Fusing Candle fans - a consumer guide

Candle fans are a great way to achieve a wide spread of effects for relatively little money and bring variety to any display.

This is a quick and simple guide to creating a wooden candle frame, mounting candles to the frame and fusing them in such a way they can be lit from one fuse.

There are many ways to create candle frames this is easily the simplest and cheapest, this particular frame is tailor made to the particular candles I chose to use for this demo, larger candles (27mm 8 shot for example) will need a larger frame.




Materials:

Pine baton
Screws
Good quality cable ties

Tools:
Saw
Tape measure
Drill bit (for piloting)
Screwdriver

Step 1
Cut your timber to size, you will need 2 x horizontal wide enough to accomodate your fan and 2 x vertical to support the frame.
For my frame the horizontal timbers are 400mm the vertical 500mm.



Step 2
Lay your timbers in position ensuring the candle will make contatct with the floor and the topmost horizontal timber is low enough for the candle to be secured to it.



Step 3
Pilot the fixing holes and screw the timbers together.



Step 4
Position the candles and secure with good quality cable ties, more cable ties may be required for larger candles. It is important not to overtighten cable ties on roman candles, the tubes on some candles can be quite 'soft', when the candle fires it may 'bulge' resulting in either a blow out or the cable tie failing.

Fusing
Fusing must be left until you are on site on show day.
Below are two techniques that offer almost instantaneous firing of the candles on our frame. Be sensible, do not smoke and ensure all body parts are clear from of the business end of any fireworks whilst fusing.

Materials
Quick Pink fuse
Quick Match
Waterproof Visco / PIC
Small Cable ties
Foil tape

Tools
Scissors suitable for fusing

The first technique uses quickmatch, quickmatch burns almost instantaneously and will light all four candles in a split second.

Step 1
Remove any tissue paper, fuse protectors or sleeves surrounding the ignition fuse.



Step 2
Cut an adequate length of quickmatch (enough to go from the first candle to the last (X) but with an extra 100mm at the beginning and an extra 50mm at the end (total length = X + 150mm) this allows enough room for a delay fuse to ignite the candles and a bit of match at the end to prevent the visco being blown out by the gases generated, it acts as an escape.

Mark where the fuses will be inserted with a marker.



Step 3
With suitable scissors cut a small knick from the quickmatch at the points we marked earlier, needs to be large enough to allow the visco fuse from the candle to be inserted.



Step 4
Cut the white was dipped part of the visco fuse off, this impedes the ignition if not removed, by doing this you expose the easy to light core of the visco, insert as much as possible into the knick you made in the quickmatch.



Step 5
Foil over the top of each candle tightly being sure to contain any exposed fuse, the quickmatch in this demo is a foil lined waterproof match, if you are using a paper based quickmatch it will be worth foiling over all of this too. Foiling makes the fusing water resistant and fire resistant preventing cross ignition.



Step 6
Cut the desired length of waterproof / PIC fuse and insert a good inch into the quickmatch and foil into place, cover the tail end of the match (the extra 50mm left as a vent) with a small piece of foil tape.



Your fan is complete:



Video fo the fusing at work:



Next quick pink visco.....

The second technique makes use of quick pink visco, this fuse burns at around a foot per second, its quick!

Step 1
Measure and cut an adequate amount of fuse allowing at least 100mm to add the ignition delay fuse.



Step 2
Using small cable ties or tape attach the pink visco to the fireworks regular grren visco allowing as much contact as possible.



Step 3
Repeat for all candles on the frame



Step 4
Cut an adequate size piece of waterproof visco / PIC and attach to the excess lead in we allowed for ignition earlier



Step 5
Tightly foil over the tops of the candles and all fuse between leaving only the ignition fuse exposed, this makes the fusing water resistant and fire resistant.



Your candle frame is complete!



Video of the fusing in action:

Hope that's helpful

You couldn't have done it better this will be a great help to many people who use this site

brilliant guide should be very helpful to lots of people! keep them coming!

Great guide, deffinately worth a sticky:thumbsup:

Excellent guide... I am going to have a go at this!

Quick question on the QM... You foil over the connections, but not the whole QM.... I have never used QM before, is it generally waterproof?

Depends what type you are using, if it feels plasticcy then it is waterporoof QM, if it looks papery then it isn't. The QM used in the guide is Jubilee's foil lined and waterproof match.

The QM from Wireless Fireworks IS water proof

Thanks.... Off to orders some QM.... Any other suppliers I should check out for fuse?


Off topic, but do you find that the chuck on your Bosch combo drill undoes itself? Just bought one myself and wondering whether to take it back :shakehead:

Wireless Fireworks.

Yeah, things useless, dont really use it that much, have a makita for work

No problem, quite enjoyed it until I realise you could only attach 10 images before it resets the list and you lose all the previous uploads making them appear as a broken link in the post!

Great thanks Karl.

Nice one, very easy to follow

Wow masterchief, Great guide! 10 out of 10 for effort and content! Now im gonna look into getting some candles...................

Really good guide Karl! Nice one

:thumbsup: nice one karl

Great guides! This is what a pyro forum should be about :thumbsup:

I see you 'knotted' the wood and yet not painted the frame, is there a reason for this?