Stars

[Blaf]

Well, those formulae are not my invention....I just picked them up from somewhere so that credit goes to authors but the most important is – they work. All measurements are by weight, of course.

GOLD & SILVER RAIN

Potassium Nitrate 60
Sulphur 6
Charcoal 39
Dextrin 5

Needless to say – everything is ball milled for an hour including Dextrin with two dozens of glass marbles. I pumped them with plastic syringe of 10mm inner diameter and they worked just fine. No prime needed...except – there was no trace of SILVER...while GOLD was pretty rich.

FISH GOLDEN GLITTER (Fish relates to author)

Potassium Nitrate 55
Sulphur 17
Charcoal Airfloat 11
Aluminium bronze 5
Sodium Bicarbonate 7
Dextrin 5

Those were ball milled too then pumped with the same syringe. The effect was quite nice and really glittering! Here I should point out that Charcoal used in both stars was of Oak origin. I know, purists will scream now...but it was the only one available then. Also, Mr. Fish recommends usage of spherical Aluminium 400 mesh...I used what I could get hold of – Al bronze available in a few Art-Shops here and it worked perfectly.

Blaf

[Blaf]

I've just taken this image of pumped stars I made recently. On your left – Gold and Silver Rain stars and on your right – two Reeper Silver stars. Latter are pretty dificult to ignite and I just dipped those two in meal slurry and then sprinkled some dry meal over it...these should be fired from single shot Roman Candle or so.

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REEPER SILVER (Reeper relates to author I believe):

KNO3 64
Sulphur 8,5
Charcoal 12
Aluminium Bronze 10
Dextrin 5

Blaf

[Duvel]

Hi,

You're my new God Blaf , I really like your stars .. 8)
I'm just a lil' kid that only makes fireworks that you can say: Aaah, Oooh.
So no boomers for me .. So that's the way that I like your stars..

Very vague replay, isn't it ?

Duvel

[Blaf]

Ah, Duvel...there you are again!

Thanks for flattering about my greatness..and other stuff. But the truth is - I never played with this type of fireworks as much as you might think. And if you ask me, I'm still beginner in this field so do not praise me too much because I could stick my nose to the clouds one day and never see the Earth again.

Just kidin'...glad to hear your comments, though.

Blaf

[Duvel]

I've just made my first stars too, they're still drying :wink:

[Exhile]

I have experienced that making stars with a high and coarse charcoal content are quiet hard to make,

I myself prefer pumped stars and rolled stars,cut stars are my least favorite since you need a very fine composition wich wil burn quicker+the fact that you don't press it that hard wich makes it burn even faster.

Blaf, have you experimented with flash cored stars?

[Blaf]

Hi Exhile!

To be frank with you, no I haven't tried flash core stars yet. As a matter of fact, all my stars are pumped so far because I'm trying to build a small star roller and I don't like to mess around without one. But what I tried are two-staged pumped stars. First you press some flash (KNO3 based) comp in your syringe...say, 5mm thick and then you press 10mm thick star comp over it. When you finally depress the piston, a beautiful cylinder comes out with a siver tip. These are made one by one unfortunately. When the're dry I paint the flash portion of the star with a layer of nail-polish so that it lights last. And It works in most cases...of course, these cylindrical two-staged stars are definitely suitable for Roman Candles...never tried them in shells so far.

That's it...

Blaf

[Blaf]

Duvel, what happened to your stars? Did you try them? C'mon, open your heart...

Blaf

[Duvel]

Hi Blaf..
I'm so sorry for my late reaction..
But, they worked fine..

I'm making new ones now.. (in the mill) ..if they are finished, I'll tell you more about them.. :wink:

[Moloch]

Here are some pics from my home made stars. All from MP (from groundflowers :? ) But they work just fine . Also, here is the 'device' I use to shoot them up. After I used them like 2-3 times, it explodes, because it becomes very fragile.

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They have fuses, i know. That is because, when i made them, i didnt intend to use them as stars. Ofcourse, i heard everybody talk about stars, but i didnt know how to make them. So from my own idea's, i made these. If you just light the fuse, you get a really bright light. I made them for that purpuse only actually .

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You might notice the black inside of the tube, that is just because i already used it.

Tell me what you think!

Oh and Blaf, i'm going to try your comp. on Reeper Silver very soon .

[edit]
If I dont press the 'Reeper Silver' ones, they gives a lot of gold sparks when i light them. Did this happen to you aswell. Mov. coming soon (movie on un-pressed 'Reeper Silver')
[/edit]

[Blaf]

OK Moloch, this is quite OK as far as I'm concerned. Well, those pressed stars look funny with fuses attached but if they work, why not.
The Reeper Silver formula is really a good one but stars definitely need priming...do not forget to coat them with Meal...maybe even two layers of it. The silver tail is long and bright eventhough they produce fair amount of grey smoke. And finally, I never tried them laying on the ground, I always shot them from some sort of tube.

Just go ahead and post imgs or vids.

Blaf

[Moloch]

Oke, so im a noob in this bit...Why do they need priming? I tryed to shoot one this evening, but it broke into 4 pieces, which had a nice effect, but it wasnt what i was looking for. I shot it up with a bit of thermite (that i ignited with some magnesium powder+green visco) and it worked, so priming was not needed.

