Fireworks Blog

In this post I'm going to share with you my first rocket tool . I made it some years ago and it's enterely made of wood. Basically, I've cut a piece about 10cm long of a wooden 2.3cm diameter broomstick and made a hole of something like 5mm diameter on it, with a length of 2cm. For the base, I used 2 glued wood blocks with a wood pin of 5mm diameter, 2cm length sticked on it. Obviously, there must be a very little space between the pin and the hole in the other piece, you can reach this space with a sandpaper until the pin enters very close to the hole, but freely. For today, that's it, in a future post I will tell you how I made the black powder rocket motors with this tool.

Yesterday, May 30 2020 ,  Nasa and SpaceX launched Crew Dragon Demo 2 Mission to the ISS. I know this is not a blog about space exploration, but I decided to talk a little about this fact because one of the most important things that powers this two areas is the same - Rockets ! The fuel is not the same, but the principle of this milenar technology that started about a thousand years ago is. The ambitions of conquest the space are not from 50/60 years ago. Early in 1914, Robert Goddard created the world's first liquid fueled rocket (oxygen + gasoline) and made a lot of studies and experiments about high altitude rockets. Some years later, during the WWII, Wernher von Braun created the A4 Rocket , mostly known as the V2 Rocket , a powerful missile that reached a range of 320km and a velocity of about 5700km/h. After the war, von Braun went to the U.S. and started developing ballistic missiles and finally was joined NASA, contributting to the creation of the Saturn V roc...

In Portugal, a Girandola is usually a rack to launch multiple stick rockets at the same time or one after another fastly. It consists of a piece of wood with holes where the stick is put in. The rockets are linked by a trail of gunpowder, a black match or by quickmatch fuses, depending on the objective (rapid or slowly firing). Image from  https://museus.madeira.gov.pt/Exposicao?exbID=18 Image from  https://museus.madeira.gov.pt/Exposicao?exbID=18 This way of firing rockets is also very usual in Spain, specially, you could see it at the "Cangas de Nárcea" festival that you can see in the youtube video below: The "Girandola" is also another type of firework in other countries like Italy and USA and I will talk about it in a future post.

Today I will talk about the traditional Portuguese fireworks rockets! In my country (Portugal) the most traditional fireworks kind ever made where the rockets . They basically consist of a wood stick or cane with a rocket motor (propellant casing) and a paper bag containg flash bombettes or color effects. They are traditionally hand-launched and many times lit by a cigarette. Rockets, along with other types of fireworks, are used in Portugal mainly in Catholic saints feasts by night, but also during the daylight. Do you know what's the Portuguese word for Rocket ? It's Foguete and the word for Fireworks is Fogo-de-Artifício. Unfortunately, the rockets are banned and replaced by mortars/shells in the summer because the suspect that they caused forest fires during the hot weather when their hot motor (propellant casing) or other parts come falling from the sky but during other seasons you could see rocket displays in many cities and vill...