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The first task is to scrounge around for a former that is the right size. Here is a
picture of a water bottle that is about 1/4 inch smaller in diameter than the mortar
used to fire the finished mine.
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A common, ordinary brown paper bag, such as a lunch bag, is folded neatly around the
former or sloppily scrunched around it, depending on the artisan's personal style. A
few wraps of packing tape will assure that the original shape of the former will be
retained by the bag upon removal of the former. Now, you could painstakingly construct
a cylindrical mine bag by custom cutting a piece of craft paper to roll around the
former, but either approach will produce a result which is pretty much functionally
equivalent. I'll take the quick and easy way any time. If a lunch sack is used to
make the mine bag, the top 4 inches will need to be trimmed off after removal from
the water bottle former.
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Next, we need a leader fuse that is long enough to protrude from the mortar by about
12 inches. My mine mortars are 20 inches tall so I make a leader that is about 3
feet long. For single shot mine mortars, a length of
home-made sticky match will do nicely.
The picture shows a length of match with a piece of visco at one end and a piece of
thermalite igniter at the other
end. The visco end is obviously where ignition fire is applied and allows the
prudent person some time to retire to a safe distance before fire is passed to the
fast burning sticky match. The other end with the ignitercord or black match is
expected to hold the ignition fire in the vicinity of the stars for a long enough
time to ignite them. The flash flame of sticky match alone might not
reliably ignite the stars in the mine. A note of caution is in order at this point.
If you are planning to load a lot of these mines into a rack of mortars, the sticky
match leader fuse is not the best idea. In this case, one should use a leader of
quick match because it is much less vulnerable to accidental ignition from sparks
from a nearby mortar which has fired its contents skyward.
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To make a simple star bag, a small cup is used as a former. A 10 inch square piece of
tissue paper is stuffed into the cup as shown. The thermalite end of the sticky match
is placed in the cup and 100 grams of your favorite stars are added. It's a good idea
to bend the piece of thermalite into an "L" so it won't poke a hole in the bottom of
the star bag.
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Now the edges of the tissue paper are drawn up around the fuse and secured with
a wrap of tape. The tape should keep the fuse from being pulled out of the star
bag.
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Finally, approximately 24 grams of good quality lift powder is placed in the bottom
of the mine bag. I use
home-manufactured black powder that has been corned into 4 to 10 mesh grains as
an equivalent to 2FA commercial powder. Depending upon the quality of your lift
powder, the amount used may need to be adjusted. The star bag assembly is placed
into the mine bag on top of the lift powder. The concept, here, is that this method
of assembly encourages good star ignition because the stars begin to burn for a short
time before the lift powder is ignited by them and ejects them from the mortar. The
final step is to close the top end of the bag with some manner of folding and taping.
The fastidious craftsman will want to make a few pleats and tape it closed neatly. The
less fussy person may just scrunch the top around the fuse and put a wrap of tape around
it. To each his own.
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If you plan to make a lot of different kinds of mines with various kinds of stars
in them, you will be well advised to use a marker to label your mines. It's a little
embarrassing to announce to your audience that the next mine will be a glitter mine
with red strobes for accent and upon lighting it, the mine turns out to be blue to
green color changers. These 3 inch mines will put up a large column of stars to a
height of about 80 feet.
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