Part 7

First put into the case the first charge of gunpowder, and take care that this finds its way to the bottom of the case; drop in next the first star, _with its priming upwards_. Take care also that the star lies directly upon the charge of powder. Now, by means of another brass scoop made to hold the proper quantity of composition, put into the case half the quantity that is to be rammed between the first and second stars. You must then press this into its place by means of your ramming-stick. This can be done with the hand, without any mallet. The weight of a mallet would break the star beneath. Remember always to ram in the composition which is to form the interval between the stars _in two quantities_. If you attempt to ram it all in at once it will not be sufficiently consolidated, and its combustion will be too rapid. The quantity of composition must depend entirely upon your own taste. I generally put in as much, in two quantities, as will rise about an inch in height in the case; it will not do to put in less.

Then upon the top of this composition put one of the square pieces of thin touch-paper. This may be rammed down in the same manner in which a gun-wadding is driven upon the top of the charge. The object of this little piece of touch-paper is to prevent the charge of powder which is above it from disturbing in its explosion the composition which is below it. This I have always found it most effectually does, and allows, moreover, of the use of a rather stronger charge of powder, than could be employed without it. Having put this in flatly, measure out your second charge of powder, and put upon the top of it your second star, then another half-charge of composition, then the remaining half-charge, then another piece of thin touch-paper, and so on till the case is filled. _The last charge of powder should not be less than two inches below the mouth of the case._ The Roman candles should always begin with composition in their burning.

ARRANGEMENT OF STARS.

36. With regard to the arrangement of the stars, I generally vary the colours as much as possible in each Roman candle. If these pieces are to be fired singly, it matters little what the order of the colours is; but if they are to be fired in numbers, it will be necessary to arrange them so that they do not throw up the same colours at the same time. The plan that I adopt to prevent this is the following:—I make out a list of the coloured stars that I have ready to use, arranging them, for instance, in the following order:—brilliant, green, yellow, blue, red, white, purple, rose. The _first_ Roman candle may be filled with its stars in this order. In the second I should begin with the green, in the third with the yellow, and so on, till all that are to be fired at once are completed.

PREPARATION OF TOUCH-PAPER.

37. I have spoken about touch-paper, but I do not think that I have yet described its preparation. This is very simple. Obtain some thin blue paper—not so thin as tissue-paper, but thinner than the ordinary blue paper used by shopkeepers—brush or sponge this over with a weak solution of nitre. If this solution is made too strong, the nitre will recrystallise as the water evaporates in drying, and this should not be the case.

QUICK-MATCH.

38. Quick-match, of a quality good enough to answer for priming to the Roman-candle stars, may be made simply as follows:—Make a thick paste of gunpowder and hot water with a small quantity of gum in it. Take about four strands of cotton, such as is sold in balls and used for making the wicks of lamps, steep this in the solution of nitre used above for making touch-paper, and then wring it as dry as possible; then rub it well in the gunpowder paste till it is thoroughly covered with it. One end of the cotton may then be passed through a small funnel, whose mouth is not more than an eighth of an inch in width. By this means, if the whole length of the cotton is drawn through it, the superfluous paste will be removed, and the match will be of a nice round form. Hang it out-of-doors on a dry day, and when it is nearly dry coil it upon a tray or paper, and dust it over with meal-powder. In winter it will not be sufficiently dry for use under a week. When thoroughly dry it should be stiff and hard, and the less it is bent or doubled the better.

If you wish to use this match for connecting the mouths of different fireworks, or “clothing” them, as it is termed, you must make some long paper tubes round a wire former which has a diameter of not less than three-sixteenths of an inch. These pipes are threaded on the match, and have a piece cut away at their side wherever they are inserted into the mouth of a case, in order that the match may be laid bare and convey its fire to the priming of the cases.

I have given you these short hints for the preparation of a quick-match. I cannot, however, recommend your acting upon them, as the manufacture of this useful article involves a great deal of very dirty work. Unfortunately, quick-match is rather expensive to buy, while it may be made at a very trifling cost. It is a most indispensable accessory, and if you dare face the dirty work, you will find your courage will well repay you. You may prepare it any way that you please, remembering that all that is necessary is to coat the cotton well with a highly-combustible compound, and one which will dry thoroughly.

Your Roman candles, when charged, should be finished with touch-paper; or with ordinary paper, to receive the quick-match, if they are intended to be fired simultaneously in numbers.

