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To begin, I should probably give a little background information. I got these
plans for this from Pyro Universe. I’m
not brilliant enough to do one of these on my own. Besides, I probably would
have used PVC. If you’re reading this and are wanting to make one, DO NOT use
PVC pipe. It will shatter. They’re good for spud guns (usually) but not fireworks.
I wanted to do an original idea for the 4th for a building project. While it’s
not original it worked like a beauty! I’m purchasing a video capture card to
import some video I took. Should be ready in a couple of weeks. Overall everything
was a success. With that, I hope you enjoy this little photo blog of the making
of The Big 20!

In order to cut holes in the base of the board you need a drill press. I didn’t have one so I went to my Dads shop. Seen above, he is fashioning a drill bit for the project. We couldn’t find any 2" and 2 3/8" hole saws so he took a piece of pipe and made a drill bit out of it. We needed a center bit for stability so he’s counter drilling one into the bit we were using.

 

My plans didn’t quite work out the way they were supposed to. With our homemade bit, the thickness would overlap the holes. They ended up overlapping anyway, but more on that later. We redrew the holes and spotted it by hand. Not perfect, but certainly doable.

Pictured here is the saw that we used. It usually cuts solid metal pipe, and it ripped through the HDPE nicely. That white junk is the coolant that got all over the pipes. I suppose we could have cut each one with a regular band saw, but this one had stops on it so we could get all the tubes the exact same lenth without measuring each time.

Here is my dad cutting the board for the first hole. At this point we didn’t have the center bit installed into the homeade holebit. The shaft on the press shook too much and caused our holes to be too large.

With the center drill bit in things went much smoother. The only thing is, that bit never really pushed the shavings out of it. Here you can see me pressing down into the wood. The shavings got hot and began to burn. Once the bit got clogged a wire brush cleaned it out and we were on to the next drilling. For holes about 1/2 inch deep this took three to four times. The shop smelled nicely of burnt wood. Luckily, none of the smoke detectors went off.

While Dad was working on the hole drilling I finished polishing up our pipe. We used this machine to sand and file down the edges so they were nice and smooth. The saw left them a little rough around the ends.

Here you can see the wood base all drilled out with the holes.

My box of pipes. Strangely, they all fit into the box perfectly.

On the day I wanted to build ‘The Big 20′ I headed out to Mom’s place. I no more than got there and it started pouring. Additionally, I ran into a little groundhog. Mom said she’s seen a “big squirrel” nosing around the yard and such. Turns out, its a ground hog. I really wanted it to be a badger, but no luck. It is apparenlty living inside our garage. I tried to snap a shot, but I missed him. I never saw him again once he went into his hiding spot in the garage. Of course, I didn’t want to get too close for fear that sucker would come out screaming and bite my leg or something. The garage is starting to smell like the indoor hippo exhibit at our local zoo. We’re still not sure how to get rid of it.

Rain, rain, and more rain. It rained for a good hour or two. I started to get some water in the work area shortly after the pouring rain. Luckily, I had a spot in the middle (the water followed the “tracks” left by the car that parks here).

Here’s the first couple of pipes. At this time I noticed two things

• The holes weren’t really deep enough.
• Damn, it’s hot outside.

Every time I’d knock one pipe in, the next one would pop out a little. This raised some obvious concerns. I reallyneeded to test this before loading it all up.

I got one side complete. Time to work on the second half. At this point, I
realized my middle bar was going to be tight. I’ll deal with that when the
time comes. I continually knocked the existing pipes into place again with
a piece of wood and hammer.

Here she is almost done. I had to move the pipes apart slightly to pinch in
the center bar. The sides and everything went on good with a couple screws.
I kept knocking in the pipes. I was kind of unsure about the perfomance of
this unit. My only hope was that the liquid nails help up for me. I ended up
placing a row of liquid nails around the edges of the pipes, reinforced one
of the sides with a piece of wood (took up the space left), and placed some
extra boards on the bottom across the width of the rack.

Here is a picture of the final product….so far. I’ve got two days to let
this sit for the liquid nails to harden.

View from the top.

This is kind of a weird shot, but I thought it looked kind of artistic.

And the final version. I gave her a nice spray paint coat of red, white (silver),
and blue.

Here’s a second view.

Me with all my fireworks, on the infamous turkey couch. Not pictured is the
box of the illegal bottle rockets I picked up in KC, MO. Do I look like one
of those DOOM chaingunner soldiers?

Here is my attempt to make home made bottle rockets. I didn’t have the exact
list of supplies, but I made do. They’re made of the green Chinese visco fuse
I picked up online (pictured top right). They didn’t turn out too bad. Not
a lot of lift, but a lot of smoke.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2004 at 8:42 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.