Has anyone any real experience of floating racks, for shooting small shells, cakes and candles from water.
I'm looking at firing a show from the middle of a pond (again!)
Hephaestus
May 3rd, 2008, 08:12 AM
I knew somwone who used to do it regularly. He made a small "barge" with plastic drums with a sheet of plywood on top. It had ropes off the corners that he would secure to the shore to keep the barge centered in the pond. Personally, I think high-test fishing line would work, and be much cheaper. Wireless would definitely have the advantage here.
If I were to make one, I would use pressure treated plywood. For floatation, I'd try to keep the deck low. The higher it is, the more it will rock side to side. Keep the large items with bigger lift charges in the middle.
JoeRatman
May 3rd, 2008, 01:35 PM
Well here is a small one, but maybe its a bit smaller than you want. That round foam works very well.
Arther this has been discussed here before I will see if I can dig up the thread. Is this going to be a one time shoot at this location? I think what you basically want to build is a floating deck, or dock. 3"-4" shells should be fine fired from any position, anything larger keep positioned on top of at least 2"x6" joists on 16" centers, more info would be helpful as well. Here in the states you can also pick up stripped down pontoon boats for just a few hundred dollars, rip everything off and you have a nice, floating platform to lay the show out as big as 8'x32'.
cjurczak
May 3rd, 2008, 05:04 PM
If you are going to use the plastic drums...you might wanna think about a way to let some water into the drums...That way if you are using light weight items you can decrease the buoyancy and keep it closer to the water...
Solkuter
May 4th, 2008, 07:06 AM
I am running on very little sleep after getting back late from the Dapkus demo (shiver) but it was awesome and the family loved it.
on to topic. find my threads from last year I belive I posted shots and schematics of the system I use. basically 4'x8' plywood with 5 gallon buckets on the bottom .. for boards filled with lots ofproduct I use 2 10' 2"x4"s to provide added rigidity and handles for porting. I loaded a board last year with 10 buckets and it was perfect. no need to add water to buckets and very stable.
Looking to go to a wireless system this year as the only other firing method is using a boat(skiff) to move from board to board lighting fuses.
PM me if you want to discuss further.
solkuter
St1dinoh
May 5th, 2008, 10:55 AM
speaking from experience here if you plan to shoot lots of stuff off the water you'll want to just build a barge.
6 plastic 55 galon drums, some pipe strapping, a box of screws, some 2x4's and 2 4x8 sheets of ply will do the trick.
arrange the 2x4's in such a way that they make a flat frame divided into 6 compartments. you'll want the drums at the far edges and because of this you'll wind up with a empty strip between the two rows of 3 drums.
use the 2x4 frame to keep each barrel in place so they can't wander.
attach the 2 4x8 sheets of ply to one side, flip it, and start attaching the drums using the strapping and some screws. (BE SURE to place the drums so the capped ends are facing outward). we used 2 strips of strapping per drum.
here's a link to a picture of a setup on this raft from 05
we've had every square inch of this thing covered and it floated just fine...even with a 100 pound rack on it. key of course being centering everything abnormaly heavy and evenly distributing the load.
when we loaded it full we found it was more stable if we added about 5 gallons of water to each drum, then resealed them.
if you build them right a dual ski-do trailer is just perfect to haul this raft.
paired with a wireless firing system shooting fromthe water is a hard combo to beat. you can get some beautiful images with that dual canvas.