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Blaf

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  1. Blaf

    BP Rocket

    Hello Tyneman Thanks for your wishes, the same to you and yours my friend! I'm sad to see that english portion doesn't breathe lately, I'm not saying it's clynically dead but I'm afraid it's close to it. Anyhow, it's nice to hear voices from the past sometimes. As for my NY eves, it was as expected, my devices worked 100%, I attended a public celebration + big fireworks and that's it. Hope you had nice evening too! Regards Blaf
  2. You bet it makes a nice fuse! You can see it within the same topic. You asked if it's profitable to make your own machine...well, to be honest, I'm not a big consumer of fuse as I do things in small scale and quantity. And I made my own machine just to see if I could do it, it was a techical challenge of a kind and I loved making it and seeing it working well. Hope this makes you happy for some time. If you have any specific questions then send me a Personal Mesage, OK? Blaf
  3. Blaf

    BP Rocket

    Hello Amateur Nice Username, hope it doesn't imply your ignorance in the field, he, he. As for the fuse I'm using on rockets, it's my own make (you should check Visco Fuse Machine topic which I started almost 2 years ago) while the one seen on big crackers is commercial type – they call it Bickford type fuse. If I had used the thiner domestic type it wouldn't have looked nice on these big brutes! By the way, their dimensions are L=12cm, diameter is 3cm. Here comes the image... Anyhow, thanks for your feedback...and if you have any questions, just go ahead! Regards from Blaf
  4. Blaf

    BP Rocket

    Hello guys Here you can see the latest production of goodies. As you can see, the leading idea was that widely spread „small is beautiful“ one but if you carefully check the image, you should be able to spot two crackers of enormous size...well, I was carried away somehow. In fact, it was a specific order from my friends son, I had to keep to his specifications. Those small slim lined rockets are stuffed with small sip of flash powder and inevitably explode at apogee while those having green ball header are filled with BP chunks with crackle bits. Nothing spectacular but kids should love it. Unfortunately only one fountain was made due to lack of time...ehm, I know this is not an excuse but I had to say something in my weak defence. Here comes the image.... Blaf
  5. Hello PyroGeorge Just go back to the second page of this topic and you'll see how it looks. Blaf
  6. Hi guys! You might remeber your old member which once upon a time started all this mess....well, whatever the case is, I'm here to check how things're going. How well or bad your machines work? Any new designs on horizon? This corner of the forum has been forgotten for some time which fills my heart with unrest somehow. As for me, one of these days I'll start my machine again (I still have plenty of fuse left from last production) to make some fuse with yarns soaked in KNO3...we'll see how it burns this time... Regards to all! Blaf
  7. I see some of you guys have doubts about details of construction. Someone mentioned a possibility of composition cracks when folding sections of the paper tube. OK, the angle shouldn't be steep, that's obvious and therefore I use ball-pen insert of 6mm diameter. I do bend the tube around this round body (which makes bends pretty round) and thus avoid cracks in still moist composition. Of course, thicker layer of wet meal should do miracles. Blaf
  8. Hello User1 I've got to correct you in this matter - namely, nailpolish remover is not pure acetone, it's mixed with fair quantity of etheric oils and other ingredients and I deeply doubt it's sufficient to get ping-pong balls dissolved. Pure acetone (industrial grade) can be purchased in paint shops or art shops and should cost less than 10 Euro per liter. I bought mine at art shop, it's 98% pure and works perfectly. Blaf
  9. Hello guys I see this has gone far enough...there's a perfect place where you could find everything concerning propane burners and melting techniques. Hope this link helps: http://www.backyardmetalcasting.com/oliverburner1.html Blaf
  10. Just to spice things up, my cotton spools have been soaked in warmed & saturated KNO3 solution for 24 hours and now getting dried so that next production should be performed using "nitrated" yarns... Blaf
  11. Guys, I don't think that adding extra oxidizer would enhance burning properties of fuse cotton layers. It would only tune the burning properties of the fuse core, i.e. fuse would burn slower or faster but we'll still have residue problem. KNO3 should be somehow embedded or soaked into threads...soaking came first into my mind as it sounded logical. Anyhow, I'll try to do it and post my experiences afterwards. I tried once to use synthetic yarns and it worked nicely but leaving rich glowing residue. I didn't like it for obvious safety reasons. Blaf
  12. Hello guys! I've got a few intimate thoughts and conclusions regarding production of the fuse in our home-shops: a.) Die holes shouldn't exceed reasonable diameter for the intended fuse thickness. If you want to make 2mm fuse then upper die should have 2mm hole given that you use appropriately sized yarns. If you make say 4mm upper hole, it doesn't make 4mm thick fuse, no way. It would only mean you have powder spilled around. So, upper one should be carefully sized as well as lower one. b.) If you take a look at commercial Chinese fuse, the green one, you should notice that it burns with almost no residue. We can therefore conclude that they use mixture other than meal powder. It burns really nice, producing lots of sparks and smell is not an distinctive sulphury smell of BP. Yarns are made of pure cotton but I suspect that it's been treated with Potassium Nitrate (or so) solution and dried before winding it on spools. c.) Now as we touched cotton yarns, there's another aspect of quality fuse production. I noticed that slightly „hairy“ inner yarns do much better job at collecting the powder and thus making richer powder core. Definitely, they mustn't be silky smooth! d.) Erniz mentioned a test with powdered sparkler mixed with meal to make a fuse core. It leaves a slag for sure as he said and I believe this should be avoided at any cost, especially when making explod.... ehm, deflagrating devices. We must strive after maximum safety of the end user, don't we? e.) As the fuse is being collected, diameter of the drum increases and consequently stretches the fuse and makes winding steeper. If you check any of proffessional Chinese machines, you should notice that drum diameter is rather large and positioned at fair distance from last pulley. It's done intentionally because larger quantities come out of more consistent thickness and reliability. Also, before it's collected on a big drum, fuse goes over several additional pulleys to keep fuse under certain tension. f.) Application of NC lacquer is done in wide open place so that fuse has time to dry, Chinese usually stretch it across entire yard. As for me, I do it on my balcony which is 7m long and quite sufficient for small lenghts I make. Any comments or ideas? Blaf
  13. Blaf

