I have searched the forums and havent seen this so i hope it is not a repost. Does anyone have any pictures of their Milk Crate Racks fused? I just built mine and it is pretty tight so im just wondering how others have fused their shells. Since each tube is touching all the way through it isnt like there is a small gap between the tubes to run your fuse.
Thanks in advance.
Xikar
December 23rd, 2006, 06:00 AM
Just chain the fuses of the shells together unless you want a specific firing pattern. Here is a pic of my milk crate racks loaded and fused. All but 1 shell did not fire out of 150.
I would offer several cautions to those that choose to use milk crate racks. We had a report this year, where a guy's whole rack went up in two seconds. He had fused it with fast fuse. Apparently the flare of hot lift gasses from the first shots leaving the tubes, ignited all of the surrounding fast fuse, causing an instantaneous chain reaction. The crowd loved it, but his show was shortened by an unplanned false finale ! Another caution is to make sure no loops of fuses from your fuse chains, are extending over the tops of adjacent mortars. You don't want lifting shells to yank at other fuse chains as they leave the tubes. The biggest caution I would offer, is to avoid reaching across any part of your mortar bundle in trying to re ignite a misfired fuse train. If you reach across or into the top of the rack, going after that fuse, you could have a hang fired shell cooking in a tube, just below your hand or arm.
shrapnel
December 23rd, 2006, 12:52 PM
I will also add, make sure you have at least a 3/4" piece of ply cut to fit the bottom of your crate, dont rely on that crate to take the blow from the mortars very many times. AND, I have seen pics of milk crate racks destroyed leaving all the tubes laying every direction, which also means facing the audience. The destroyed milk crate was probably some sort of brittle plastic so make sure you are using an hdpe crate as well. Even if you are using nfpa guidelines of 70' per inch/tube diameter, which equals less than 140' minimum distance from audience to mortar, we know there are consumer shells reaching well over 100', add in another 75' burst diameter, half that for the radius=37' and that 140' is really pushing it imo, especially if using questionable equipment.
graybeard
December 23rd, 2006, 01:52 PM
Schrapnel has it right, there are flimsy replicas of milk crates sold as shelf organizers at places like Staples and Office Depot. Those are not suitable for this purpose. Most real milk crates have a reinforcing band around the top and bottom. I really wish we could discourage the use of the crates altogether. It's not really a rack, but a way of bundling mortars, which is much less safe than a real rack. I would hope everyone wanting to shoot shells in multiples, would work toward getting real mortar racks as soon as they could.
Bill Corbett
December 23rd, 2006, 04:49 PM
I've made & still have several dozen milk crate racks. Yes they were very fast & easy to make, plus the price was right (free). After using them for several years I've decided to make a bunch of regular racks. I'll still keep some milk crate racks however it's hard to fuse these racks the way I like to with my big hands & fingers. I want some regular style racks because they are safer, more versitile & easier to fuse.
leeca
December 23rd, 2006, 05:42 PM
Milk create racks are cool but after using them awhile most people want to get some kind of fan rack anyway.
Just make sure you get the milk creates that are made out of HDPE!! (http://www.containerstore.com/browse/Product.jhtml;jsessionid=F3QXLACCCENRFQFIAIMCM5GAVABBMJVC?CATID=77858&PRODID=60136)
The ones with the metal band may seem like they would be stonger but that band really dosent do squat for making them any stronger.
mudhog79
December 24th, 2006, 07:44 AM
Yes,
After the new years i plan on taking all of my tubes and making them into a fan rack. The lack of time is what has caused me to go the way of a Milk Crate rack for the new years.
nolaPOPS
December 30th, 2006, 01:38 PM
Speaking Milk Crate racks, I have an old Borden's milk crate from when my grandpa worked for Borden's many, many years ago. We found it while cleaning his house after he died (that was 10 yrs. ago), but the crate is solid wood with a metal frame on the corners, around the top edge, and the bottom is metal. It may make a sturdy rack but the problem of close ignition is still very possible. ....I don't want to use it because when we found it I cleaned and re-painted it, just thought I'd share the possibilities of a sturdy rack if someone can find some of these "old style" crates.
