24 replies to this topic

[sizzle]

Hi, I am planning a display for christmas eve for friends and family, I am basically planning to set off some Devco fountains, roman candles etc... but I also want to set of some of my own work, unfortunately I only have a small garden 20ft x 10ft so I need some ideas of what to make, I have mastered black powder and fountains but I'm looking for something a bit better to do.

I have the following available to me:

Potassium Chlorate
Potassium Nitrate
Sodium Chlorate
Aluminium Powder
Magnesium Shreds
Sulphur
Charcoal Powder
Black Powder
Copper Sulphate
Sodium Bicarbonate

Unfortunately I am unable to locate some dextrin at a cheap enough price. Any ideas would be great.

[RegimentalPyro]

I would advise you make dextrin rather than buy it. It's MUCH cheaper and you might well already have the *one* ingredient [corn flour, aka corn starch] in your cupboards already.

You might consider modifying some of your fountains into drivers. That will open up the wonderful world of saxons, wheels and rockets. Lance work is also possible. Have you tried candles yet?

However, 20ft is really too small to set off any pyro. I would certainly urge you to reconsider firing on such a small site. It's just not safe!

[sizzle]

I would advise you make dextrin rather than buy it. It's MUCH cheaper and you might well already have the *one* ingredient [corn flour, aka corn starch] in your cupboards already.

You might consider modifying some of your fountains into drivers. That will open up the wonderful world of saxons, wheels and rockets. Lance work is also possible. Have you tried candles yet?

However, 20ft is really too small to set off any pyro. I would certainly urge you to reconsider firing on such a small site. It's just not safe!

Sorry I meant 20m x 10m , can you explain more about drivers?, I haven't tried candles yet no, I still don't know how to structure them, how can I make dextrin from Corn Flour then?

Edited by sizzle, 08 October 2005 - 05:24 PM.

[alany]

What form and particle size of Aluminium powder is it?

Fine atomised powder and sodium bicarbonate will give you gold glitters (Search for D1 Glitter), flake and fine will give you tailed stars and falls (Something like Bleser #1 or Shimizu Golden Wave #2).

With the Basic Three (KNO3, S, Charcoal) alone you can make a hell of a variety of different devices. I'd suggest saxons first they are great for small areas and provide a big effect for a minimum of effort and composition. Mines are dead easy if you've perfected any kind of quick-burning star and lift BP. Having good quickmatch is handy too, but you can side fuse them if you have only commercial fuse, or just blackmatch.

Candles are fairly tricky, you must have good lift for them to work properly, and there is a nack for ramming the delay without smashing the star or lift into useless powder. I'm a big fan of rockets, they are fairly easy especially with good tooling, but aren't really suitable for small areas. Tourbillions are be fun too, the z-b**b and helicopter varients scale down well, but require very fast BP for good performance, where the traditional tourbillion is larger and less picky.

Dextrin isn't the only binder available, starch works quite well if not better. Making dextrin is easy and I am sure it has been discussed here before.

With just a few other chemicals you could move on to colour compositions for stars, Lancaster Chlorate reds and pillboxes in particular. Red Gum can be hard to find, but shellac shouldn't be too difficult (just expensive and difficult to powder). Sucrose and Lactose can be used, but I don't recommend it, sucrose especially, it is quite hygroscopic.

[RegimentalPyro]

I know the subject of making dextrin has discussed here before and am not going to repeat the information.

Drivers are basically tubes with comp in them, and a choke/exit hole. Light the comp and the gasses rush out of the exit hole and provide thrust.

If you mount them either end of a stick and orientate them right you have a wheel.
Put a stabilising stick on them and you have a rocket. [you'll prob. need to tweak the design to get it to fly right]
Make the exit hole lateral to the direction of the tube and mount it so it can spin, and you have a saxon

Good devices drivers.

Edited by RegimentalPyro, 08 October 2005 - 05:52 PM.

[sizzle]

The Aluminium powder I have is Mesh 250 (Dust), I am quite interested in these Mines, but could you explain in more detail the structure of them, I'm not sure how to make them. I can't get hold of any other chemicals apart for Glycerine due to lack of funds.

RegimentalPyro: When you say make the exit hole lateral to the direction of the tube and mount it so it can spin, can you clarify that for me. Sorry.

[completebeginner]

this is where i learnt to make starmines
http://infernolabs.c...rmine/index.htm

[sizzle]

Thanks completebeginner, how far do the stars usually shoot up if using the standard amount of BP? These should be really good to start the display off with.

[RegimentalPyro]

RegimentalPyro: When you say make the exit hole lateral to the direction of the tube and mount it so it can spin, can you clarify that for me. Sorry.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Badly drawn ASCII art is only about 100 words however <grin>

+----+
|bulk|
|head|
+----+
|....|
|...[	-> exit hole
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|comp|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
|....|
+----+
|bulk|
|head|
+----+
| [] |   <- Nail, device should spin anticlockwise about this
+----+

[sizzle]

Ah, I see now, so I would mount this to a board or post of some sort I assume?

[alany]

I think mines are better as a finale item. Their effect is brief and relatively spectacular, so they work well at the climax. Of course you can use them in different ways, but in shows with relatively few devices and mostly long-lived ones they should definately go last. I'm not a big fan of starting the display with something huge, bright or loud. Displays are a bit like sex, you need foreplay and build to an earth shaking pyrogasm, not just jump in with eye/ear splitting effects. Well that's my take on it anyway.

A nice little "backyard" display might start with some saxons and charcoal gerbs, transition into silver gerbs and maybe crossing candles or a falls, then end with W-shaped comet spread and a glitter mine front.

Dan Williams' mine page is quite good for common "bag" mines:

http://www.wecreate4...ines/mines.html

However I prefer mines with a sabot to get extra height out of my crappy lift BP. Lately I've been a fan of the "cup" sabot, rather than the disks + wadding technique which I've championed in the past. The disk and/or wadding method scales down well and is quite easy so I still recommend it.

[sizzle]

UPDATE: I now have some other chemicals available to me, so any new suggestions would be great. I now have access to:

Potassium Chlorate
Potassium Nitrate
Sodium Chlorate
Aluminium Powder (250 Mesh)
Magnesium Shreds
Sulphur
Charcoal Powder
Black Powder
Copper Sulphate
Sodium Bicarbonate
Zinc Powder
Strontium Carbonate
Red Gum
Iron Fillings
Dextrin
Potassium Perchlorate

Edited by sizzle, 10 October 2005 - 03:57 AM.

[The_Djinn]

As your list has extended, you can explore colour starting with a nice easy red.. have a look under the formulas section and you will see the Strontium Carbonate will give you a pretty reasonable red.

Mark

[sizzle]

Thanks, I have a bit of a gripe actually, Untill now I have made fountains by simply pouring a comp into a tube and capping the bottom and just sticking a black match in the top, they have always worked but obviously only had a few inches of spray at the top, Last night I attemted a silver fountain by caping the bottom, pouring in my comp, ramming it, pouring some more in and ramming it then used some Pollyfilla as the top cap, put a hole in it about the size of a pencil right down into the comp and added a black match, when I attempted to light it, it lit for about 2 seconds, didn't even spray one inch and then just went out.

What could have gone wrong?

Edited by sizzle, 10 October 2005 - 10:30 PM.

[warrenizer88]

Was there any comp left in the tube after it was finished burning? if so then im not sure what could have gone wrong, but if not then try adding more effect charcoal (not airfloat) which will make it burn for longer with more sparks. It is possible that the composition you were using was too energetic and more of a driver than a fountain composition