Beach Shoot #19 - 30 mm Glitter Mine with Iron Hummer and Blue Star Accent
Date: 2004-01-16
Description
The mortar made from a spiral wound core from a dress-making material (textile) roll, freed from the local Lincraft store many moons ago. One end was plugged with lots of wadding and hot-melt glue and a bamboo stick added for staking.
Mine materials were just dumped down the mortar, there was no bag used. The lift was 5 g of -20+40 mesh pulverone dumped in the bottom. The Iron hummer went next (10% linseed oil coated sparkler steel and 90 % meal in 12.5 mm ID, 25 mm long hummer tube), fused with blackmatch and lots of meal-NC paste, the blackmatch extending above and below the hummer to passfire from the stars to the lift and ignite the hummer.
A heaped teaspoon of KP burst was tipped in next, essentially as priming, followed by a handfull of D1 glitter stars and 4 KP organic blue stars.
Another heaped teaspoon of -40 mesh KP burst was dumped in. A length of 8 mm ID match pipe was fitted with 2 sticks of blackmatch, which were folded back into loops at the mine end and bent horizontal before insertion. A small shake settling the stars around the match ends. Some meal-NC paste was painted on the exposed match of the leader to ensure good performance.
Finally the mine was sealed with a ball of paper towel wadding, tamped in place well with a timber dowel.
Comments
Kinda worked.
Unfortunately the KP burst I put in lifted the stars weakly out of the mine before the pulverone lift was ignited. Resulting in the stars reaching only about 1 metre altitude and the hummer being lifted somewhat later to a higher, but equally unimpressive height.
I think 10-15 g of lift would have been closer to the right amount, and no KP burst priming, it was likely not required at all and probably formed a fire block that prevented the pulverone from igniting at the same time and perhaps producing a reasonable lift. Essentially it functioned as a 2 shot candle rather than a mine.
It did look and sound pretty nice though, so it wasn't a total loss. Perhaps a few smaller hummers (higher frequency spin) would make some interesting beating effects. I'll have to try it again with more lift and no KP burst. The hummer did jet slightly in the air, suggesting I drilled the hole slightly off, and perhaps hinting at self-propelled hummer effects (ie bees) in future attempts.
Attachments
| title | type | size |
|---|---|---|
| Test Video | video/x-msvideo | 858.366 kbytes |
| Pre-Test Picture | image/jpeg | 61.292 kbytes |
| Hummer Detail | image/jpeg | 47.021 kbytes |
| Post-Mortem Picture | image/jpeg | 68.879 kbytes |