be more specific? If the spolette took fire, but didn't pass fire, how was the fire giving end nosed? Was the powder column drilled back? Scratched back? Etc. WB Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFeve81 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 Looked like some nice shells. I like farfalle a lot. Did your spolette burn through, but not light the contents of the shell, or did the spolette itself fail to take fire? Can you be more specific? If the spolette took fire, but didn't pass fire, how was the fire giving end nosed? Was the powder column drilled back? Scratched back? Etc. WB The spolette burned but didn't pass fire. It was drilled back, blackmatch inserted, and held onto the inside with a paper nosing (or whatever it's called). I will be taking the shell apart tommorrow. Right before the spolette burned out I noticed a slight hiss/puff like the blackmatch lit but was choked out. Not sure if that's what happened or if it was just the spolettes death throes. Pretty much it either failed to pass fire to the match or the match was choked at the nosing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carbon796 Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 Did you have a small hole punched through the nosing ? To relieve pressure as the spollette burned through. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mumbles Posted July 22, 2013 Share Posted July 22, 2013 The first couple of shells looked great. Coarser metal can give a longer tail. There might be a factor that the Ti stands out better than iron or FeTi, that the length of the tail is more noticable. I've read about stuff like this happening, but it's not common you actually see one documented. I really don't know how valid the "fire getting sucked out of the spolette" thing is, but I do still punch a hole in the nosing. I think a far more common problem is blackmatch that isn't totally saturated with BP. I don't know if you kneed the BP into the string, or pull it through a slurry, but I've had nothing but consistent results since switching over to kneeding the BP in to fully penetrate the cotton strands. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JFeve81 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 Thanks Mumbles. I'll keep that in mind on my next batch of blackmatch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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