I trust that the above directions will enable you to succeed in the manufacture of a species of firework without which no exhibition can be complete, and with which so many and beautiful effects may be produced.

In case you should prefer to buy your chemicals and various ingredients of an operative chemist, I beg to refer you to Messrs. Bolton & Co., 146, Holborn-bars, London, in whose preparations I have great confidence, and who will undertake to supply you with all the articles required in pyrotechny at the prices in the subjoined list. You will perceive that it is much more economical to purchase them _by the pound_ whenever they are required in such quantities. Many of the things, however, you will need to use only sparingly, and these, therefore, may be bought by the ounce. I think the following list will be found to contain nearly all the preparations that you will require; there may be a few things omitted, such, for instance, as red lead (used in the composition for white Roman-candle stars), but this can be procured of any country chemist or painter:—

Per lb. Per oz. _s._ _d._ _s._ _d._ Nitre in powder 0 8 Meal-powder 1 0 Sulphur 0 4 Charcoal 4_d._ to 0 8 Calomel 5 0 0 4 Nitrate of strontia 1 0 0 1 do. do. anhydrous 2 0 0 2 Nitrate of baryta 1 0 0 1 Do. do. anhydrous 2 0 0 2 Chertier’s copper 4 6 0 4 Oxalate of soda 3 0 0 3 Shellac in powder 3 0 0 3 Sulphide of copper fused 2 6 0 2 Realgar 2 0 0 2 Carbonate of strontia 2 0 0 2 Stearine 2 0 0 2 Regulus of antimony 1 9 0 2 Bright steel filings 1 0 0 1 Cast-iron borings 0 6 Powdered glass 1 0 0 1

I have now only to give you a brief description of the woodcuts. Fig. 34 represents the funnel into which golden rain composition is placed; Fig. 35 the drift with which it is rammed; Fig. 36 the case which is to contain it; Fig. 37 represents the tubular Roman-candle star mould; Fig. 38 the drift with which the stars are rammed; Fig. 39 the finished star with its quick-match priming; Fig. 40 represents the settle with its upper part on which the Roman-candle case is to be supported.

The next portion of our subject with which we have to deal is that which comes under the head of

GERBES AND JETS OF BRILLIANT, CHINESE, AND COMMON FIRES.

CHINESE AND BRILLIANT FIRES.

39. These are certainly among the most beautiful and effective pieces to be met with in the whole range of pyrotechny. They should find a place in every exhibition, and, if only prepared properly, according to the directions which I am now about to give, will be sure to prove one of the most striking features in your display.

They have one great advantage—that there is no limit to the modes of combination or arrangement in which these pieces may be effectively employed. By means of them you can make any such things as the following:—Fountains of any size or design, cascades, brilliant suns, either fixed or revolving; bouquets of Chinese fire, Prince of Wales’s feathers, trees of silver flowers, and a thousand other devices which will readily occur to you.

But, like many other things which are possessed of highly useful or ornamental qualities, they have a corresponding disadvantage. Their compositions, to produce the desired effect, must be made _as shortly as possible before you intend_ to fire them; for the ingredients upon which they rely for their beauty are _filings of steel for brilliant fires_, and _borings of iron for Chinese fires_, and unless these filings and borings be entirely free from rust at the time when they are fired, the effect produced will be insignificant as compared with what it should be. And it must be borne in mind that both iron and steel become very soon and very easily corroded when mixed with any composition into which nitre and sulphur enter. I have known cases filled with brilliant or Chinese fire remain good for a week in winter; but I do not suppose that even then their performance was at all what it would have been if they had been prepared for a few hours only.

Many attempts have been made to secure these metallic ingredients from corrosion. Some have stirred the filings in a varnish made of resin and spirit; others have shaken them about in powdered black-lead, and so coated them with this substance. But a coating of any kind is tolerably certain either to rob the spark, which each particle of metal should produce, of its brilliancy, or to render the composition during combustion very smoky, and so impair the intended effect.

By far the most successful preparation of steel and iron that I have noticed is the following:—A weak solution of asphalt in naptha is made, and the filings or borings are stirred about in this. When it is thought that they are thoroughly covered with it, the solution is poured off, and the filings spread out upon a paper to dry. This plan will protect them from rust for a little time longer than they would otherwise remain uncorroded. But still the best plan is to prepare the compositions as short a time as possible before they are to be fired.

The size that I recommend for cases which are intended to contain Chinese fire is that called the _two-ounce_ case. To make them, the same former may be used as was employed in the manufacture of Roman-candle cases already described.

