Set pieces are
words or pictures written in fire. They are beautiful and elaborate,
and were commonly used centuries ago during Renaissance times, but are
rarely used anymore in professional displays. Modern firework shows
are usually designed to be viewed by audiences from great distances from
which set pieces couldn't be seen. The only times they are used are in
smaller close-proximity displays, such as those fired at racetracks and
sometimes sports games.
Set pieces
consist of small, pen-sized colored flares called lances attached to
a wooden frame in some sort of pattern, such as a picture. A pieces of
quick match is attached to the ends of the lances, so they all ignite at
virtually the same instant. Although lances are considered 1.3G
(display fireworks) and require a BATF permit to purchase and use, you can
use simple sparklers to get a similar effect.
MATERIALS
- "Morning
Glory"-type sparklers
- ¼ to ½" thick plywood
-drill and 1/16" bit
- quick match or sticky match
- visco fuse or electric match
- chalk or pencil
- tape measure
- wood screws and wood (such as 2x4s)
Procedure
Begin by
choosing a design (words or pictures) and figure out how large it should be
according to its distance from the audience. Letters should be a
minimum of 12" high and 12" wide. If the set piece is going
to be more than 75' from the audience, make them larger.
Next, find
a piece of plywood that your design will fit on to. Cut it
2" larger than your actual design all on all sides. Use a
tape measure and chalk to divide up the sections for your letters.
The boxes should be as wide as they are high. Then draw the
letters, picture, or whatever. Use a different color chalk to
draw an "X" or put a dot at every point on the letter where
you'll put a sparkler. They should be about 2" apart on
straight sections of letters, and 1" apart at curved sections.
You can increase this distance for larger set pieces so you don't use
up quite as many sparklers.
Using a
1/8" drill bit, drill a hole wherever there's an "X".
Make sure they're about an equal distance apart. Spray paint the wood
flat black so it will be harder to see when the set piece is going off.
The idea is to make it look like the letters are kind of floating in the
air, not attached to a support. Wait a while for it to dry.
Now
prepare the sparklers. Cut the stick off about 1/4" below
the composition, and remove the colorful tissue paper from the
opposite end to expose the primed end (it looks like a white paper
tube with dab of hard black stuff on the tip). Take a hot glue
gun and cover the hole in glue, then quickly stick in the end of the
sparkler (NOT the primed end). Do this until every hole has a
sparkler in it.
Now
you're ready to match the set piece. You can use quick match or
sticky match. With quick match, the best thing to do is match
one letter at a time, and then connect each letter to a continuous
piece of quick match that runs the entire length of the wood (scroll
down to see diagram). Remember to leave
about a 6-8" leader of quick match before the first sparkler.
Where the quick match
comes into contact with a sparkler, pinch the bottom part of the quick
match pipe and cut a V-shaped notch about as wide as the sparkler,
revealing the black match fuse inside. Carefully insert the
primed end of the sparkler into this hole far enough that it will stay
inside.
You still need to attached
the quick match more permanently to each sparkler. One way is to
use a LOW TEMP glue gun and attempt to glue the outside of the match
pipe to the outside of the sparkler, being careful not to get any glue
inside the match pipe or on the sparkler primer. Another way is
to use masking tape.
Take a 1/2 inch wide
piece of tape, about 2 inches long, and wrap it over the quick match
and on to the sparkler, as shown. Wrap a thinner piece of tape
around the sparkler near the very tip in order to strengthen the hold
of the first piece. Try to use as little tape as possible.
Repeat this process from every sparkler on the set piece.
Your set
piece should now look like the diagram on the right. Insert a
piece of visco fuse (at least 6 inches long) or an electric match into
the quick match leader. Your set piece is now ready to fire,
once you find something to mount it from.
Joe Schneider,
who built this type of set piece for his Christmas 2003 display, has
kindly provided us with some close-up photographs of his project.
Click each image to see a larger, more detailed version of the quick
match attachment.
THE MOUNTING FRAME
There are several ways to
mount the set piece. The first it to hang it from some type of wire
hung between two poles. I wouldn't use that method because for one,
you'd need one hell of a strong wire, and second, it would sag down and
could be blown by the wind. A better option would be to mount it
directly to a pole or tree. Mounting it on your house is a VERY BAD
IDEA...A third option is to build a mounting frame out of 2x4s and
attach the set piece to the top of that (as shown to the left). You
would have the ability to move the thing wherever you wanted.
You
might want to add other things to the set piece, such as fountains and
wheels. For example, if your set piece was a picture of a car,
you could use [firework] wheels for the car wheels. You can fuse
these directly to the set piece quick match to ignite as soon as the
set piece does, or use various lengths of visco fuse so there's a bit
of a delay.
Once
you've lit off the set piece, you can use it over and over
again. Just use pliers to rip the sticks and glue out of the
holes, then put in new sparklers.
