The coarse grain that Roy mentions hits the nail on the head, perfect to have the glowing grain popping the balloon. And as Tony says a duplex load, so you would use a fine powder as the main charge topped of with some coarse grain to do the pop. The burn of the fine stuff would be faster so the coarse would be ejected still burning.
I still think your ignition would give you problems, caps are not as reliable as primers in a cartridge. A larger hole in the nipple should help as the pressure should be fairly low. The ideal might be a nitro conversion cylinder which uses shotgun primers but this would be an expensive gun.
A tissue wad with nail varnish to secure it seems a good idea. I think florist foam is man made so perhaps the bang would turn it into a molten plastic projectile, maybe to much. Our wool wads are spat out whole but dont go very and may disrupt the glowing grains coming out.
The info that you could be looking at 15 yds range throws the cat among the pidgeons thats quite a way for no projectile to pop a balloon, would a pinch of semolina be to much ejecta?. I guess we are looking at something that will give a bit of spread like a shotgun so a shorter barrel perhaps.
Its an interesting load puzzle and the combined wisdom on here has come up with something approaching what you need I think.
Last edited by Smokeless Coal; 06-08-2012 at 10:36 AM.
“If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?” :- Prince Philip said after Dunblane
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