7 replies to this topic

[Farnet]

Hi Guys,

Firstly sorry for being offline all summer, work issues can be a pain for your social life.

I have been talking to my Boss regarding waterfalls and fancied making one at the weekend, but looking at the 'Fireworks P&P manual' the composition looks remarkably similar to Flash and I'm a bit nervous on whether this is a sensible composition for me yet, as I have made about 4gms of flash in the past and have a huge respect for that mixture.

Any ideas or pointers.

Farnet

[Creepin_pyro]

They are essentially a flash formula but with very coarse (read hard to ignite) Al so not really in the same realm of sensetivity. I would still treat them with respect in regard to not ramming them hard and making sure there are no issues with badly consolidated grains so none go pop.

There is already some discussion of them on here and Phil has a nice tutorial if you're interested:

http://www.pyrosocie...ffect-firework/

http://www.thegreenm.../waterfall.html

And just for good measure, here's what can happen when you confine enough waterfalls in a shipping container and set them off. I think you'd have to try pretty hard to replicate this on a small scale so I wouldn't worry

[Mortartube]

They can be rammed with 8 LIGHT blows of a mallet per increment. Add a few percent of yacht varnish to the mix to help it stick together in the tube. Keep the mix in a container within a bin bag whilst working to prevent the varnish curing too quickly. Have everything ready to go before mixing in the varnish. To ram you need around 20% or more of the Al to be coarse flitters. The best method is to put masking tape over one end of the tube. Drop in an Antimony white star (This will help light it) then ram the tube in small increments. As I Said, LIGHT blows. When done, prime with a hot prime and put a capping on the tube.

[MDH]

Is it really even necessary to ram it? I have made waterfalls before out of barium nitrate / aluminum / paraffin compositions and all of them were pressed, not rammed.

[Mortartube]

I am sure that they can be pressed, but with very light duty cases, I would imagine you will need a mould or a very gentle pressing on an arbor press or similar. I only have experience of ramming them.

[Farnet]

Thanks for all of that, I will try this in the next week or two, and will post my findings :-)

[helix]

Here's a waterfall comp from Hardt:

Potassium chlorate 52
Potassium nitrate 9
Red gum 5
Bright aluminium 17
Aluminium flitters 17

the mixture is damped with appprox 10% alcohol and the cases charged using funnel and rod.

There is also a detailed article in one of the Pyrotechnica papers, I think written by Mike Swisher, using a similar comp. The ends of the cases were from memory rammed with sawdust so that they could be pierced/ drilled through the ends and a wire threaded through.

[Mumbles]

I've made a few of these. Pyrotechnica XII is the relavent issue. Helix pretty much covered the whole of it though. 1" of sawdust rammed in the end so that it can be pierced and hung with wire. The formula is the same one given in Hard essentially, but in the original production sized components:

Potassium Chlorate - 12 (52.2%)
Potassium nitrate - 2 (8.7%)
Red gum - 1 (4.3%)
Bright Al (#810) - 4 (17.4%)
Al Flitters (#813) - 4 (17.4%)

I've always just filled them by tamping. Load the composition in, compress and lightly ram the composition in by hand with the doel.

Below is the formula I like to use. I got it from the Westech manual, but I'm unsure where it originated.

Potassium Perchlorate - 4
Al medium fine - 1
Al medium - 1/2
Al coarse - 1/2
Red Gum - 1

I used a coarse bright flake for the medium fine, -100+325 mesh. I used -30 mesh flake for the medium, and +30 mesh for the coarse. It was nice, had about a 7-10 meter fall. It is sort of a gerbe composition, so the individual tubes fly around a little bit. Shifting some of the finer Al to coarse flake should settle it down a bit.