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).
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).