The paper and imperial board may be cut of the following sizes. Open your sheet of paper, _of the 70-lb. thickness_, to its full size, and divide it into three pieces, as shown in the following woodcut, Fig. 41:—

Then open your sheet of imperial board to its full size, and divide it thus into nine equal pieces, Fig. 42.

So that by these arrangements one sheet of imperial board and three sheets of 70-lb. brown paper will furnish you with material for _nine_ cases, each of which will be about nine and a-half inches in length.

My plan for rolling the cases is that which I have described in paragraph 25, but which may perhaps, be rendered slightly more intelligible by the accompanying sketch. Having pasted one of my strips of paper and one piece of board all over on one side, and having brushed some paste over my metal former, I lay the former across the strip of paper about one-third of its whole length from the end nearest to me. I then double the one-third of the strip, pasted side downwards, over the former, on to the remaining two-thirds, Fig. 43, taking care that the edges of the one are even and parallel with the edges of the other. Then having made a crease in the upper fold just in front of the former, I put into this crease the pasted piece of imperial board, and roll up the whole together. It is necessary, however, _to paste the upper side_ of the fold of paper which you have made round the former. This I have always found a very quick, and easy, and perfect method of preparing cases of any kind. I trust that I have rendered my meaning plain, as I shall have occasion to refer frequently to this operation. The rolling board must, of course be used.

The cases when made are to be choked, _while wet_, precisely in the same manner as described for rocket-cases, only it must be remembered that their aperture may be almost choked up, because when it has been reopened by the point over which they are loaded, _it must not be more than one-third of the interior diameter of the case in size_.

Having described the manufacture of the cases. I now proceed to give the formulas for the composition of

CHINESE FIRE.

40. There are two sorts of this fire which are known by the names _red_ and _white_. The red is that which contains charcoal, and _therefore has some red sparks intermixed with those produced by the iron_; the white is that _the sparks of which are produced by the iron only_. It is my intention to give several formulas for this fire, in order that my readers may select for themselves, and use that which they find most successful.

No. 1. Meal-powder 16 parts Nitre 16 „ Sulphur 4 „ Charcoal (No. 2) 4 „ Iron borings 14 „

Or the following is quicker in combustion:—

No. 2. Meal-powder 16 „ Sulphur 3 „ Charcoal 3 „ Iron borings 7 „

Or,

No. 3. Meal-powder 8 „ Nitre 16 „ Sulphur 3 „ Charcoal 3 „ Iron borings 8 „

Or,

No 4. Meal-powder 16 „ Nitre 8 „ Sulphur 4 „ Charcoal 3 „ Iron borings 7 „

The compositions given above produce what is termed _Red Chinese Fire_, since they all contain charcoal. I have numbered the charcoal, because Mr. Bolton, 146, Holborn-bars, supplies three different degrees of fineness, the _second_ of which is proper for this purpose.

The following formulas will produce what is called White Chinese Fire:—

No. 5. Meal-powder 16 parts. Nitre 6 „ Sulphur 3 „ Iron borings 10 „

Or,

No. 6. Meal-powder 16 „ Nitre 4 „ Sulphur 2 „ Iron borings 6 „

Or,

No. 7. Meal-powder 16 „ Iron borings 5 „

It is an understood rule among pyrotechnists that the smaller the diameter of the case employed the quicker must be the composition with which it is filled; or, in other words, a quick composition which answers well in a case of small diameter will burn too rapidly, or explode, in a case of larger dimensions. My readers must therefore first determine the size of the case that they intend to use. It will not be well to adopt any size of case smaller than the _two-ounce_ for Chinese fire. If, however, the ¼ lb. size be chosen, I should recommend the compositions No. 1, No. 3, or No. 5. Nos. 2, 4, 6, 7 will answer very well in a case of the 2-oz. size.

But if it be thought advisable to have recourse to a case of the ½ lb. size, a still weaker composition will be required, in which case the following formulas may be used:—

No. 8. Nitre 16 parts. Sulphur 3 „ Charcoal 4 „ Iron borings 7 „

Or,

No. 9. Nitre 20 „ Sulphur 4 „ Charcoal 4 „ Iron borings 12 „

For general purposes, cases of the 2-oz. size will be found quite large enough, particularly when used in combination, and not fired singly.

