Nov 5th 2006, your displays

Thought members might like to see some of my Nov 5th stuff

Phil, thanks for posting these - they are a work of art... On looking at the pics I just sat back and smiled...

This is my tribute to one of the 'tree' set pieces in the Weingart book - it's about 4 feet from top to bottom.

Mr Weingart has some truly weird and wonderful set pieces (thinking of the Snake and Butterfly contraption...) it would be great to see your lancework in action.

Is the cone real? I have never quite made them work that well, it would be great to hear the formula and method...

Edited by BrightStar, 01 November 2006 - 06:16 AM.

Hi Brightstar,

Yes it's real. I agree they are trickier than you might think. When I'm confident I have a good and reproducable method, I'll put it on my website, but at the risk of going off topic, I'll say the following:

Formula - from Weingart. Potassium Nitrate 24 parts, 40 mesh charcoal 4 parts Sulphur 4 parts Iron filings 10 parts. Sift three times - no milling required.

Case - laminate from many layers of segment shapes. Has got to be thick (maybe 4mm in this size) as there is alot of pressure and the top gets very hot.

Ram a clay choke in the top 10mm of the case and drill 1/4inch.

Pack in comp until nearly full - you can't really ram it.

Finish off with a disk of cardboard glued in and then about 8mm of plaster of paris for good measure. Fuse with a bit of quickmatch and a turn of blue touchpaper.

I really like (proper) cones because of the way the plume of sparks builds up as the device burns...

Phil, I really like your tree of gerbs set piece, I'm sure it will look equally impressive in action!
Can you give any details on how you attached the gerbs to the frame?
It's a very tidy method, does it lend itself to being reusable?

Hi James - Thanks for the comments.

Yes, the hope is that the frame will be reusable.

My standard gerbs are rolled on a 1/2" former and conveniently come out to just under the internal diameter of a piece of 22mm plumbing pipe.

I cut several short lengths, 90 degrees at one end and 45 degrees at the other. I then drilled 2 holes in the 45 degree end and screwed them to the post with a long and short screw. The gerbes are a push fit in these 'stubs' of pipe. I put a turn of self-adhesive aluminium tape around them for extra security.

Hope this makes sense!

For my display I have the following planned:
mixture of charcoal (first so the charcoal sparks are visible) then aluminium fountains with some 3mm pieces of flying fish which act similar to coloured microstars.
10 1/4" nozzleless rockets with +10% al atomized in the fuel for a silver effect all fused together about 7 seconds apart
2x 3 shot cakes with 3/4" tubes, mini shells which contain some crackling microstars and others with charcoal based microstars, also some flying fish in another
4x 1" shells with blue falling leaf fuse
5x 2" starmines (bag-mine type) with 2 charcoal based, 2 aluminium based and 1 with bleser reds
at least 10x 1/2" rockets with 2" cylindrical headers, mixtures of perc based red, charcoal and aluminium effects, and slightly bigger crackling microstars which seem to crackle longer than normal ones, maybe some with 1/4" salutes in.
a few 1/2" single shot candles which I might decide to fuse together to make a big cake
2x 4" willow effect shells for the finale, fused together to go off 2 seconds apart

If I still have some time near to nov 5th I plan to make a silver & gold waterfall too.

OK, as I rarely stick to my plans, the display at the moment will be:
less 1/4" nozzleless rockets, as they seem to be a bit unreliable, and are affected by the wind a lot, only got 3 of those
A few single shot 3/4" tubes with various effects, and a 3 shot 3/4" cake, some 3/8" 3 shot cakes with chrys#6 and red stars, another 4 shot charcoal based one in a fan configuration.
4 x 2" shells with mixed effects
1 x 5" shell with chrys#6 20mm stars (weighs 190g, BP on vermiculite, 35g lift)
A few 1/2" rockets with 3" spherical mixed headers (still finishing those off so not 100% sure of the numbers)
A 5 tube steel waterfall with colour changing to blue, yellow, green then crackles
A few 1" and 2" starmines with various mixed effects (and my silver formula I am testing) and 1" crackle shell.
A small fountain collection with iron, aluminium, coloured (effects fuse pieces) and crackling microstars.

My syringe/star pump for the 1/2" stars broke so there will be no 1/2" candles!

Pictures and videos will be here soon

hehehe....hearing (and seeing) all your plans for Nov 5th make my simple 'display' look quite crude in comparison.

I made 10 visco rockets today, I tried my best to make them with a small bp report, however due to limited time (and resources) wasn't able to test them. 9/10 flew and 2/10 had a successful report (if you count exploding about 4m up successful)

I managed to fuse seven together in a simple stand so that they fired with a 2 second delay between each.

This was my first ever attempt of a display and as a begginer and I can't wait for the next
Plans are starting to form for new years eve ....
Thanks for the great info by the way!

hehehe....hearing (and seeing) all your plans for Nov 5th make my simple 'display' look quite crude in comparison.

Well you got to start somewhere, I'll bet it was more satisfying to make those than open a box of commercial ones. Better success rate than I used to have.

My attempts this year were, er, interesting. the weekend of the 5th is a useful test opportunity for more adventurous stuff. With the aid of two saxons and a cone I found my BP is far far too fast...

In response to requests here is a video of the 'tree piece'...

Tree Piece

I was pretty pleased with it. The saxons need to be a bit longer or start later but for a first go, not too bad.

The other stuff went well too, apart from my stingers which were a bit variable!

(sorry about the leaves on the left hand side - not much space in my garden )

Here's a five tube waterfall I made as well...

Waterfall

Particularly like the splashing!

Edited by phildunford, 06 November 2006 - 12:36 PM.

Excellent stuff. Keep up the good work. Were the waterfall sticks nailed horizontally to a piece of wood, rather than hanging free?

That looks awesome

My display went down pretty well, had 14 fountains which were going for the duration of the display, with candles and various mines (various stars and effects fuses) going off in the background, near the end I had a couple of smoke devices emitting a pretty thick low-lying cloud, which coupled with a series of star mines emerging through the smoke looked really nice. Finished it off with a 4 Benstar Rockets, which for £2 each were really impressive!

Yes, there were 5 tubes fixed horizontally on a board about 3 feet wide. I think they are less likely to get damaged in rigid fixing like this, although they do look better hanging from a rope i think, you get more movement.

Fired a Brocks one (many years ago of course) that was rope mounted and had about 30 tubes spaced about a foot apart - quite a sight!

Lovely tree! ...and lasted a nice length of time as well.

So that's how quick match is supposed to go!? Wish mine had a bit more "get up and go" instead of "Light up and go out!"

Yet another thing I have to perfect. (There are so many!)

I know I promised videos or at least pictures a while ago, but as my broadband supplier unexpectedly shut down, it could be any time up to the middle of february before I have anything fast enough and reliable enough to upload a 20Mb+ video.

On pay as you go dial up at the moment and as I'm moving house, its not worth upgrading to broadband (15 days to start a connection, 15 days to close a connection, and moving in january).

Hopefully will get things up and running, as I have a video of my 5" shell I would like to upload.

Thanks for being patient!