curious aardvark

I recently came across this remarkable gadget on another forum and wondered if any of you lot had ever used/made/seen one ?

http://www.firepistons.com
http://www.onagocag.com/piston.html

I've made a prototype, but got a few of the important technicalities wrong.


So I'm hoping my mkII will work, when I get round to making it.

But either way it has to be a safer alternative to carrying around a lit portfire for lighting fuses :-)

You lot would have had kittens if you's seen me last saturday ;-)

Having chatted to various members about rockets at shugborough it seems that people make the motors by building the rocket and then ramming powder into the engine tube which is a bit hit and miss (or rather a bit, whoossh and BANG or fhupp).
Has anyone tried launching an effects rocket with standard model rocket engines ?
Has anyone actually tried making those bloody expensive rocket engines and if so what are they made of. And why couldn't slightly larger versions be used for display rockets built in a modular fashion ?

Definitely seems to me to be the easiest way to build a rocket.

Or (as usual) am I missing something fairly obvious ?

I'd love to be able to produce consistent rockets. I know the emphasis is on shells, which are fairly easy to lift. But you really can't beat the sound of a rocket going up. Modular motors definitely look the sensible way to go.
discuss :-)

Cracking time on saturday, good to meet some of the forum bods. Watched my video 3 times all the way through now - apart from a bit of dodgy focus where the auto focus lost light, it's actually surprisingly good (not just my first fireworks show videoed, first time at night videoing anything :-). Next year I'll figure out how to preset the focus so it doesn't fade in and out and get a wide angle lens adaptor and probably stand at the back, etc etc.
Generally though it gives a very good indication of what went up (and down - the shout of 'friendly fire !' occurs quite frequently curtesy of the cambridge boys :-) Not to mention regimental pyros enthusiastic cheering and clapping whenever something good went off (which was pretty often) :-)
I should have the dvd done by the end of this week. I've got approx an hour of video - all solid pyro. But I usually like to stick a photo gallery on dvds as well and I've only got about 3 pictures (well when you're wielding a monopod in one hand and watching the fireworks and trying to make sure the camera is pointed at the right bit of sky it's tricky taking pictures as well) so if anyones got any decent shots and they'd like them on a dvd can you contact me and bung some across so I can add them to the slideshow.

Once done dvds will be available to anyone off the forum who sends me an a5 SAE and a blank dvd-r. If you're overseas - ie: not uk - and still interested let me know and we can sort something out. I'll be sending one out to my brother in law in canada, he might copy and post them on if people are interested.

Oh yeah and don't forget Dave - your forum handle has to be 'pink lady' :-)
I'll post a preview of the italian show when I've got it titled and rendered.
right then try this :-)
orzella low quality real video

I've bumped up the brightness and lowered the contrast - let me know if anyone thinks it's a bit too washed out. I don't want to render the whole thing using these settings if it's a bit 'dodgy' :-)

see above :-)

Hi folks - well this has to be the hardest forum on the net to join :-)
So hello :-)

Right. After many many years of not (much) lighting interesting things, I have recently discovered that you can actually buy the chemicals I used to 'acquire' from my school/college store rooms (no worries, this was the best part of 20 years ago) and local chemists, from actual legitimate internet suppliers in sensible amounts.

So I've got this 500g pot of potassium perchlorate sitting in my workshop looking seductively at me and whispering: 'fizz, crackle, whooossshhh' every time I go near it :-)

Now in the past I've only ever had tiny amounts of this stuff to play with and I primarily used it as an additive for my fuses (another post and from what I've read so far, better than anything I've seen on the forum)

so what can I do with it and what would YOU do with it ?
It wasn't cheap, but then these days I'm not a short-of-money student :-) So who cares. What I don't want to do is waste it.

On those lines: can I use it for making rocket motors ? If so how.
And anything else you can think of :-)

And while I'm here. I used to use carbon black for making BP (just read the post on toner as a carbon substitute and I have to disagree with one of the comments about carbon black as I used to make pretty effective BP with it). But I have a limited amount left and my mum has now retired from being a food colour chemist, so I'm not going to get any more :-) What do you lot use ? And is it any less messy than CB (that stuff gets everywhere).

Reckon that ought to do for a first post :-)