pyrochris

I think one thing I forgot to take into account was the stars that I was using!

I have found that C6 cut stars burn WAY too fast, and generally burn out before they spread very far. I think I can attribute the poor performance of some of my shells to those darn C6 stars!

I'll use tiger tail instead and see what happens...

I also solved the problem with the fragile stars... I just made a new batch of dextrin and that seemed to solve the problem. Don't know why...

Thanks! I didn't even think about NC lacquer. I still have a jar of that stuff laying around that I made out of ping pong balls and acetone!

Also, what Adamw said also seems to make sense. It must be coated in something because none of my other chemicals cause any such problems.

Edit: Yes, it has a sweet, oily smell...

NC laquer works better, but I can still crush the stars between my fingers...

Maybe if I use my glitter stars as cores for tiger tail stars, their weekness will no longer be an issue.

I forgot to mention, the shells I'm using are cylinder in shape. They are also pretty heavy for the size. I'm guessing this could have something to do with it?

I don't have any 2" mortors right now, but maybe later I'll buy some of them and see what that does.

Do you think that I could reduce the sound without ruining altitude if I took out the stock lift and replaced it with a more coarsely granulated BP?

Good Idea with the silencer Alany. I was thinking though, that it may be difficult to do. Not sure if this is true, but I have heard that HDPE cannot be glued to anything for some reason. This is also supposedly why wooden plugs are stapled into the bottom of HDPE mortars.

Not to mention that HDPE mortars with silencers would take up alot more space than just an HDPE mortar!

Thanks for the ideas guys!

It is a 1-7/8 inch shell, and the mortars I'm using are 15 inches with a 3 inch plug, so that is an effective length of 12 inches. I believe that the typical length of a mortar for these shells is 10 - 12 inches, so I might just try taking a couple inches off of one.

I think the main problem is that there is not enough of a gap between the tube and the shell to release the excess pressure before the shell leaves the tube. Maybe if I take the plastic label wrapping stuff off of the shells they will be slightly smaller in diameter...

Yeah, I'm sure the length of the mortar also has something to do with the noise. If drilling holes doesn't help, maybe I'll do a "chop-job" on a mortar, and see if that does.

That will probably reduce altitude though, right? I don't mind a slight drop in altitude, but a larger one would be a problem...