Skylighter Fireworks Making

A week ago we asked you for your most “burning” questions about making black powder for fireworks. To be honest, we were completely overwhelmed by the response as we received over 260 comments and questions. We had no idea that so many people were having problems with making black powder. Since BP is the most [...]

This is the time of the year when all of us start making black powder for our 4th of July projects. And with Skylighter’s incredible deals on potassium nitrate this year, now you can make BP cheaper than ever.

Since we’ve been swamped with questions on making black powder, we figgered it was time to compile the answers into a recording for you.

We’re putting together a “Podcast” with solutions to every black powder problem you may have.

Making meal or black powder coated rice hulls is one of the cornerstones of shell making. Ned Gorski’s latest project shows you how.

Ned’s ball shells are consistent prize winners in fireworks competitions. Fact is, this article is really a collection of some of his important secrets to building his trademark, spectacularly-beautiful shells.

If you make your BP coated rice hulls well and the same way every time, you’ll be much closer to having reliable aerial shells that burst incredibly well every time.

Recently there has been a spirited discussion on the merits of using electric matches to fire homemade fireworks shells at our club shoots in order to improve safety. I belong to The Crackerjacks, a mid-Atlantic fireworks club. This use of ematches would mark a change from the club’s traditional approach of attaching a length of [...]

Charley stored all the fireworks he made in a big chest-type magazine.

Right out in the middle of his backyard.

It was the middle of a nice July afternoon in 1996. And Charlie was in the mood to tell some secrets…

And I was a fireworks newbie itching to find out whatever I could from this old fireworks pro.

By Harry Gilliam

Okay, I ran across this great game in the Washington Post (August 17, 2001). Click the link for a pdf of the article.

Without going into all the rules and gory details, the game is played by tossing a steel slug 60 feet towards a slanted mud bank in order to hit the center ring (the bull’s-eye). One of the ways you make points is by hitting a triangularly-shaped paper packet of so-called “gunpowder.” The packets are called “mechas.” More on those in a minute.

Who’d a thunk it?

It reminds me of horseshoes, kinda sorta. But mo-bettah, because something actually explodes when you hit it. And of course, as you will see in this video, because it is actually encouraged to play this wonderful sport while drinking

At some point fairly early in every pyro career we realize we need to be able to make good black powder (BP) from scratch. BP is used in aerial fireworks shells as lift and burst powder. It is also used, in one way or another, in almost every other pyrotechnic device and component–mines, stars, black match, and the list goes on.

Obviously, in this introduction to rockets, we won’t be discussing military rockets, which have a long and rich history. Neither will we be discussing rockets designed for space exploration, which we’ll leave to NASA.

But leaving those aside, there is a wide variety of rocketry that folks can and do explore for purely recreational purposes. Such rockets include model rockets, amateur rockets, high-powered rockets, and fireworks rockets. The purpose of this article is to discuss fireworks rockets. However, in order to distinguish fireworks rockets from the other types, we will briefly mention and define each of these.

“I often use the word “joy” when describing fireworks.

It is a considered word, deliberate in choice. Not just amusement, entertainment, or astonishment, but joy.

Our art makes us all into children again for awhile. We become one in our experience for the moment, lost in the sound and color and light.

“4-ounce” rockets? What does that mean? Well, if you’re interested in the history of the term and some further background information on rockets in general, you can find it in the Introduction to Rockets article. But if you’re more interested in getting started, let’s go!

Specifically, in this project we are going to make a 4-ounce (1/2-inch ID), nozzled, cored, stick-stabilized, black-powder skyrocket with a bag-shell heading.