I just tried your formula and only did a tiny ten gram batch to test and i used potassium perchlorate instead of chlorate, because thats just what i had and oh my. Such a vibrant red. Wonderful formula. Lit two stars unprimed. Going to prime the other 3 romorrow to finish the test. Just made it into a dough and hand rolled a few. Thanks again!! Ill post a video on my page tomorrow making a small batch of the stars and ogniting a few of them, ill do a shout out for you. Thx again for the detailed video! First star i ever made.
Yeah star plates are where the budget goes way up, my next project is going to be making some crossette tooling. Using hdpe. Good video, look forward to building some shells.
If I had the time I would try and make some star plates. It would take a lot of precision drilling for that though. They're easy to bind up. You could even do crossettes by filing a hard wood dowel. It would hold up awhile just pressing compound.
So the big difference between "pumped" stars and "cut" stars is that you can turn out a ton of cut stars quicker. But I'm wondering if the pumped stars perform better. Seems to me they would be more dense and would burn more consistently and possibly longer than the cut stars. Have you found that to be the case? And if so, does one have a different application than the other? i.e. a different type of effect. Or is it pretty much a wash between the two?
It would stand to reason that the pumped stars are denser, and thus would burn better. They both dry hard but I have found that they do blow apart easier than pumped ones given hard breaks.
@@joeestes8114 This. ^^^ 3 inch shells and smaller are great for cut stars. But large cut stars tend to break apart and blow more blind if you aren't careful. This is where denser pumped stars work better. They handle the more violent breaks of larger shells and burn longer in the sky, which you need with a larger shell that goes much higher.
They are nice and hard. But I don't think I was using enough bp. I used your method and now they have a nice fried chicken nugget coating. I had one partial success (the rocket lawn darted and the shell detonated on the ground. But the stars lit!)
Thanks for uploading the series of videos for newly born pyrotechnician ( like me). My name is Digant and I am from India. I have a question related stars making formula at 2:25 minutes you show the formula for make red color my problem is with Potassium chlorate or perchlorate, can you please share a new formula using potassium Nitrate ? because in India the potassium chlorate is ban or very very difficult to get. My humble request to you to please share the potassium Nitrate base formula for making stars.
This may seem far out of the box but can I take a pump jerky gun and fill it with the star comp in a dough form and use the snack stick tip which is about 3/8 round and pump it out and then cut each to length then prime?
Got your idea from the FB group, and am going to try it out today. Don't see why it wouldn't work. Have you done any testing on it? Funny to see the same question on here and FB! ;)
Anyone know of the Japanese do that color changing effect in their stars? Do they layer them in different recipes gradually as they're rolling them each day?
Why can't you prime the cut stars the same way as the pump ones? I have a variable speed priming bucket that sits at a slight angle with on open end. If I run cut stars in it will they round off or break Up? Also can I prime this way?
You ca definitely do them the same as pumped. The cut stars are softer than the pumped ones so it's not as easy to get them on a drying rack. You can tumble them after drying and the corners will round, but you are losing some of the star when that happens, although it should mix with the prime.
This video was very informative. I've been into making fireworks for about a year now. Can you tell me where you bought your star plates and pumps? I have a 20 ton hydraulic press already
John, the shipping can get expensive, the cheapest place I've bought chemicals from is pyro chem source. If you make a order with several chemicals the shipping is a per order charge. My advice would be order the chemicals all on one order.