The most effective of all the compositions that I have given is No. 7, which consists of meal-powder and iron borings only, but it is very rapid and fierce in its combustion, and will burst the cases into which it is put unless great care be taken in the ramming. A very little of the composition must be rammed at a time, in order to insure a thoroughly equal and solid compression throughout the case. If properly managed a two-ounce case filled with this composition will throw a very brilliant jet of large flowers of fire from eight to ten feet in height.

I have sometimes thought that the moistening of composition No. 7 with a little turpentine, so that it becomes less dusty, has the effect of preserving the iron or steel from rust to some extent. At all events, it greatly facilitates the uniform mixing of the ingredients. It must, however, be especially borne in mind that _neither spirits of wine nor gin must be used to moisten any composition containing iron or steel_.

The iron borings which Mr. Darby will supply are very effective for the preparation of Chinese fire.

You should take care that the other ingredients are thoroughly mixed before you add the iron borings, and then that the iron be equally distributed throughout the mixture.

The next operation is the filling of the cases. For this you will require some tools not before mentioned, which I will now proceed to describe.

You should get Mr. Newman to make you three solid drifts which will pass very easily into your 2-oz. cases. The first of these should be about _nine inches long_, the second about five inches long, and the third two inches long. These tools will always be found convenient for many purposes in pyrotechny, and not only for the filling of Chinese fire cases. The two longest of these drifts should be about _nine-sixteenths of an inch in diameter_; the third may be nearly five-eighths of an inch.

Your mallet should be, in the measurement of its head, five inches long and three in diameter. It should be made either of ash or beech.

In the next place you will require a block with a nipple and point, such as is drawn in the page of illustrations, figs. 44, 45 and 46. This may be made of wood, with its point only of metal; but I much prefer a metal nipple and point. Mr. Newman has made for me a set of nipples and settles in gun-metal, _all of which fit into the same block_. They answer all purposes, and take up very little room; whereas you will find a multiplicity of blocks very inconvenient, if your accommodation is as scanty as mine.

You must, of course, have a scoop of a proper size for filling 2-oz. cases, and this, I think, will complete your tools.

Your case must now be pressed over the point of your nipple, and by this means its aperture will be made of the proper size. You will find it very convenient to have a ring of iron fixed into your block, through which the case must be passed, which will steady it and keep it in a perpendicular position while being filled (fig. 47).

And this is in reality more than a matter of convenience, for unless the case be perpendicular while the operation of filling is going on, the blows of the mallet will not have their proper effect, and the composition will not be thoroughly consolidated; or, what is worse, the neck of the case may be wrenched or injured in some manner, and will in all probability give way and burst upon the combustion of the composition.

Now drive in your composition, a ladleful at a time, and, after putting in each ladleful, give the drift twelve blows with the mallet. Fill the cases till there remains a space of _two inches only_ unoccupied at the end. Into this end put _a gun-charge and a-half_ of gunpowder. Then with a bradawl separate one or two of the inner folds of the paper of the case, and turn these down on the top of the powder.

My method of filling in the ends of the cases is the following:—Melt in an earthen pipkin a mixture of two parts of common resin and one of wax. This may be poured into the ends of the cases upon the paper that has been turned down. It will harden in a few minutes, and will be found to insure you a good report from the powder.

It only remains now to prime these cases. This is an operation requiring some care, although it may be performed in a very simple manner. If the point of your nipple is not too long—that is, is only long enough to _reach_ the composition _without penetrating it_—all that you need do is to press into the mouth of the case some meal-powder paste; but if a cavity has been left in the composition, this must be filled up before priming, or the case will inevitably burst.

It is an excellent plan to take for your first ladleful, not any of the compositions for Chinese fire, but a ladleful of some slower fire containing no iron borings. You may use a mixture consisting of

Nitre 6 parts. Sulphur 1 part. Charcoal 1 „

The advantage of attending to this piece of advice will be very apparent to you, and I strongly recommend the plan to your notice in the case of _brilliant_, as well as of Chinese, fires.

Having now described the manufacture of the cases of Chinese fire, I shall proceed to point out to you some of the combinations in which they may be used. The simplest is the ordinary Prince of Wales Feather, the framework of which any blacksmith can make in thin iron rod, having a couple of holes drilled in it, through which screws may be driven to fasten it to your post. I give you two sketches (figs. 48 and 49), the former of which has, in my opinion, rather the advantage. The mouths of the cases must, of course, be connected with quick-match, so that they all take fire simultaneously. By having a framework made of iron it will be liable to no injury from the explosions at the end of the cases. The same framework may be used with three Roman candles, instead of Chinese fire cases, and with excellent effect.