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Star Mine Techniques
One of the rarest and in my opinion most not
understood item available to consumers is the star mine. The star mine effect is
found in many cakes; however it is rare when it comes to reloadables. To
date there are only two reloadable kits that I have seen sine I started
doing my own shows that have this effect. The first kit was a shell and
mine kit called “Heroes Among Us”, this kit is no longer made. The
second kit made by World Class Fireworks is called “Critical Acclaim”;
this kit received a
makeover for the 2003 fireworks season.
I don’t even know what a star mine is?
| Chances are due to the rarity of this type of device you have never seen what it look likes or the effect by itself. To visualize the effect you can think of watching a geyser, however instead of water being shot into the air it would be lighted stars. A picture lower on this page show a shell and a mine going off at the same time, the stars below the break is the mine. For those of you that have never seen the actually shell it basically looks like a regular canister shell however without the lift charge on one end. In the picture to the right the three shells that look similar are the mine shells in this fusing setup. When using a kit like the Critical Acclaim it works just like a reloadable mortar kit. A star mine kit contains a number of reloadable star mines and a cardboard mortar. Each of the star mines has a fuse that has to be unwound prior to loading into the mortar. The picture to the right has three mine shells from world class fused to a triple break shell. |
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One of our websites visitors has brought up many places to use these wonderful devices. Here are a few of his ideas; beginning or end of a show, and to accent the show while being set off to music. Mines are also great to be used when you are transitioning from say a quiet part of your show to and energetic part quickly. For instance say you are shooting off a few fountains and the next item that you want to shoot is a mortar shell, between shooting these two types of items is the perfect spot to place a few of these.
Techniques to improve star mines.
While I think mines look great by themselves these are a few techniques that can really make this wonderful effect more impressive.
Mortar shells and mines
| One of the best ways to help improve star mines is to use them with mortar shells. This becomes easier when you have mortar racks available. For a really neat ground to air effect piggyback a shell on top of mine. Instructions on how to do this can be found here. When you light the aerial shell when the shell is shot out of the mortar it lights the fuse to the mine. The effect it produces in amazing when the shell reaches the highest point of the flight and breaks the mine comes out of the ground to meet it. An example of what the effect would look like is to the right. Notice how the mine and the shell are both purple. This effect was using World Class's Critical Acclaim and Excalibur Shells. The audience will love this combination of simultaneous effects, we usually have about a quarter of our shells shot this way. |
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| Another technique that improves the effect of this device is by shooting them out of an angled fan rack. This will help spread the effect of the mines over a wider area producing a huge fan of color. If you have a large budget, try to get three mine kits so that you can shoot three of the same color at once. If your budget is not really that big where you can devote a few bucks towards mines then try to get one box. Try mixing the colors of the mines that are shot at the same time. For techniques on how to obtain different mine firing effects, check out our star mine rack fusing techniques. If you use a rack that has multiple rows of angled mortar try shooting the mines left to right and then right to left forming a "Z" effect with them. |
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If you have an electrical firing unit or some type of fast fuse this technique is very impressive looking. What you do is take three mortars spread them apart about 15 ft. in a straight line. Fuse all of the mines together so that they can be all lit at the same time either electrically or by quick match or sticky match. The effect is overwhelmingly impressive, as all three of the mines race towards the sky at the same time. Grucci used this effect in their 2005 Harborfest show creating rainbow of colors, very impressive.