“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.

Here’s a diagram. You’ll see references to it throughout this project.

Black Powder Rocket Diagram

Half-inch rockets are small enough that they don’t use huge amounts of materials. They can be made quickly, and can be flown in many back yards.

But they are large enough to be really impressive, with that black-powder-rocket “whoosh”? as they launch. They can also carry a nice payload of stars or other garnitures into the air. Working with them will provide plenty of experimentation, experience, research and development, and plain old fire-working fun. This is one “Quarter Pounder” you won’t have to drive to McDonalds to get!

Continue Reading: 4-Ounce Black Powder Rockets…

Realgar & Orpiment

My old pal Bob Winokur has been doing some pyro-sleuthing and came up with a small stash of two pyro chemicals which are largely unobtanium now: Realgar and Orpiment, both arsenic compounds.

He was able to supply us with a little of each. You can order it below.

This has been an interesting process. Both of these chemicals are naturally occurring minerals. They are often found together, as you can see in the photo below:

The reddish crystals are realgar, and the yellow stuff is orpiment. They occur together and are very close to the same chemistry.

The powder we have was produced by first harvesting crystals of both chemicals and then grinding them into very fine powder. Suffice it to say, the whole process is mostly manual, expensive, and time consuming, and not much of it is available. To my knowledge, neither of these chemicals is produced synthetically in the US, if anywhere.

Realgar was most commonly used to produce white flames in fireworks before powdered metals such as aluminum, magnesium, and titanium became widely available. It was also used with potassium chlorate to make impact explosives. I have heard of crackling stars being made with it as well.

I do not suggest that you come to rely on either realgar or orpiment for any formulas that you want to make on a regular basis. They are both poisonous, of course, and I don’t know if we can or will continue to stock either chemical. Best to consider both of these as exotic pyro antiques, more a curiosity than a practical ingredient.

CAUTION: Both realgar and orpiment are sulfur compounds and will explode when mixed with chlorates. They are both arsenic compounds and highly poisonous. The resulting ash from burned pyro compositions is likely to contain water soluble arsenic oxide, which is considerably more toxic than either of the sulfides.

In addition to the information listed with each chemical on Skylighter.com, here is some historical info Dr. Winokur worked up on these two very old pyro chemicals.

You should treat the units of measure given in the tables below as parts by weight, unless otherwise noted. They do not necessarily add up to 100 in each column.

Continue Reading for Formulations Containing Orpiment & Realgar…

This nifty new project shows you two methods for making mines.

To make this project, you need:

• The supplies shown in the project below.
• Black powder, which you can make or buy locally. If you want to make your own, check out the Red Gum Black Powder project.
• Stars. This particular mine is small, and uses 3/8″ stars. The two projects for making Rubber Stars are perfect for these, but any small stars will work.

The mortars you use for your mines need to be securely anchored to the ground in some way. So, you might want to check out these two links on setting up mortars for a consumer fireworks display.

Have fun. This is a fun project to make a spectacular kind of firework that many people in your fireworks display audience have rarely, if ever seen. You’ll be a hero.

–Harry Gilliam

Making 1.75-Inch Bag & Piston Mines

By Ned Gorski

Introduction

In its simplest form, a fireworks mine is a device which shoots a spray of stars skyward from ground level. This dramatic low-level effect, complementing and contrasting with high aerial shells, can lend welcome variety to any fireworks display.

Mines can be used to augment the beats in music. Many mines spaced out across your firing area may be fired simultaneously in what is called a “mine front.” Or they can be fired in rapid sequence down the line from one side of the field to the other in what is called a “mine run.”

These mines are quick, easy and inexpensive to make. So, many of them can be made to provide more devices for a show–and homemade devices at that!

Fireworks Mines

The construction of these mines and the equipment used to fire them can vary considerably, and many different effects can be created. For example:

• Standard length mortar tubes will fire tall, narrow sprays of stars. Short mortars will create short, wide star-sprays.
• Fast burning stars will create vertical rays of light which burn out at the top. Slower burning stars will arc over, creating gracefully drooping spark displays.
• Other inserts besides stars may be used in mines. Small homemade devices or “repurposed” consumer fireworks devices such as hummers, bees, whirlwinds, and reports, as well as flying-fish-fuse, and go-getters may be used, either individually or in combinations with each other.