graybeard
December 30th, 2006, 02:10 PM
nolaPOPS, Here is some more milk crate trivia: Some of the really old milk crates were made completely of steel and were so sturdy, we used them for jackstands for car repairs when I was a teenager. Many of the old milk crates, Like the Bordens brand you have, have become valuable collectors items at flea markets. There was a time when almost everybody had several milk crates stacked in their garage, because they were handy for so many different things. In California, they have a law on the books where it is a Felony to posess a milk crate, without permission of the owner. Shopping carts are included in that same law.:rolleyes:
SteveEmge
December 30th, 2006, 02:41 PM
If you have the time, and the handiness, making a proper rack is not very expensive. A 10 shot, 1 row rack costs less than $5 in materials. I would encourage anyone who does use a milkcrate rack to only fire shells that are not strong enough to blow out the mortars (if using HDPE or good fiberglass, most shells out there will not cause the mortars to fail, but if you are shooting some of the hardest breaking shells out there, you are asking for trouble if you have a tight bundle of mortars that are not in a rack built to withstand the forces of a catastrophic failure). A correctly built rack does not contain these forces, but is designed to release them without critical damage to the rack. Any rack with more than 2 rows of mortars without significant space between the rows is a potential catastrophe because if a shell cooks off in the middle row, the force has no direction of least resistance and will be extremely destructive.
scarp9603
January 3rd, 2007, 06:41 AM
If you have the time, and the handiness, making a proper rack is not very expensive. A 10 shot, 1 row rack costs less than $5 in materials. I would encourage anyone who does use a milkcrate rack to only fire shells that are not strong enough to blow out the mortars (if using HDPE or good fiberglass, most shells out there will not cause the mortars to fail, but if you are shooting some of the hardest breaking shells out there, you are asking for trouble if you have a tight bundle of mortars that are not in a rack built to withstand the forces of a catastrophic failure). A correctly built rack does not contain these forces, but is designed to release them without critical damage to the rack. Any rack with more than 2 rows of mortars without significant space between the rows is a potential catastrophe because if a shell cooks off in the middle row, the force has no direction of least resistance and will be extremely destructive.
How about a milk crate with 2 rows of 5 tubes, wooden spacers at the top and the bottom of the 3rd row instead of tubes, and 2 more rows of 5 tubes:
ooooo
ooooo
====
ooooo
ooooo
mastersparks
January 3rd, 2007, 06:49 PM
Mud, sorry I don't have a pic but I have been faced with the same dilemma you have and really like doing it this way:
1) Go get some small but strong small metal clips. I get mine at the gun shows around 5 cllips for a buck. The kind of clips with the plastic or rubber around the tiny handles. They are no more than two inches long.
2) Put all your shells in the tubes in the order you want to fire them. Visualize going left to right in volleys of 5 shells as that is how the milk crate is configured. (5tubes by 5 tubes)
3) Take the fuses of 5 shells (one horizontal or vertical row) and hold them together evenly with one hand at the middle tube of these 5 tubes.
4) Take your other hand and put a clip around the fuses. I use 2 clips per row so you will need at least 10 clips. Leave yourself at least 2 inches for zip ties and tape. Now your shell leaders are in place and you have 2 free hands to work with.
5) Take two 4" zip ties and pull each row of 5 fuses together tightly You can take the clips off now when the zip ties are in place. Snip the long ends of the zip ties down towards the connection with a pair of dikes.
6) Now you are ready to run your connecting fuse right down the middle of the tied up groups of 5. It is hard to use a zip tie to attatch the connecting fuse so I tie a knot with the visco around the bundles of shell leaders. Take a couple wraps around the bundle and tie a slip knot.
7) Duct tape each of the 5 intersetions of connecting fuse and shell leaders and leave a little bit of visco out one of the ends to light.
I like this way alot because if you leave a little bit of slack in the connecting fuse from one group of 5 shells to the next row of 5 shells, you will get very nice volleys of 5, then a pause then another volley.
You can splice in fast visco on your last 2 groups of 5 shells if you want a nice, fast 10 shot finale.
It's easier if you make each row of 5 the same type of shell as the shell leaders will all be the same length. Try mixing up different kinds of shells in different rows of 5. Hope this helps. Try it out.
bubbalina
January 5th, 2007, 11:38 AM
scarp--thats how i have mine. and if i need to angle them, its easy enough to remove the bottem spacer and angle the tubes
SteveEmge
January 5th, 2007, 02:08 PM
How about a milk crate with 2 rows of 5 tubes, wooden spacers at the top and the bottom of the 3rd row instead of tubes, and 2 more rows of 5 tubes:
ooooo
ooooo
====
ooooo
ooooo
This is better, but I would not say it is really safe without testing. I really have no experience with milk crate racks and do not know what the crates can hold up to.
