Making your own chains

[PyroKing31]

Hey All,

Looking for tips on making your own chains. I've got 3 inch shells I want to set on a delay and I tried this past weekend by taping the visco's together staggered so that one cue would light 2 with a 1 or 2 second delay. One instance worked the other I staggered too much and the Quickmatch that lit on the first ripped the visco out of the second.

I'm looking to make small flights. 3-5 shells. Any tips on how to accomplish this is appreciated.

Thanks!

[PyroJoeNEPA]

The easiest way to do it would be to use good quality 30 sec/foot green visco....get rid of the visco on the end of the leaders and trim back 3/4" of the paper from the quick match. Fold the exposed black match over the side of the green visco & cover with a piece of "magic tape". space the next shell about an inch down the line on the visco and repeat. You have about 2 1/2 seconds per inch burn time on the green visco, so you can space and time your shells accordingly.
To get the main visco lit, cut it on a sharp angle and slip it into a short piece of quick match and insert your ematch there. ***Make sure it is Black Match and not the grey perchlorate quick match. The grey Perc QM burns very violently and will NOT pass fire to a piece of visco with 100% reliability like the black match does.
**Another variation of this would be to use pink, yellow, etc visco with different burn rates to get whatever timing you want.
If you want longer time delays, then you would go to "buckets" with 1/4" time fuse pieces. The 1/4" is hard for a novice to use in very short time delays since it burns at 2 1/2-3 seconds an inch, thereby requiring very small pieces of time fuse. Longer time delays are easy to do with it.
Eliminating the visco that comes with the shell is important--most of the time a gentle tug will separate it from the quick match--they are not secured very well from China and are not reliable to use for this application unless you re-secured them.
I hope this is helpful. Let us know how it works out for you.

[PyroKing31]

Thank you Joe!

I will try this for the 4th. This is great info.

[displayfireworks1]

On a side note check what kind of quick match is used on those shells. If its that gray looking quick match , everything is going to be fast and it may not pass fire reliably. This assumes you are aware of the gray perchloate quick match. There is more of that out there than we realized and it also been around longer than we realized.

[RalphieJ]

To help prevent leaders from getting yanked by the previous shell, use thick rubber bands around the top of each mortar (about 2" from the top) with the shell's leaders tucked under the rubber bands.