The mines we are about to work on are impressive fireworks devices, while still being in the “consumer fireworks” size range. So while they present plenty of opportunities for experimentation and creativity, they are also suitable for a basic, backyard fireworks display.

Continue Reading: Making 1.75-Inch Bag & Piston Mines…

If you don’t already have specific plans for them, you’re gonna love the next fireworks projects from Ned Gorski. They can all use your new Rubber Stars.

For Ned’s next act this week, he’s gonna show you how to make two different kindsa mines.

You know, “mines.” Think of a mine as an aerial shell full of stars that fires from the ground UP, vs. the other way around. Mines are fast, easy, and inexpensive to make. So, you can make a lot of them in time for your July 4th display.

Your audience will absolutely love them, and they make the perfect firework to be using your new Rainbow of Rubber Stars.

How about a mine “front” consisting of 30 mortar tubes, with ten different colors all fired at the same time? Or a color-changing palette of colors firing in sequence, one second apart, going from one side of the field to the other?

Slant your mine mortar tubes to the left and right, fire them at the same time and make them cross each other in the sky.

The possibilities are endless.

So watch your emails for this week’s brand new mines project.

If you’ve ever used mines in a fireworks display, tell us how you used them, and how they improved your display. Post a comment down below.

Introduction

The “rainbow” of star colors I’ll be discussing here builds on the methods detailed in the How to Make Screen-Sliced Brilliant-Red Rubber Stars project to expand your color palette of star choices.

Note: Be sure you learn and are familiar with that new way of making and priming stars before starting on this project!

The screen-sliced rubber stars production method has significant advantages for the small-scale hobbyist:

• A full range of great colors with a small collection of chemicals
• Simple and fast star-making process
• Fast drying stars, which are great for on-site pyro-device manufacture
• Very specific quantities of stars can be made, minimizing storage of excess stars
• Matching-color rising tails for shells and rockets can be made at the same time as the stars
• Metal particles may be added to the stars to create spark-trails behind the color-star heads

The introductory project focused on one basic star formula for “brilliant red” stars. At some point most fireworkers start to yearn for a wider variety of color stars and effects. They want to fill out the palette of potential star effects they have to choose from when making fireworks devices. Multiple colors and effects used in the same device, as seen in the photo below, can really make for interesting and beautiful fireworks.

A Pair of Amateur-Built “Stained Glass” (or “Kaleidoscope”) Shells
Photo by Tom Handel

So how do you make a rainbow of color stars to go with those charcoal stars and glitter stars, silver-spark tailed stars, or a nice white star? At the same time, can we get around the problems of using chemicals that are hard to obtain or require special drying?

The purpose of this project is to answer these questions with a set of well-balanced color star formulas that use easily available and relatively non-hygroscopic chemicals. These formulas are designed to work well with the screen-slicing method described in How to Make Screen-Sliced Brilliant-Red Rubber Stars.

Now if I were you, I’d be clamoring to get my paws on those formulas and itching to start getting my hands dirty right away. So, I’m going to give you the table of new formulas right up front. Your job for this project is to use these new formulas along with the screen-slicing process you learned in the red rubber stars project to make some of these beautifully colored stars and try them out.

However, when you’ve worn out your hands (or exhausted your pyro budget), come on back in here and read the two sections of this project that come after the star formula table below.

In the first one, “Pyrotechnic Color,” I’ll explain how these (and other) formulas work to create colored flames and how you can mix and modify them to create even more colors for your pyro palette.

Finally, in “Developing a System of Bright Stars using Carbonates,” I will show you how to approach a major pyro research project by explaining how I went about developing this one. In doing so, I’ll include many more useful color star formulas for you to try and experiment with.

