to make “E45 equivalent” rocket motors. In this project we’re adding time delays,

ejection charges, and sending a duct tape rocket, over 1,000 feet high.

I just made 10 rocket motors for under $5.00, and they only took about 10 minutes each.

Now to see if they’ll even work at all, let’s strap one to a couple of bricks for

static testing, and light it up. When the propellent catches, you can see it’s actually

got an impressive amount of thrust. Now of course this

begs the obvious question. What would happen if we put one, in the paper rocket from a

previous project. So I just made a glorified version of the same thing, using cardboard

and duct tape. You can see the cardboard fins are just hot glued to the body, and I reinforced

the upper part of the tube with 3/4” PVC pipe to keep it rigid. The hole at the back

has just enough room to accept a single sugar motor, and you can see a little metal wire

holds it down in place. Ok, our rocket is loaded and ready to fly, but we still need

a way to launch it. I used the lid of a cooking pot, and a sawed-off marshmallow roasting

stick to make a simple blast pad. And the rocket’s just held on with pieces cut, from

the body tube of a pen. Alright, let’s light it off and see how it does. Now that’s not

too shabby for a rocket made from sugar and cardboard. From the time of apogee, it took

a little over 8 seconds to hit the ground, which means this thing shot up over 1,000

feet high. How cool is that? The problem, of course, is that there’s no parachute

on this thing, which means it’s going to “lawn dart”, straight into the ground,

every time. That’s exactly why I’m out in the boonies, miles away from any people,

or property. Now it’s important to mention here that potassium nitrate is hygroscopic,

meaning when the propellent is exposed to air, it’ll slowly absorb moisture until

the fuel loses potency. This mix is about a month old, and won’t even light off anymore,

and you can see this rocket, doesn’t produce any thrust whatsoever. To reverse the hydration,

you could put it in the oven at 300F for 30 minutes. If you’re willing to risk the possibility,

of an insurance claim. Ok, to make a parachute ejection charge, we’re going to need to

add a time delay function, and a little black powder. I just made this one out of acrylic

so you can see exactly what’ll be happening inside the motor during the launch. You can

see that when the white mix ignites, it burns incredibly fast, then stops suddenly at the

black mark, where the delay mix begins. This amount of powder should give about a 5 second

delay, then ignite the ejection charge. .. Which you’ll see how to make in just a minute.

Now the recipe for delay mix is so incredibly simple. All we need to do is separate 20 grams

of the white mix, made in our “Sugar Rocket” project, and add 15% baking soda by weight.

Which in this case brings the mix up to 23 grams total. Put the modified mix in a container

and shake it around for about a minute, to blend it together as much as possible. And

that’s it. Just by adding a little baking soda, we’ve modified the rocket propellent,

into a fairly reliable time delay mix that’ll burn 1 second for every 1/16th of an inch.

I typically use a 5 second delay on my motors, and ended up making a new ram rod to fit that

profile. It should be obvious that the delay mix goes in after the white mix, but before

the kitty litter end cap. The last step is the ejection charge, and for that we need a little

black powder, and a small drill bit. The bit I’m using is a 3/32” bit, and using the

modified template we can gauge how deep, we’ll need to drill through the clay plug, to expose

the delay mix underneath. This will need to be drilled out by hand the same way we did

the nozzle in the “Sugar Rocket” video, and it’s important to watch carefully for

a trace of white powder, on the tip of the bit. This is our confirmation that we’re

all the way through the clay, so to finish up, let’s drop a bit of black powder down

the hole, cover the clay plug a few grains deep, then compact it with a few taps from

the wooden rod. This compacted ejection charge should hold firmly in place, and the modified

rocket motor is finished. Now, using another acrylic motor, you can see that the instant

the burn hits the delay mix, it stops suddenly, and burns dramatically slower for about 5

seconds. When it reaches the black powder, though, the charge ignites, with enough power

to push out a parachute. The delay can be adjusted for any length of time we need, and

the rule of thumb, is a 1/16th of an inch, per second. Well now you know how to modify

your sugar motors to have time delays and parachute ejection charges, rather than taking

the riskier approach of launching duct tape rockets, and just hoping they don’t hit

anything important. Well that’s it for now. If you liked this project, perhaps you’ll like

some of my others. Check them out at www.thekingofrandom.com

Hey, if you’re across the pond, or in another country, I realize you may not have access

to some of these materials, so I’ve got another rocket building project coming up

that I guarantee you’ll be able to do. So keep at eye out for that video coming very

soon, and in the mean-time if you still want to build rocket motors like these, I strongly

recommend you join a rocket club first, so you don’t get yourself into trouble. There

are a lot of regulations and safety precautions that you need to be aware of. One thing I

didn’t tell you is that these motors can be modified to work with Estes model rockets

as well, but I’m thinking about doing a video on building a rocket with a parachute

from scratch, so if you’re interested in seeing that, let me know in the comments and

I may put together something for next spring. And one final thought. If you have to ask

where to get black powder, this definitely isn’t a project you should be playing with

yet, but let me just say this. It’s actually easier to find than potassium nitrate. Thanks

for watching to the end. I hope you enjoyed what you saw, and I hope to see you around

for the next project video. Bye.