what are piccolo petes?

[djmetallium]

I have never heard of them before, but i do live in scotland so i'm guessing its an american thing

[Staos]

Whistling fireworks.

[Enchanter]

yeah its best to head to washington and get the good ones there. i shot off a few bottle rockets last weeks because they are illegal here in new jersey.

[adamjaskie]

Basically its a flash powder packed really tightly into the bottom of a tube. It burns really fast, pushing a lot of gasses out, and making the tube vibrate, producing a whistling sound.

I would imagine that if you could get some air pockets in the packed powder, it would burn unevenly, maybe making a small explosion, but nothing spectacular.

Would be easier to take off the paper and tape it to a stick. Might make a good little rocket. ALthough a smaller nozzle would help.

[aramil]

Yea, and how you do that is you remove the bottom, hammer the end tell some of the powder comes out, then when it's all done whistling, it shoots straight up with a loud bang.

[Mae Dean]

But it used to be that if you crimped the middle, REALLY HARD, when the pete got to the crimped part, it would explode violently. I dunno if they fixed them, of I'm just inept. *shrug*

[TheRubberBandMan]

Heh, Reminds me of This comic.

[Scotty]

i'm pretty sure i heard kids shooting off a bunch of those over the weekend, Canada Day was thursday and we have fireworks too, we also do fireworks on Victoria Dat weekend, AKA The May 2-4 for the the holiday falling on the third weekend in may which usually is on or around the 24th, also cooincides with everyone buying 2-4s of beer (nickname for the 24 bottle cases)

[SothThe69th]

Greg- There's nothing to change in the design, you just need more practice.

Wrap the top in duct tape (to ensure integrity), then hammer that closed. Light it, and BACK THE FUCK UP. It explodes. It's awesome, and it's loud. It may take a few tries to get the method down, but you'll get it.

[Scotty]

you know whats cool, when i was in grade 9 (thats roughly 9-10 years ago) i bought a pack of firecrackers about halfway through the usuall "light em and throw em" routine i got an idea, i made a little box out of lego, put a firecracker inside, capped it (made sure there was a little hole for the fuse) and lit it, lego pieces flew everywhere hehe and the great part is it didn't actually break any pieces so i could rebuild to box over and over, it was like a toy frag grenade:)

[fuzzmanmatt]

I did that with some bottle rockets, and the comic gave me the inspiration to try the crimping-go-boom piccolo pete trick. It was fun. I haven't found any this year, and it makes me a little sad. :'(

[flamechocobo]

This year I took a two liter bottle, put a piccolo pete inside it, making sure there was about half an inch of the firework hanging out of the top of the bottle... You make sure there's nothing in the bottle, and that the bottle has no holes, and then seal off the top of the bottle, wrapping electrical tape around the sides of the firework (leave the top intact). When you light it, back the fuck away, preferably behind something, and watch as the bottle explodes LOUDLY and either goes straight up like it's supposed to... Or shoots FAST into a tree like what happened when I did it. Plastic is still stuck in one of the branches.

[SothThe69th]

Note the trend of advice when you fuck with fireworks-

1. Light it.
2. BACK THE FUCK UP.

Just thought I'd point that out.

[BillyBlaze]

I've discovered that when giving people advice involving dangerious things, best to do it like a mother bird pushing her babies out of the nest. If they don't know the "BACK THE FUCK UP" part on their own, the world is going to be a better place without them.

[darkfirewall]

I have a long hockey stick that i tape a sparkler to, light the sparkler then use it to light my firework concoctions. Gives you that extra 5 foot gap in case something goes horribly wrong, plus the sparkler looks pretty ^^