Continue Reading: How to Make a Rainbow of Colored Screen-Sliced Rubber Stars…

Overview

At a certain point, whether for fireworks aerial-shells, mines, roman candles, or rocket headings (or all of these), you’re going to need stars, and lots of them. In addition to spark-producing charcoal and glitter stars, you are going to want to be able to produce brightly colored stars to enhance and add variety to your pyrotechnic palette.

In this article, I’m going to get you started down this path by showing you a simple, easy-to-master technique to make brilliant red stars without any special or expensive equipment. These stars are ready to test in minutes, and dry and ready to use in just a few hours.

This is a breakthrough method of making stars. And I don’t say that lightly.

Why? What makes the screen-slicing method so special?

• Simple equipment: All you need is a screen. Forget about expensive star rolling machines, loaf boxes for making cut stars, and tricky-to-use star pumps, and plates.
• Cheap: A framed screen can be had for $30 or less.
• Fast: You can test your stars as soon as they are made, before they are dry. And star drying time is a couple of hours, max.
• Easy: Absolutely no special skills are needed. If you can play pattycake, you can make these stars. And they are almost impossible to screw up.
• Water Resistant: These stars are water resistant. You can store them longer.

Whether these are the first stars you ever make, or even if you are a seasoned fireworks veteran, screen sliced stars are faster and easier than any other star you can make.

–Harry Gilliam

Introduction

There are an almost infinite number of colored-star formulas out there using a wide array of different, sometimes difficult to find chemicals. In this project though, we’re going to focus on a simple, four-chemical formula which uses commonly available materials. The red formula we’ll start with here, called “brilliant red,” is about as eye-catching a star formula as there is, showing up well even if it is shot during the daylight. When folks call this star “brilliant,” they mean brilliant. I won a best-red-star competition at a large regional fireworks-club event one year with this star.

Among all the different methods that can be used to make fireworks stars-cutting, rolling, pumping, pressing the composition in tubes for box-stars, layering composition between sheets of paper for falling-leaves stars-each method has its advantages and disadvantages, and is appropriate in certain situations. The method I will show you here, screen-slicing, may be the fastest, simplest, and easiest way to produce a finished batch of color stars ever invented.

In this particular project, stars will be sliced through a 3-mesh screen which has three openings per inch (nine openings per square inch). The individual openings in such a screen are about 5/16-inch square. A 3/16-inch thick patty of star composition will be pushed through that screen to cut the patty into cubic stars. Since the composition extrudes through the screen openings as it is forced around the relatively large screen wires, the stars end up being about 5/16-inch thick.

Once these stars are primed using the process described below, they end up being almost spherical and about 3/8-inch in diameter. This size is nice for rocket headings, mines, and aerial shells in the 1.75-inch to 4-inch range.

Using a larger 2-mesh screen (four openings per square inch) and a thicker patty (say 5/16-inch thick), and using more composition per patty (say 24 ounces) will produce finished stars in the 5/8-inch diameter range. These stars would work in 5- to 8-inch shells and devices.

Some advantages of this rubber-bound formula and manufacturing process include:

• Even before drying, these stars can be test-fired out of a star gun immediately after production to check their color. After 2-3 hours of drying in a warm breezy location or in a drying chamber, these stars are ready to be used in devices.
• These stars are relatively water resistant, with no water used in their manufacture. They are rubber-bound, which inhibits water absorption by otherwise hygroscopic chemical ingredients such as strontium nitrate.
• Rising tails for rockets or shells which exactly match the color of these stars can be manufactured at the same time the stars are made.
• Different varieties of colors and effects are possible using this method. More colors and effects will be presented in a follow-on project.
• Particles of metals such as titanium or ferro-titanium may be added to the color composition to create a silver-spark trail behind the burning colored star.
• You can produce just the right quantity and size of these stars for a particular size shell or other device, so you’ll have no leftover stars requiring magazine storage.

All of these attributes make these stars ideal for on-site manufacture at fireworks events where devices are made from scratch in a limited amount of time, and where no excess stars requiring transport and storage are desired.

