BUILDING FIREWORK RACKS
20-Shot Mortar | Angled Mortar | Fountain | Set Piece
Set Pieces - Words & Images in Flames
Set pieces are beautiful and elaborate words or pictures written in fire. Having fallen out of style for a while are becoming popular again in professional displays. Modern firework shows are usually designed to be viewed by audiences from great distances from which set pieces couldn't be seen.
Set pieces consist of small, pen-sized coloured flares called lances attached to a wooden frame in some sort of pattern, such as a picture. A pieces of quick match is attached to the ends of the lances, so they all ignite at virtually the same instant. Although lances are considered 1.3G (display fireworks) and require a BATF permit to purchase and use, you can use simple sparklers to get a similar effect.
Materials
- "Morning Glory"-type sparklers
- ¼ to ½" thick plywood
-drill and 1/16" bit
- quick match or sticky match
- visco fuse or electric match
- chalk or pencil
- tape measure
- wood screws and wood (such as 2x4s)
Procedure
Begin by choosing a design (words or pictures) and figure out how large it should be according to its distance from the audience. Letters should be a minimum of 12" high and 12" wide. If the set piece is going to be more than 75' from the audience, make them larger.
Next, find a piece of plywood that your design will fit on to. Cut it 2" larger than your actual design all on all sides. Use a tape measure and chalk to divide up the sections for your letters. The boxes should be as wide as they are high. Then draw the letters, picture, or whatever. Use a different colour chalk to draw an "X" or put a dot at every point on the letter where you'll put a sparkler. They should be about 2" apart on straight sections of letters, and 1" apart at curved sections. You can increase this distance for larger set pieces so you don't use up quite as many sparklers.
Using a 1/8" drill bit, drill a hole wherever there's an "X". Make sure they're about an equal distance apart. Spray paint the wood flat black so it will be harder to see when the set piece is going off. The idea is to make it look like the letters are kind of floating in the air, not attached to a support. Wait a while for it to dry.
Now prepare the sparklers. Cut the stick off about 1/4" below the composition, and remove the colourful tissue paper from the opposite end to expose the primed end (it looks like a white paper tube with dab of hard black stuff on the tip). Take a hot glue gun and cover the hole in glue, then quickly stick in the end of the sparkler (NOT the primed end). Do this until every hole has a sparkler in it.
Now you're ready to match the set piece. You can use quick match or sticky match. With quick match, the best thing to do is match one letter at a time, and then connect each letter to a continuous piece of quick match that runs the entire length of the wood (scroll down to see diagram). Remember to leave about a 6-8" leader of quick match before the first sparkler.
Where the quick match comes into contact with a sparkler, pinch the bottom part of the quick match pipe and cut a V-shaped notch about as wide as the sparkler, revealing the black match fuse inside. Carefully insert the primed end of the sparkler into this hole far enough that it will stay inside.
You still need to attached the quick match more permanently to each sparkler. One way is to use a LOW TEMP glue gun and attempt to glue the outside of the match pipe to the outside of the sparkler, being careful not to get any glue inside the match pipe or on the sparkler primer. Another way is to use masking tape.
Take a 1/2 inch wide piece of tape, about 2 inches long, and wrap it over the quick match and on to the sparkler, as shown. Wrap a thinner piece of tape around the sparkler near the very tip in order to strengthen the hold of the first piece. Try to use as little tape as possible. Repeat this process from every sparkler on the set piece.
| Your set piece should now look like the diagram on the right. Insert a piece of visco fuse (at least 6 inches long) or an electric match into the quick match leader. Your set piece is now ready to fire, once you find something to mount it from. |
|
|
|
Joe Schneider, who built this type of set piece for his Christmas 2003 display, has kindly provided us with some close-up photographs of his project. Click each image to see a larger, more detailed version of the quick match attachment. |
|
|
THE MOUNTING FRAME
There are several ways to mount the set piece. The first it to hang it from some type of wire hung between two poles. Not recommended as it requires a very strong wire to prevent sag and being blown by the wind. A better option would be to mount it directly to a pole or tree, although the best option is to build a sturdy mounting frame and attach the set piece to the top of that. This gives you the ability to move the thing wherever needed.
You might want to add other things to the set piece, such as fountains and wheels. For example, if your set piece was a picture of a car, you could use [firework] wheels for the car wheels. You can fuse these directly to the set piece quick match to ignite as soon as the set piece does, or use various lengths of visco fuse so there's a bit of a delay.
Once you've lit off the set piece, you can use it over and over again. Just use pliers to rip the sticks and glue out of the holes, then put in new sparklers. > TOP