[Blaf]

Hmm, it broke into few pieces you say...it shouldn't happen if you use right Dextrin ratio. When those stars are dry they're very hard...so check your formulation again.
As for priming, I shoot them with corned BP and several times I had a blind shot. If they had been in some kind of shell there would have been even more blind stars, I believe. They need priming to ensure 100% ignition because Reeper S. stars contain fairly high percentage of Al. You shot them with (as you say) kind of Mg Thermite which surely produced much higher temperature than simple BP and therefore, there was no need for additional layer of primer. At least it's my opinion...

Blaf

[Moloch]

Yea, I agree with you on the temp. part. But I am sure I used the right amount of dexrine...unless it wasnt dextrine I used...Well, theres only 1 way to find out, google it! My stars are pretty soft right now, if you drop them from 1,5m, they break into tiny pieces...My other stars (without dextrine) were very solid, I can trow with them. But these were made from groundflower BP, so there might be some dextrine in the mix already.

I'm going to look for some dextrine when I go to the supermarket. You will hear the results tomorrow (its a very sunny day here in holland, so the stars will dry quickly).

[yellowcard]

I shoot my star with KMnO4 flash, witch is nice because you have a nice flash with some spark when you shoot the star, and I think the temp. is high so the stars will ignite very good. I hadn't had a blind shot.

Going to light a star now, it's 5 grams made following this composition:
Potassium nitrate.................................42
Sulfur............................................18
Mealpowder........................................18

cya, yellow :wink:

ps. Soon you'll find some vids of stars from me made with the following comp. ( I am going to try it )

KNO3 64
Sulphur 8,5
Charcoal 12
Aluminium 10
Dextrin 5

sorry for the bad English :?
[edit by Tyneman:
The first composition worked verry bad, now I will make the second.

And here is a video of a normal, simple mealpowder star of 5.5 gram. I shoot it up with 1.5 gram KMnO4:Al:S = 5:4:1 flash powder, wich is verry nice as you can see :wink: .
Video:
http://rapidshare.de/files/20104494/HPIM0439.mpg.html

This renders everything under this text useless. Why post the compositions twice?[/edit]

EDIT: the stars following this comp.
Potassium nitrate.................................42
Sulfur............................................18
Mealpowder........................................18
are very bad. I am now going to make this star:
KNO3 64
Sulphur 8,5
Charcoal 12
Aluminium 10
Dextrin 5

:arrow: EDIT2 :

I made the KNO3:Al = 6:4 star, witch didn't worked. Wat i did: I added some charcoal and a very little bit of Fe2O3. This worked very good ! Ik burned very bright and with some sparks. I think I will make a star of it once, and I will make a certain clear composition were you can see how much Carcoals and Fe2O3 I exactly added.

Yellowcard

[Blaf]

OK, we have to attach some name to this type of star, evethough it's nothing new there. I'll tell you what I did and you can refine or develop it furtherly. Mixture is simple:

70% meal
10% Al flitters
20% fire gel

No Dextrin was used here as I wanted to see how it works without it. Fire gel, I suppose you know this stuff which comes packed in plastic tubes. I mixed everything in ceramic coffee-cup and left it for a few minutes so that gel evaporated a bit. Then I filled my smallest plastic syringe and pumped some stars. At start, they were prety sticky at touch and I left them to dry on piece of wood. They had a grainy Al look and felt rough around surface. After a day, they dried and I lit a few with no problem. One of them crumbled when I pressed it hard....so maybe some Dextrin could be handy.

I expect further developments from you guys...

Blaf

[Moloch]

So what is this fire gel stuff exactly? I have seen some fuse beeing made with silicone (think it was at frogfot...), I suppose you could use it for your stars. When they are elastic (cause of the silicone), they wont break up very easily (I have had some trouble with crumbling stars). It might be a good idea.

When I know what fire gel is, ill try it .

[Blaf]

Ah, fire gel....well, I didn't know what it is either but I found it in my supermarket one day and took it immediately for experimentation. It comes packed in a funny fat tube which looks like containing hair-gel, the stuff you put in your hair to stiffen it. It even looks like it when you uscrew the cap and squeeze it a bit. It smells very nice, slightly reminding of alcohol or so. It's primary use is to start fire at fireplaces without using quantities of paper or so. You just squeeze some of it, say...2-3 cm on piece of wood and light it...it burns with pale flame with bluish envelope while gel slowly melts down. No bad smell comes out while burning and all in all I like it. Before this I used those white fire-starting cubes based on petroleum but this is much cleaner. Besides, you can mix stars with it....

Blaf

[Oscar]

Have you fire one already or do you know what the effect is?

[Warcore]

Here are some Core/stars that i made.

Pink.
Weg gehaalt

Orange.
Weg gehaalt
In the orange core/stars i forgot the dextrine, thats why the crumble.

Today i have tested my first Italian shell, it was a success!
The shell was 3cm round, and 5cm long.
There was 18 of those pink stars in it, and 3 grams of whistle mix in a tube for the core.

It shoots approx. 50 meters high when exploded with a huge burst of pink stars!
It was seriously beautiful!

I didnt made some pics or a video (Stupid, stupid,stupid).
Next time i will.

[RSDZ]

Wow 50 meter high stars, I'd like to see the video next time :wink:

[Warcore]

I've got some new stars.
Blue this time!
The star weigh 0,40 grams!

Weg gehaalt

[Blaf]

Nice pumped stars Warcore!

Compliments for your first cylinder shell that went off so well. Movie you posted is little blurred but your star burned seriously blue. Congratulations!

Blaf

[Duvel]

Where the **** are Warecore's pictures.. ?! :)

[Nitroglycerin]

He has deleted them I think it was good. Probably justitia wil be able to see it as evidence, and I think Warcore doesn't want to go to jail and stuff.