Blaf

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

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

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

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

Hello PyroGeorge Just go back to the second page of this topic and you'll see how it looks. Blaf

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I should certainly try that very soon. Meanwhile, I made something like crackling balls, simple star composition with smallest eggs I had at hand and little more Dextrine, poured into small paper cups, piece of fuse added on top and left to dry. When ignited, it produced lots of orange sparks (as it ment to be) nicely spiced with white flashes and cracks. I must admit, eventhough the efect was too short, I liked it. Blaf

It should be 270 Mesh according to shipping declaration... why? Blaf

Hello guys Let us get back to this neglected topic: Dragon Eggs or elsewhere known as Crackling Microstars are small lttle chunks making nice loud cracks. Precautions are must as Lead compounds are toxic... The composition is well known and I'm not going to elaborate it here. In fact there are a few very similar mixtures, two of them utilizing Lead Tetraoxide (Red Minium) while third one uses Bizmuth Trioxide. Those of you keeping track of my earlier posts could see that Minium is almost impossible to get hold of nowadays, but me being lucky, purchased two kilos while it was still available. And now, since I'm in posession of other essential ingredients, I dared to enter the Land of Dragons, unknown to me by now. The formula I used included Minium, Potassium Nitrate, Sulphur, little Al and NC lacquer in following ratios by weight: Author: Lancaster MgAl - 17 Lead Tetraoxide (Pb3O4) - 44 KNO3 - 4 Sulfur - 4 Copper (II) Oxide – 31 NC lacquer – 5% Chemicals (except Minium!!!) are mixed dry first and then NC lacquer is added. Thorough mixing with wooden stick is necessary here until it all becomes a thick soup. Then, Minium is added and nicely mixed in, little Acetone helps here to maintain consistency of the mixture and keeping Minium dust down. By further mixing it dries gradually and finally reaches dough thickness. Then, it could be granulated (as I did partially) through rough screen or poured and flattened on waxed paper (I did it too) and left to dry. Later, when it hardens, it could be crushed (corned) into smaller pieces and sieved. I did just a little crushing and some bits are pretty big but I don't care for now. See the image... I tried smaller ones by positioning a few of them on flat surface of my test desk and lighting it with my torch lighter. Eggs do not burn at first but they heat up instead, changing colour from dim to bright orange. It happens quickly, though and after a second they burst with flash and sharp crackling sound. I must admit, I like it eventhough I expected much louder cracks. Maybe other recipes work better, don't kow yet until I try them. Anyhow, take a look at short video... Crackle.wmv Blaf

Ehmmm, you're right about level of noise. I presume it's because larger one made so much more noise that probably overloaded electronic circuits of my camera audio input. Both shots were made from the same distance so it must be that... Blaf

Here are two recent videos I made this morning. The first one is larger cracker of 8cm in lenght, 8mm inner dia, 2mm wall thickness. Of course, it's gone off loudly... CrackerB.wmv The other one presents the Micro Cracker you've seen in my previous posts. Note that video is zoomed, deflagration took place at the same piece of rock as the one before... CrackerM.wmv I couldn't resist sharing this with you guys. It's not that I did not enjoy, on the contrary... Blaf

How much, how much... It's miniature one indeed and if we distract bottom tissue plug (5mm) and fuse tissue plug (5mm) from overall lenght, we have only 2cm of hollow tubing. Bottom plug is pulled inside at least 5mm which makes the inner space even smaller...say 15mm. So, we have 15mm x 3mm of volume - exactly that much powder is inside. And I have no doubt it will make a fine little bang. Blaf

Ah, there you are Tynemann! In this petite beauty I used notorious flash mixture including 70% Potassium Perchlorate and 30% German Dark aluminium. Other mixtures, I'm afraid, would not rupture small chasing like this one. With other flashes it would surely need much tighter confinement. Blaf

As you can see, Crackers Inc. is working its brains out on miniaturization. Inner dia is 3mm, lenght 2,5cm, wall thickness cca 1mm, tissue ramed at both ends. Didn't have a chance to try it yet, though... Blaf

I think this is worth telling you guys. This morning I went to my shooting range and brought some newest products with me. Nothing specially new, just a few crackers filled with that Perc/Al flash I recently mixed. Two of those were moderately sized items, one was 6cm long with 7mm inner dia while other was shorter but thicker little lady. As you might expect, both exploded....uups, deflagrated with loud, sharp bang releasing fair amount of smoke and debris. But the most interesting one wasn't even completely finished. Namely, third tube was closed at one end while other was gaping open. I've poured some flash, filled half of the tube (L=4cm / Dia=5mm), positioned it vertically in small pile of debris, added some 7cm of my fuse, lit it and retreated to where my fellow shooter was standing. Fuse hissed on open for a few seconds then smoked a bit from tube opening....for a second I thought this was a failure...but it deflagr...what a Hell, it exploded quite nicely. Like it was thoroughly confined! I'm sure, the tube could be opened at both ends and this flash would still rupture it. And of course I enjoyed it, what kind of a question that is? Blaf

Ah, end caps... you can use several different aproaches to this and I'm sure any would work with this super fast burning Perc./Al flash. I've got an impression that no end caps were needed at all! Their only purpose is to hold flash powder inside casing and that's all. You can ram little crumble of tissue paper for bottom side, roll short & narrow strip of the same around fuse to inner tube diameter and stick (after you fill it with some flash) it more or less firmly to open end of the tube and later, apply little wood glue over those tissue parts. Or, the way I did it here, you can bend inner layers of the tube to close bottom end and upper end around fuse. Other approaches call for kitty liter bottom plug (rammed) but I don't think it's good idea since bottom is being ehmmm...accelerated of sort and could hit someone. Hope this suffices for now. Blaf