SteveEmge
January 5th, 2007, 02:10 PM
Does anyone know where to get HDPE milk crates in the St. Louis area so we can do some destructive testing?
Bill Corbett
January 5th, 2007, 04:31 PM
I was told there are pallets full of them behind any large grocery store.
leeca
January 5th, 2007, 07:42 PM
I got my HDPE ones from amazon.com $9.99 + shipping. But many office supply stores also have them. It's getting harder to find the 13x13x11 crates behind the stores anymore. and that is the size to get to fit 25 tubes.
I'd be very interested in the results of safety testing on milk crate racks. I'd much rather spend my money on more tubes. But if safety is an issue, I'll have to spend the money on lumber to build racks for the tubes I already have.
noel
January 24th, 2007, 10:25 AM
Scarp...
I just noticed this thread, Steve uses the Pyrogear name on here.... Maybe he should change it to "PyrogearSteve" .. Or we can just call him Bruce to keep it clear.
I'll keep my eye out for some milk crates (to be legally had) and also show the difference between that and the dreaded office paperwork crate that I know can't stand up to an inverted fart.
scarp9603
January 24th, 2007, 11:34 AM
Thanks, Noel
I'd especially be interested in destructive test results on my scheme:
a milk crate with 2 rows of 5 tubes, wooden spacers at the top and the bottom of the 3rd row instead of tubes, and 2 more rows of 5 tubes:
ooooo
ooooo
====
ooooo
ooooo
pyrofusion
April 6th, 2007, 01:20 PM
Are the milk crates as strong as the wood? Does there need to be a separator in between the rows of mortars?
SanFrancisco
April 6th, 2007, 01:40 PM
Are the milk crates as strong as the wood? Does there need to be a separator in between the rows of mortars?
Personally, I like milk crates. Real ones are amazingly tough.
For the square milk crates you won't need a spacer of any kind. It's like they were designed to hold 25 tubes. The larger milk crates will need a board at one end to take up some slack. Don't forget to put a piece of ply fitted inside the bottom of the crates before you slide the tubes in.
I am planning to setup a milk crate this year with spacers between each row using 15" tubes. I will drill a hole in the side of each tube about 2" down from the top. The shell leaders will come out there and attach to the main fuse. I am feeling pretty confident that it will help prevent early ignition.
Tennespeedy
April 6th, 2007, 02:25 PM
I just saw that the wood in the bottom comment, I didn't even think about that. I'm getting ready to fiddle with some milk crate rack ideas.
skypainter
April 6th, 2007, 06:36 PM
Personally, I like milk crates. Real ones are amazingly tough.
For the square milk crates you won't need a spacer of any kind. It's like they were designed to hold 25 tubes. The larger milk crates will need a board at one end to take up some slack. Don't forget to put a piece of ply fitted inside the bottom of the crates before you slide the tubes in.
I am planning to setup a milk crate this year with spacers between each row using 15" tubes. I will drill a hole in the side of each tube about 2" down from the top. The shell leaders will come out there and attach to the main fuse. I am feeling pretty confident that it will help prevent early ignition.
The larger milk crate racks that I have hold 30 tubes almost perfect, no spacer needed.
The plywood fitted to the bottom is a good idea. without it the tubes can jump out of the rack when fired. Also on the bottom of the milkcrate are short legs used to make them stackable. Saw them off so the crate sits flat on the ground.
Trim the shell leader to stick 1 inch out of the top of the tube then attach that 1 inch to your main fuse and you shouldn't get any early ignition. If the shell leaders are longer the main fuse will be able to flop around the top of the rack while burning igniting other tubes. My racks are always top fused.
SanFrancisco
April 7th, 2007, 06:29 AM
I think my larger milk crates hold 35 with a little space at the end. I've never seen one with feet.
skypainter
April 7th, 2007, 07:03 AM
I think my larger milk crates hold 35 with a little space at the end. I've never seen one with feet.
Mine had small 0.5 inch long "feet" in each corner to make them stackable which wouldn't allow the bottom of the crate to sit flat on the ground.