Brakkie

Most of them contain a lot of smaller shells to make up for the "empty" space left inside the shell after the outer petal and burst.

In certain compositions the Dextrin is vital! I tried to make a batch of Lancaster Chlorate Silver stars for NYE and they got messed up. I tried Red Gom first which for some reason didn't seem to bind them properly. Might have been the huge pile of bright aluminium. But after that I sprayed them with some NC-laquor but they still didn't seem as hard as I've made them when I used dextrin before.

The dextrin also slows down some compositions (Like Lancaster Chlorate Silver, it uses 18% Dextrin).

http://freakpyromani...N_07-08_017.jpg

It's the one most on the right. I've been thinking together with a fellow pyro to see if we can get our hands on one and do some dissection tests with it. I'd be surprised if they actually contained 28 grams of flash. They're loud but the 30 gram groundsalute I did for New Years Eve felt like it had a lot more kick to it than the Cobra 6 that a friend had did.

I didn't really know if this is what you ment by your pm but

I'll take 20 sets of your hands

I would also definetly recommend reading through forums and eventually participating in them. Reading through forums gives you a lot of practical information as well as NEW information. A lot of books are old, that doesn't mean that they're useless because some are like a bible to me. It just means that there's a lot of new inventions, techniques and formula's that are not stated in books. Especially when it comes to tools and techniques forums have, in my honest opinion, got a good role at how to finish things, how things should be made, how devices should perform and when they don't perform properly, how to improve them.




Lastly, that doesn't mean that can't become a pyrotechnic without forums! You can become a great pyrotechnic just by yourself but it's a good bit of information out there on the net, use it wisely! Know who's talking sh*t and know who has the reputation to match the talking. Some people talk a lot but give wrong/impractical or downright dangerous information.