13 replies to this topic

[Arthur Brown]

What is the usual scale for lancework? I could be needing 40+ letters in March prob for 50m viewing, How many lances are usually needed per letter?

[cplmac]

At a little over 100m I use 6" (16cm) spacing. Depends a lot on how big your letters are.

[booom1]

At a little over 100m I use 6" (16cm) spacing. Depends a lot on how big your letters are.

Matter of interest, what do you use as a back board and how do you fix your lances to it? I had been told that a pin through the back of the board was one method. Glueing another. But what glue is best?

I played around with some lancres recently, and tried to use Superglue, but I think it was just too damn cold for it to set quickly enough. Still sticks yer skin together in no time though!

What kind of match do you use and how do you fix it to the lance end?

Cheers
Keith Booom!

[cplmac]

It really depends on what I'm making, I did an 8 foot diameter smiley face with 3/4" flexible PVC, I do flags and some other stuff with plywood. When I use a solid mount like the plywood I always paint it black. As for securing it also depends on the type of lance you are using. The lance we used to get up until this year I would just run screws through the board or PVC and you could screw the lance onto the end of the screw. One end of the lance was very much like a cigarette butt. This year we used nails and hot glue because the new style lance wouldn't screw on properly. I always fuse lance with medium sticky match and use foil tape to secure it. The sticky tape on it's own without the foil will have a somewhat reliable 10 percent failure rate, in my experience.

[booom1]

It really depends on what I'm making, I did an 8 foot diameter smiley face with 3/4" flexible PVC, I do flags and some other stuff with plywood. When I use a solid mount like the plywood I always paint it black. As for securing it also depends on the type of lance you are using. The lance we used to get up until this year I would just run screws through the board or PVC and you could screw the lance onto the end of the screw. One end of the lance was very much like a cigarette butt. This year we used nails and hot glue because the new style lance wouldn't screw on properly. I always fuse lance with medium sticky match and use foil tape to secure it. The sticky tape on it's own without the foil will have a somewhat reliable 10 percent failure rate, in my experience.

Thanks for all that. Do you foil over all of the tapematch - i.e. the bit between the lances as well as over the tip?

I always thought the shop-bought lancework used the brown paper covered QM. Is that the case? Is it just too fiddly to use?

[Arthur Brown]

All forms of sticky match are very susceptible to sparks! it's only sellotape between BP and the outside world! The pipe of QM is much more protective. Foiled match more protected still.

I'm planning to have the fire writing as the opening item not the closing - largely to have the most spark sensitive item out of the way first!

[cplmac]

The foil tape goes over the fuse to lance section only. I guess you could wrap the rest of the sticky in regular old foil or kraft paper if you want but we've never had a problem with premature ignition with one exception. We cued a 5 gallon fuel b**b that was ten feet in front of it a little early. In fact about ten minutes early, and that would have blown foil wrap right off anyways. DO NOT use quickmatch. It's way to fast and violent and WILL tear itself off a large percentage of your lances. If you are going to open the show with it I wouldn't bother covering the sticky match at all.

[booom1]

The foil tape goes over the fuse to lance section only. I guess you could wrap the rest of the sticky in regular old foil or kraft paper if you want but we've never had a problem with premature ignition with one exception. We cued a 5 gallon fuel b**b that was ten feet in front of it a little early. In fact about ten minutes early, and that would have blown foil wrap right off anyways. DO NOT use quickmatch. It's way to fast and violent and WILL tear itself off a large percentage of your lances. If you are going to open the show with it I wouldn't bother covering the sticky match at all.

Excellent. Cheers. I had wondered about quickmatch. I had a wee go a while back and the QM did indeed pull off. Any recommended suppliers? Low smoke?

Interesting variation on framing here, but hit heavy on resources!!!!
http://www.firework....s/lancework.htm

[cplmac]

I don't know about low smoke all of our lance is very smoky. The wind does matter, nothing is worse than having a time consuming lance piece get washed out by a non-cooperative wind. I'm stateside so I don't know about UK suppliers for lance, but probably any display firework supplier would have it.

[Mumbles]

I think he was asking about scale of letters. I think the general consensus is to make a 2' by 3' rectangle (65cm by a meter tall), with a bar across the middle horizontally. Some vertical or diagonal cross bars may be needed for certain letters. The general 2:3 ratio width to height is fairly standard. I've seen them up to 4' x 6' before.

[Arthur Brown]

The original show design has morphed a bit an may well use flaming rope instead of lances.

A bundle of old rope and a can of fuel costs less than lances AND means I can minimise the NEQ in transport so have fewer problems.

Also a roll of chicken wire from B&Q is so cheap and easy to assemble compared with pinning and fusing lances.

Anyone have a good formula for coloured flame fuel?

[chemicalwazi]

Have to disagree about the QM.

For large scale lancework say 4ft numbers (E.g. Big 30/40/50 for birthdays) we have been very successful using QM.

Method - bearing in mind we use tubes which are primed with BP. The QM is stripped back and laid on the top of the tube, then 1. A 1/2" wide strip of gummed tape is wrapped over and stuck down to the tube. 2. Another 1/2" wide strip of gummed tape is wrapped around the tube and over the tails of the first tape.
3. Repeat steps 1 & 2.

We have never had a failure yet and you get simultaneous ignition of all your lances!

[cplmac]

The QM we have is way to violent for lancework, but if you can make it work more power to you. Sticky match is about the same price so we are pretty content using sticky.

[Mumbles]

In my very brief experience with lancework, the poorer quality bundle match quickmatch from precocious pyrotechnics seems to work fine. It still quickmatches, but doesn't have the violence most does. It is about the only application I would prefer it in. I use it as leaders as well, even though it is more expensive simply because it is more readily available, and want to save my good flat 5 strand stuff.