Acknowledgements: Troy Fish, in Pyrotechnica VII, authored a detailed article on rubber-bound stars, “Green and Other Colored Flame Metal Fuel Compositions Using Parlon.” This article has inspired many explorations into this rubber-star-binding process, and recently Gary Smith has shared his experiences with one variation on this process, the screen-slicing method of cutting these stars. Without these two sources of inspiration, this current project would not have been possible.

Continue Reading: How to Make Screen-Sliced, Brilliant-Red Rubber Stars…

“Garnitures.” Kind of an old-fashioned word, not heard very often in conversation. But, as used to describe the class of fireworks components we are about to look at, I’ll be darned if I can find a better word.

From “Traditional Cylinder Shell Construction, Part I” by A. Fulcanelli, found in Pyrotechnica IX:

Pumped-Star Garnitures Filling a Shell-Casing Hemisphere

And, from the dictionary, the root of the word “garniture” lies in the term “garnish,” which is defined as “to furnish with beautifying details.”

To furnish with beautifying details. Doesn’t that sound lovely? That’s exactly what we are asking of our various types of garnitures.

There are basically two “sub-assemblies” of a fireworks shell. The first assembly includes the shell leader-fuse, the lift powder, the time fuse, the shell casing, and the burst powder. That whole integrated construct, though, serves one purpose-that of getting the second assembly, the garnitures, up into the air and ignited. Without the garnitures, the shell wouldn’t really serve any purpose.

So garnitures refer to the contents of a shell, whether it is used as an aerial shell, a rocket heading, or as an insert in another shell. (In the case of a shell insert to be used inside a larger shell, I suppose the contents of that smaller shell could be referred to as “garnitures of garnitures,” or maybe garnitures squared.)

The contents of fireworks mines, and other ground devices-such as cakes, roman candles, and single-shot comets-would also be called garnitures.

Continue Reading: Stars and Shell Inserts…

I was in pig heaven when I got my new star rolling machine from John Smith.

But the very first batch of stars came out looking like they had contracted a king-hell case of warts. Looked like raspberries – all bumpy all around. Actually, there was an easy fix, but I didn’t have a clue about it at the time.

Over the next couple of days, I’d like to find out about YOUR problems in making stars.

Please take a few minutes and tell us all what sort of problems you have or had making stars. Or what has stopped you from being able to make stars. What kind of stars were you making? What went wrong? How was the process difficult or unsatisfactory for you? It’s star problems I’m especially looking for. How come?

I want to see if the problems you’re having can be solved by a radical new star making method that Ned came up with. And Monday, I have a great new article on stars for you from Ned.

Just add your comments on star making problems down below.

Thanks.

Harry

PS: The cure for star warts is to dampen them and keep rolling ‘em. Don’t add any more dry powder just yet—just spray them with water or water and alcohol. As you spritz ‘em, the warts soften, and they get rolled out flat. Once they’re perfectly round again, you can resume building them up with powder and water. The warts are caused by using too little water.

Every year about this time, the good people of Tultepec (about an hour north of Mexico City) stage the wildest and craziest fireworks event literally on the planet Earth.

Click here: TultepecFireworks

A whole buncha my pyro pals from the Florida Club are down there as I write this. And I am NOT.

I HATE when that happens!

Enjoy the video. And tell me what you think of it.

Harry

Sometimes, learning how to make a smoke bomb using colored smoke can be tricky. Even if you already know how!

Because even if you really do already know how to make a smoke bomb, you can still have problems getting your colored smoke to work…problems you may not expect.

How to Make a Smoke Bomb the Failsafe Way—We Thought!

Skylighter has been offering organic powdered dye pre-mixed with the other necessary colored smoke chemicals for years. These premixed colored smoke components make it a lot faster and easier to make smoke grenades and make smoke bombs. We even got Ned Gorski to write an excellent and detailed project article on How to Make Smoke Bombs, complete with color photos, and even videos.

