How To Make Slow Burning Fuses

when experimenting with homemade
pyrotechnics things go wrong and you
don’t want to be too close if your
composition explodes I need some sort of
a pyrotechnic time delay so for this
project I’m using items from around the
house to make a simple form of a
slow-burning fuse
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you
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if you’ve seen my videos on making
rocket fuel and smoke flares you’ll
probably recognize these ingredients
this time I’m mixing up thirty six grams
of my stump remover with 24 grams of
white table sugar this gives me a 60
gram composition that needs to be shaken
up vigorously I have a preheated frying
pan set at medium heat so that when I
add 1/3 cup of water it boils instantly
at this point I’ll slowly sprinkle in
the 60 gram mixture because I want this
all to dissolve I can stir that in with
a spatula and because the water is so
hot it dissolves completely that’ll need
to sit for a minute to heat up and let
the water boil out so it’s a good time
to prepare my cord this is 100% cotton
yarn and I’m going to be using about 12
feet of it okay the water is boiled down
to the point where the slurry is getting
very frothy which means this solution is
supersaturated it’s time to add the yarn
into the mix to soak up the chemicals as
the last bit of water continues to
evaporate out it’s important that every
bit of yarn is absorbing an equal amount
of the solution holding on to one end
will help prevent the yarn from knotting
up when I pull it out this gets
transferred onto a cookie sheet using a
pattern resembling a sine wave and with
about six turns on each side the yarn is
evenly spaced and fits perfectly now
this goes into an oven set to 300
degrees for about 20 minutes and while
the cord is still hot I can nudge it
slightly to prevent it from sticking to
the pan when it cools later on alright
the time is up and this court has a
slightly golden tinge to it and that’s a
good sign so I’ll leave it out to cool
for about 5 to 10 minutes when the cord
is fully cool you can see it’s become
stiff and retains the shape from when it
was bait now I can just cut these
strands at the base of the turns using
some scissors and I’ve got a nice piece
of fuse cord ready to go the cord is
easy to cut and a few of these strands
will get cut down smaller to be using a
batch of smoke flares I made in another
project look for how I built those in a
different video
okay testing out the fuse the first
thing I notice is it lights off really
quickly and continues a steady and
progressive burn even with a little
breeze it’s still got a nice flame
shooting off the back and seems to burn
steady at about 3 seconds per inch
sweet I tried making different fuses
this time soaking a coffee filter in the
solution and laying it out for baking I
also tried soaking some paper towel then
twisting pieces of it in the shorter but
thicker fuses after they were baked they
were very drying and very rigid and cut
a strip of the coffee filter first and
tested it with a rock on top to see if
it would fizzle out when it lost contact
with the open air surprisingly it
continued to burn on underneath the rock
and kept on burning right out the other
side one of the paper towel fuses was
lit but maybe twisting it wasn’t such a
good idea because when the pressure
built inside was gone in an instant I
tried another one and got pretty much
the same result when this one was lit
without anything holding it down it went
airborne so as far as consistency
reliability and aesthetics Co I’m pretty
happy with the results using the yarn
well there’s how I made some cheap but
functional slow-burning fuses with
things around the house if you like this
project perhaps you’ll like some of my
others check them out at the king of
random calm
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you
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