mguerra
10-30-2013, 05:13 PM
I saw an article about preserving cardboard mortars and tried it. First I used a jigsaw to remove the square plastic flanges from the base of the mortars, leaving the plugs intact. This is so I can rack them up in mortar racks. Then I removed the paper labels. The instructions say to rinse the mortars with a "strong" solution of calcium chloride. I used Damp Rid as my source of calcium chloride and mixed about a cup of it in about 2 quarts of warm water in a shallow pan. That seemed to suffice. I put the mortars in the pan and sloshed them around to thoroughly wet them in the CaCl solution, then emptied them out and placed them upside down in a cardboard box to dry. They don't dry out but stay slightly damp. After they dried to slightly damp, I dunked them in a pan of 40% sodium silicate that I got from Amazon. The instructions say to use a 25% solution but i just tried the straight 40% as supplied. I emptied them out and placed them upside down to drain for a few minutes, then flipped them upright to finish drying. This coats them inside and out with sodium silicate. The instructions say to just use the sodium silicate on the inside of the tubes but I wanted to try this method. When dry the tubes feel amazing, they have a very smooth, plastic or glassy feel to them. It's almost like you treated them with fiberglass resin or something like that. Theoretically they should last many years. I will do an upside down shell explosion test to see if the treated mortars fragment in to sharp shards or not. The main reason I did this was to be able to re-use the small mortars that come with Artillery Shells from Wholesale Boom. These small ball shells have short fuses and need to be shot out of short tubes. They are very inexpensive shells and have really nice breaks. Perfect for keeping yourself entertained between big shows!
I also did a few tubes with the 25% solution of sodium silicate. The resultant coating is not as thick and glassy as the 40%, but still seems like it will preserve the cardboard quite well.
Time will tell. This is very quick and easy, and if you have a lot of cardboard tubes you would otherwise throw away, you can use them and save on fiberglass or HDPE tubes, which cost between 2 to 5 dollars each with shipping.
Michael
I also did a few tubes with the 25% solution of sodium silicate. The resultant coating is not as thick and glassy as the 40%, but still seems like it will preserve the cardboard quite well.
Time will tell. This is very quick and easy, and if you have a lot of cardboard tubes you would otherwise throw away, you can use them and save on fiberglass or HDPE tubes, which cost between 2 to 5 dollars each with shipping.
Michael