You should look at quills for setting the thing off.... they are easy to make.
Take a piece of scotch tape and dip the sticky side into 4f powder.
Fold in half with the powder to the inside.
Insert into paper craft straw (correctly sized for your vent)
Leave a small portion sticking out the bottom (you can cut the straw at an angle to help penetration into the powder)
Leave an inch or so hanging out the top
"open" the portion on the top to expose the powder.
Will be more reliable than priming the vent and will have ALOT less powder flying around during ignition. Near instant detonation as well.
If you want instant ignition, and not have to wait on a fuse with an unknown detonation time, then yes you can absolutely use them in your mortar. See my thread for a linstock as well.... its the tool that is used with the quill to ignite it. There are many ways to make a linstock, a lot easier than others... I took the hard way. You could use a stock of copper pipe and some fittings to make something that's just functional.
Making your own slow match will also give you a much larger and hotter ember that way you spend less time fiddling with getting the tail of the quill to ignite.
Yea there was quite a bit of flame coming from the vent, Im experimenting with different vent diameters. I have used quills before I just need to put aside the time to make some lol.
1911ly The ugly base im making now is 14"x6.5"x4". Its made of 4 pieces of beat up pine bolted together.
This is cool. Something my friends and I would probably try while our wives were busy checking on life insurance coverage.[ They typically think that if we've made it, and it goes bang, it's dangerous]. Please keep us updated on progress. I would imagine the DNR would have no problem with this for hunting, but I seem to remember something about cap and ball pistols not being legal, for deer anyway, so I'd like to hear the response on that.
The whole idea looks fairly inexpensive and fun.
Luck,
Jim
I think black powder would really enhance the whole experience. Picture the cloud coming out of that!
1911ly I just saw this shoot me a PM whenever you're ready.