I had an idea about an hour ago. I have a jar full of PVC dust leftover from grinding down some parts for a potato cannon, I swept all of it off the counter and into the jar and saved it for some reason. I poured about a handfull into an old metal dish, and added/stirred in school glue until it started to all stick together. I have about 2" of it drying in a tube, and an already dried small ball of it. It dries pretty hard, and seems like it would disentigrate into dust in the event of blowing out a plug. I can't test it, as I lack the chems for flash right now, and don't have the extra cash. If anyone feels like giving it a go, I would love to see the actual results. A couple of scrap pieces of PVC is a lot easier to get into a fine dust than wood, and would be a lot easier to make plugs out of, for me at least. The only problem is that its fairly messy. If anyone tries/has done this before, please post the results.

Sounds like a resourceful idea. I take it you are using it to plug pyrotechnic devices (at first I thought you were using it for a spudgun, and I thought wtf is he doing). As long as you make sure that you take the right precautions (just cause you think it vaporizes, it still might make chunks or shards which would gladly put a hole through you)

so are they supposed to be strong or easily breakable? What about using PVC glue?

If it holds together, Elmer's will work fine. I find PVC glue too expensive to use it for common gluing applications. On a side note, I've played around with burning PVC, and depending on the type, it will release either a whole lot or a flying shitload of smoke (nice toxic chlorine based smoke), but I think the school glue might take care of that.

That might shoot a piece of melting PVC at near the speed of sound across your blast site. Doesn't sound to safe.

ouch, I can only imagine what it would be like to be hit with an endplug.

you should rather worry about the fine PVC dust in the air that you would get from grinding

Honestly, how hard would it be to use clay or saw dust and water-based glue to make your end-plugs instead? PVC is non-biodegradable and could be very dangerous if used as an end-plug as it could shatter and shoot out plastic shards, it could also spray burning plastic everywhere as previously stated.

Search through our old topics to see how to make different end-plugs if you are having trouble procuring your own. You shouldn't need to resort to making more dangerous epoxy or PVC plugs.

Yes, the plan was to use them for pyrotechnic devices. I haven't been able to test it yet, for obvious reasons (no chems, no fuse, no nothing, but I did find a discreet source of KClO4, a friend knows a chem prof that gets chems for a discount and will supply trustworthy people). I basically scratched it because sawdust would be about the same, and it just took to long to dry when compared to a proportionate sawdust plug. YayItGoBoom!-Elmers works fine, although I did experiment a little with melting leftover dust with PVC solvent, hoping it would make a solid, hard mass (maybe useful for casting something cheaply), it just turned out to be a soft, rubbery, extremely flammable solid. 0EZ0-For smaller applications, I usually ram my own plugs out of paper soaked in school glue, but that doesn't seem to work for me with larger casings, I thought this might work better. It wouldn't really shatter, exactly, since it is just dust held together, but now that I think about it, you're right, the negative aspects defenitely outweigh the good. Scratch that idea. It might have prospect for smokebombs in home-rolled casings plugged at one end. An endplug that gives off smoke along with the desired smoke mixture might be nice.

um...what?

It is really a mute point flamming every one of your stupid posts because you won't be here long enough to appreciate them, but I need the practice. Now, Ask yourself; did I contribute to this thread in ANY way? if the answer is no then you are correct and I urge you to make peace with the m[g]ods before they slaughter you, but if the answer was yes then violently ram your head into you moniter



-=HERE=-

I have seen a great link somewhere on this site that had a pictorial example on how to make your own end plugs out of paper and glue. I have been looking everywhere for it with no luck.
does anyone know what I'm talking about. If so, do you remeber the name of the thread. The method he used went somewhat like this, He was taking small square of paper 1" x 1" and forming them with his tubing. anyways, all tips are greatly appreciated.

Follow the link at the bottom of my post. I was the one who came up with the idea, and now the instructions are all over the internet without giving any credit to me.

Ya man thats the example I was talking about. well I give you credit dude.

Man every freaking time my end caps blow out of my salutes. I even tried super gluing them. I guess I will just have to use thinner tubing.

I make endcaps for salutes out of solid epoxy, although I use thin tube so there isn't too much expense. I have never had an endplug blow yet however even with relatively thick cases.

Couldn't you just use fibre wads from a shotgun reloading supplier? The 12g ones must be around .70" - 0.75", so are cheap, quick, and a bit of epoxy round the sides and it should be fine.

The tubing I was using is like .500 O.D. and like .350 I.D. So that makes the wall thinkness about .075, I was using KNO3 & Al flash. Its basically just shooting the energy out one end with a small bang and bright light. The problem is somewhere in between having to thick of a tube wall, an end plug plug problem, and my charge wasn't large enough to make a shockwave to destroy my tubing. It's kind of hard to fit a good size charge in such a small I.D. I will check out some shotgun reloading supplies. Thanks for the advice Zaibatsu.

Have you tried scoring the inside of your tubes? I find this really helps. Without it, the epoxy/glue/whatever has not much to grab onto. The scoring allows it to grab on better. I've never had a set of endplugs since I started doing this. I just use a course dremel bit, and rub it against the inside a couple of times. I do this by hand, I don't actually use the dremel tool.

Also KNO3/Al flash isn't very fast in my experiance. If you have even low grade Mg you should find that KNO3/Mg is quite a bit more powefull.

Force nails through boths ends of the tube, then put the glue in. I guarentee the plugs wont blow out anymore.

When you say force nails thru the ends of the tube, you do mean perpendicular to the center line of the tube don't you. Either way it doesn't sound like my stlye. But if I was going to do that, I would insert my nails perpendicular to the center line of the tube.

I'm sure he means perpendicular to the center line: IE horizontally through the tube. I've used it when using plaster of paris end plugs and it works ok, giving them something more to hold onto rather than just friction, but I think it's a little bit of bother, and I don't like to stand close to crackers with nails/screws in.

Not bad NickSg, I tried your little nail thru the endplug trick and it worked quite nicely.However, I slightly modified your procedure a little. I used a little piece of a paper clip instead of a nail, and I curled the ends of these little pieces of metal till they were touching the tubing. Finally sucess! I was excited to see that a section of the tubing had been charred and busted open when I went to inspect the aftermath of my little fire cracker. :D
also it was apparently quite safe. The little pieces of paper clip were still inserted in the end plugs after the explosion. The were not projected in anyway.