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Jumping Cracker


Blaf

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Hi guys!

I don't know how you call this type of the cracker...the most appropriate name in my opinion would be the jumping cracker.

It is made of craft paper strip 6cm wide and some 25cm in lenght...more lenght, more cracks (or jumps, heh!).
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The secret is a line of wetted meal (I applied it with a small paint brush) which goes along longer edge of the strip which is then wound several times and glued.
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It looks pretty much like quick match tube. One end is then bent, thus making an end chamber.
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Whole tube is now zig-zagged as many times as the lenght allowes and a piece of fuse sticked into oposite open end.
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A piece of yarn or thin rope is then tightly wound around centre and cris-crossed around each segment of the snake-looking device. It is then left to dry for a day or so.
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When lit (and thrown), each segment loudly pops (or bangs, depending on how much paper is used) and has a nasty habit to impredictably jump around (hence the name) changing direction with each bang. Very nice effect I would say, eventhoug you never know where to hide! But this feature just gives a slice of charm to it, doesn't it?

You can't miss with this one, believe me...

Blaf

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Hey Blaf,

I think you can refer it as "7 snapper"?
we call it in dutch " 7 klapper" i'd never thougt to see it or hear from it again for that matter.
we use to buy this kind a firework's for the holliday's

I have to say, beautifully done.

Greeting's

Nick

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The rope is tightened but not too strong Oscar. But if you leave it to dry enough it shouldn't be a problem...the blody stuff should burn through anyway.
As for flash powder, I don't really know what to expect. Maybe it's too fast for this type of gadget so that all segments would burn in a snap.
Heh, Visco - no, I did not try at all...but still collecting various parts to assemble my own simple Visco machine - I picked idea elsewhere on the Net.

I'm running to aassemble my latest BP rocket, sorry!

Blaf

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I presume your meal powder was KNO3+S+C


I believe you don't understand the term "meal powder" compleatly,

let me explain to you different types of blackpowder with the same ratio's

First we have green powder, this is a very slow type of blackpowder with the chemicals rawly mixed with each other

then we have meal powder, this is green powder that was wettened with some water and ballmilled

At last we have black powder, this is meal powder that was ballmilled for a long time, wettened again and pressed in pucks with a consistency of 1.7 gram/cm^3.

All of these comps have their own uses so as you can see, even BP isn't that easy 8)
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Exhile, don't be soo rigorous about the issue...

Lord of Dark, yes, meal that I mention here is 75:15:10 mixture of (of course, what else...) KNO3, C, S ball-milled for two hours. The powder is consistency of talc powder after that. I took two small spoons of it, tossed into a coffee cup and wetted with fair amount of water. No alcohol was used this time. And so, I got a thick slurry that's usually used to make a black-match with addition of Dextrin...which is in this case omitted. So, Dextrin is not present here. It is basically a quick-match, just bent to make separate curved chambers. You can apply two layers of this meal slurry if you intend to make thicker tube.

Oscar, my devices were made of moderately sized paper strip (6-7cm X 25-30cm) as I didn't want to make a lot of noise...but if you ask me, 16 X 30cm sounds too much for this type of stuff.

Anyhow, I wish you luck guys!

Blaf

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  • 1 month later...

To wetten with water doesn't mean all soaked wet, it has to be a bit wet, so don't put 100 ml water in you're ball mill, you can spray it with a "flower shower" (I don't know what's the English word for it) this is a pic.:


and after ball milling you have to dry the MP, after you have done that you can compress it to BP.

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Nitro, that's the right stuff indeed! I regularily use a small sprinkler remained from nasal drops (you know, when you get a flu or something, your nose gets stuck and magic drops clear it so that you can breathe freely again...) as I never make large quantities of anything pyro. Well, it's OK for now but if I ever increase production, one of those large sprinklers will do for sure...

Blaf

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Maybe, but just maybe your device wasn't squeezed in the middle as tight as it should have been. Try to tight up the rope...I can see no other reasons unfortunately. The burn speed of your powder shouldn't make problems except increasing or decreasing the frequency of cracks. Sorry, that's the only diagnostics I could make from this far...

Blaf

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  • 1 month later...

I also made three crackers yesterday they dont look as nice as yours blaf but i do hope they will work.
I only have made em a bit to small 20 cm on 6 cm so i only have 5 snaps if they work but well see.
I did make one mistake and therefore i think they wont work and that is that i drowned my meal accidently i have such a nice plant spray and i only sprayed once in my disch where the meal was in it but it still looked very dry so i sprayed a bit more but unfortenaly the water al collected beneath my meal so when i tilted my dish a bit i saw a lot of water under my meal :cry:
So i tried to get most of it out by holding a tishui(somthing to whipe your nose with)in the water and this absorbed most but also a litle bit of meal.
The only thing im wondering about now if the kno3 would be disolved in the water and absorbed by my tishui?
But i put in enough so that the water accident schouldn't be that much of an influence i hope but well see this weekend then they should be properly dry.

Pirate

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You should have mixed a small percentage of Alcohol with water. It has something to do with surface tension of the water and when you add alcohol it softens so that meal particles could soak up. Try that next time...

Blaf

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Ok il let them dry for a while, this evening im going away for the weekend so then i have to leave them for later anyway so by monday they wel be dry i hope.
I also used water/alcohol for my second try and that went much much better i only am surprised at how many meal you put in, therefore i think that my first three crackers wont work but ill test them anyway.
I also wil try to put a picture online from one cracker he looked kind off nice so ill share it with the rest of you guys and if i can find out how il post a video of the effect if there's one that workes offcoarse :D

Pirate

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