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View Full Version : 8 in mine mortar vs 12 in mortar



chrish
07-16-2016, 11:13 PM
so I received a shipment of 8 inch mine mortars with the intent of using them for just that, mines. however curiosity go the best of me.
I decided I wanted to see how much difference the shorter mortar would make launching ball shells.

I keep a junk box of cheapy ball shells (like "black box" shells or various other $0.30/ball shell) on hand for various testing purposes and decided to use these. these are low breaking shells anyway. they only put 3-4 grams of black powder in the lift (and about 10 grams of effect in the ball).

so I got out my test rack and loaded a shell in a 12" mortar and a shell in an 8" mortar. tapped the fuses together and lit them together. they launched nearly at the same time so I could hear the difference in the launch. the 12" sounded more substantial and rose ~25% higher. this seemed reasonable. I tried again and the resulted were similar but just a little closer together.

so at this point I decided to upgrade the ball shell a little. I used a shell called Front Lines, about $0.55/shell. lit them and the shells launched together and rose to exactly equal heights. Not what I was expecting. I tried again and got the same results, shells broke at the same height.

I had some premium ball shells I was going to try but the fireworks killjoy came out side and said something about the baby was going to sleep.

at his point everything I tried I would consider usable. . . if people are at a safe distance. However I would not angle the 8" mortars when shooting ball shells. But if I was trying to fill some lower space under bigger breaking shells I think this would work. however, you would definitely need to test for your self in your firing location.


overall I was a little surprised that none of the shells broke low. (I consider low to be 50% of normal height. and all of these broke at 75% to 100% of normal baseline height).

chrish
07-17-2016, 09:48 PM
tested premium ball shells today and they were with in 10% of each other on height. I would say it makes some difference, but nothing like I thought it would. it looks like a 10-20% reduction at worst.

chriskrc
07-18-2016, 06:52 AM
At least now you know it's not to much of a difference and thanks for actually testing that out. I have always wondered if there was a difference and how much it would be. Well as small reduction in height will give some better effects in a show.