- Explosive tutorial III - This addition of the explosive tutorial will explain rockets, their propellents, and their ignition systems. First of all I will be talking about the model rocket engines because they are very easy to obtain and can be converted for many of your needs. Your basic model rocket engine has three stages. It's first stage is it's propellent. It's propellent consists of a solid fuel composed of solid black powder. It has a clay nozzle on the bottom side to direct and concentrate the thrust out the back of the rocket. After the solid propellent burns out(usually depending on the engine, within half a second to two and a half seconds) the tracking smoke ignites. This is made specificly for the model rockets when they reach high altitudes. Then their is the ejection charge. That is usually made of a black powder that blows out the parachute with a minor explosion. Now if you are going to make a rocket that has an explosive payload, or something that makes a design(such as a sky rocket), you will need to scrape off the tracking smoke for it to have a shorter time between igniting your payload. It will fly to the ground before it ignites your payload if it is to heavy and does not have those powders scraped off. Now I will talk about the ignition system. It is electrical, unless you have a long enough fuse that will fit up the engine nozzle and give you plenty off time to run like hell. But, if you are using the rocket launcher then it must be electrical. If you choose to shoot it out of a pipe you can use the electronic detonator that I explained in one of my earlier files. They are ignited by using model rocket igniters that can be bought at your local hobbie store. You must make sure the two wires of the igniter are not touching or else the igniter will fail and not fire the rocket. You place the igniter in the bottom of the engine making sure you push it in far enough so that it touches the solid propellent but to not force it or else you might bend the wires causing them to touch. After the igniter is placed in the engine, you must then place something to keep the igniter from falling out. This can be done by placing an igniter plug in thier which usually come with the engines now-a-days. If you don't have any you can simply use a peice of tape that runs through the two wires holding it firmly in place. Never aprouch the rocket if it misfires for about a minute just in case. You don't want to have it go off in your face, because that would probably be an extremly rude awakening. ------Vortex------==>