Skylighter sells that pre-mix as “colored smoke mix.” You buy a pound of the colored smoke mix, combine it with a pre-measured amount of just one other chemical, potassium chlorate, load it into a capped tube, and voila. You have a homemade smoke bomb, ready to light.

Usually.

Except, now people were having problems getting their colored smoke to light.

When this problem started to show up repeatedly, I finally decided to roll up my sleeves and look into it. What I found, though anything but earthshaking, is a good little lesson in simple pyrotechnic detective work.

And it is exactly the same kind of problem diagnosis and solution, which anyone who makes fireworks will eventually run into.

So, ride along with me a ways. It won’t take long, and there are a couple of good tips and tidbits that anyone can use.

What we try to do with our colored smoke bomb kits is make it really simple, fast, and idiot-proof to make a smoke bomb. But in trying to make it too simple, we may have overlooked the obvious.

Here was the problem: Customers were mixing the correct weights of the two-part colored smoke components (smoke mix and potassium chlorate) correctly—according to the instructions Skylighter provided. But when they tried to light the stuff it wouldn’t burn. Or it would light, and then go out.

Now when you light colored smoke it is supposed to smolder, not catch on fire.

The key is having exactly the right ratio of the potassium chlorate oxidizer to the smoke mix fuel. Screw the ratio up one way and your mix will burn too fast.

This is very important. If your mix actually burns, you won’t get the colored smoke you want. Just black, brown, or some other characteristic dark color of burning material.

Screw the ratio up the other way, and your colored smoke mix will not ignite at all.

Colored Smoke Detective Work

When we first heard about the problem with a single colored smoke color, we simply took some of our smoke mix here, mixed it properly with the potassium chlorate, and burned some outside.

Hmmm… there is some kind of problem. Perhaps the company, which formulates our colored smoke mixes, changed the brew in some way. They said not, but chemicals can be different, from batch to batch, or year to year. And unless you do time consuming and expensive testing of each batch you get, you might never know. So, we all tend to rely on good suppliers, brands, and model/spec numbers instead.

Making our smoke mixes does involve carefully weighing and blending at least 3 different chemicals.

It did visually appear that the blending/mixing was not as thorough.

But hundreds of pounds of these colored smoke mixes were already out on the street in customers’ hands. What to do?

We found that if we increased the amount of chlorate added to the smoke mix, that we could get it to burn. So that’s what we recommended to people who were having problems. We even sent out additional potassium chlorate at no charge, and replacement smoke bomb kits.

The problem reports continued nonetheless. Some people were not able to add additional chlorate and solve the problem. And then other colors started to have the same problem.

Hmmm… what else could be wrong?

A little background will help here. Because colored smoke dyes are “dirty” to work with, we recommended that folks use “bag mixing” to mix the chlorate and smoke mix.

Basically, this involves dumping the two parts into a big zip-lock, sealing it, and then mushing the contents around for a while until there’s a homogeneously colored powder inside with no lumps.

The theorem I developed was that for reasons unknown, either or both of the two-part smoke mixture had either increased in particle size and/or gotten “clumpy”—a scientific term describing what happens when a chemical gets a little bit of moisture in it.

Well, for sure the chlorate had. You could look at it and tell.

I ran some of our blue smoke through a 30-mesh kitchen strainer and found the same thing. More clumps. Maybe even larger particles.

So, here’s a lesson in pyro 101.

When we first started offering two-part colored smoke kits, it’s a fact that both the colored smoke fuel and the potassium chlorate were very fine (particle size), free flowing powders, something you almost always want in your fireworks chemicals.

And we had no reports of problems igniting the smokes.

Now, with lumpy, clumpy material, what has happened? Well think about it. It’s simple. The particle size of both parts has increased. When particle sizes are larger, surface area is decreased.

Since the pyrotechnic burn we want depends on many little particles of fuel and oxidizer being in close contact with each other AND since we know we had that balance exactly right when the two powders used to be fine powders that were free flowing, then the surface area is no longer adequate for the ratios we were using.