    BP Rocket

    Hello guys! Just to give you a proof of life, I'm sharing these few images in praise of miniaturization trends. Make it small and beautiful... This is a newly developed rocket engine but of modest size, 5cm in lenght, 8mm inner dia, 2mm wall thickness. Bentonite nozzle with 2mm exhaust hole...and that's it. Other items are there just for comparison purpose. As you can see, nozzle looks like pro-work and performs excellent, of course. Finished bottle rocket with flash charge. It's stabilizer stick is little more than 20cm long and I fired it off-hand with no problem with straight flight. They usually end up at little less than 50m height, no delay comp there so they go bang right after burn-out. I have to admit, I love these little things and my next move should be putting a small payload on top. We'll see... That is it for now... Blaf
  14. Blaf

    New 2008.

    Hello guys Ehmm...this year, I admit, I wasn't too active in this hobby. But anyhow, I made a few devices. - as a tradition, 12 bottle rockets with flash header were made. To be honest with you, half of them just burned at apogee and half exploded quite nicely. All rockets were made the same way (you saw them here before) but this time headers were shorter and end caps were glued with water based wood glue. It just might be that moisture found its way to flash powder inside and moisted it so it just slowly burned. Whatever it was, spectators were for some reason very happy... On other side, I made dozen firecrackers that were complete success! And one metal powder fountain with flash bottom – this particular one burned nicely but as its tube was sprally wound, it couldn't withstand pressure and cracked before burning ended so that flash could not make noise, just a thump and bright flash. This is just to let you know I'm still here, watching and checking your overall acitivity. By the way, whyt did you do these days? Blaf
  15. All of you wondering how to coat your fuse with NC lacquer, there's separate topic on this subject - NC Application with applicator design axplained in detail... Blaf
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