And that’s exactly why adding a little more potassium chlorate had solved the problem for some people. The large surface area problem meant that if we changed the ratio of oxidizer to smoke fuel, we could indeed get the smoke to light again.

But over time as BOTH fuel AND oxidizer got clumpier and clumpier, even that solution didn’t work.

Why? Because the mix was simply too coarse to take fire using the bag mix with the two chemical components we were providing.

The Tests

Experiments proved this out. Armed with the info above and my theorem that it was merely a particle size problem, I set out to solve the problem AND try to do it in a way that would involve the least hassle and expense for both Skylighter and our customers.

It took about two hours. Like most of my testing, I try to work with very small batches. This speeds up the process by reducing weighing, milling, and mixing. And reduces the cost of materials, a lot of which is often wasted doing the testing.

I was pressed for time; so I had the guys in the warehouse, first pre-measure a lot of little baggies of potassium chlorate and colored smoke mixes.

I took the box of this stuff home, realizing only later that the little white powder bags could have brought big smoke down on me, had I been stopped with them. (“No, no, no, ossifer. Those little white powder baggies aren’t what you think at all. Actually, if I mix the white stuff in with this colored stuff, and light it, you will get purple colored smoke! Wait, ossifer, I am not trying to burn the evidence. No, wait. Stop. Those things are too tight on my wrists. I wanna call my mama, ahhh lawyer!”)

First problem was finding someplace that wasn’t windy. I don’t do this stuff indoors in my shop any more, and smoke dyes are easily blown around by even stray puffs of wind.

I found a corner against a shed, out of the wind, and set up my scale, two coffee grinders, some mixing cups, a small kitchen strainer screen, and my trusty pyro notebook.

I aimed for a ratio of 14.2 grams of smoke mix to 5.2 grams of potassium chlorate. That’s the ratio we devised early on that would work with all of our smoke mixes, regardless of color. And we knew from history it used to work.

My test burn container for all experiments was a 9/16” ID x 1-1/2” long tube (called an M80 tube in some circles) with a cardboard plug in one end, the other end open.

FYI, colored smokes do not have to be confined to do their thing. I left one end of each test-tube open for the tests.

Experiment 1: I added the two chemicals together in a zip lock and sqwooshed ‘em together for ten minutes. The now infamous, bag mix method. Filled a test tube, inserted a piece of Visco and lit it. Failed to light. This mix would not even light when directly blasted with a blowtorch.

Experiment 2: I repeated the process in Experiment 1, but with an additional 10% potassium chlorate. Lit the fuse, and it too failed to ignite. Blowtorching the loose mix caused it to light, but it could not sustain the burn, and went out.

Experiment 3: Repeated #2 again adding +10% chlorate, but instead of bag mixing, screened the mix 3 times. Lit the fuse, and the smoke mix ignited, the burn was sustained, but with a “sputtering” burn, and an okay, but not rich blue smoke.

Experiment 4: Since the potassium chlorate was the lumpier of the two components, I used a coffee and spice grinder to grind the chlorate to a fine, fluffy powder, with about 20 seconds of pulse milling. Weighed the two components in the original 14.2/5.2 grams ratio. Screened the two components together 3 times. The mix burned correctly.

Experiment 5: Repeated #4, but I also blade milled the smoke mix for 20-30 seconds as well, before screen mixing together 3 times. The mix burned even better. Full rich blue smoke. The volume of smoke was the greatest of all the test burns.

Conclusion

The particle sizes of both components need to be as small as possible. If there is a problem getting the smoke mix to burn, then milling both components separately to a finer particle size, as well as using a better mixing method will likely solve the problem.

This will not solve all fireworks mix problems. But if you think particle size or clumping may be your problem, the method described above is a quick and simple test to find out.

Cost: Cost to solve the problem at Walmart–$34: 2 coffee mills, $14 each; one small wire strainer, $6. And everything is reusable later on in my fireworks shop.

More on cheap chemical milling using a coffee (blade) mill.

Tell Me What You Think: Was this Article Helpful to You or Not?

Just leave a comment below. Thanks.

- Harry