How To Make a 30-Shot Festival Ball Mortar Rack

Learn how to create mortar racks for class c festival balls using milk crates and HDPE mortar tubes.

Materials Needed

Here’s a great tip from Lyle Jaegler. Festival balls are those Class C, 1.4G Chinese shells, about 1-3/4 inches in diameter that come with reloadable mortars. First, go to Wal-Mart or Staples and buy yourself one of those plastic milk crates like we all used to steal from grocery stores.

If you want to use these crates more than once, cut yourself a piece of 3/8 inch plywood or OSB the same size as the inside bottom of said milk crate, and lay it down in the bottom of the crate. Then, as fast as you can, drop 30 of our HDPE Festival Ball tubes right in. That should take you about 30 seconds. Et Voila! A fine new mortar rack!

Now, cut yourself a length of 2 x 4 so that it is the same length as the inside of said plastic crate. Lay it in the bottom of another crate. Then cut another piece of plywood and lay it inside on top of the 2 x 4. Then, fill the carton with HDPE tubes as before. You will now have a bunch of pipes standing up crooked. Right? Wrong! They aren’t crooked. They are angled mortars!

Make two of these angled racks. Now set them up in your back yard. Place the straight up and downer in the middle and put an angled rack on either side of it, 15-30 feet away. Fill them up with Festival balls. Now, fuse them all together with Fast Yellow Visco. Cross-fuse them, so that once they go, they will all go within a few seconds of each other.

To learn more class C festival ball effects read these:

"How to Make Festival Balls More Interesting"
"Festival Ball Mortar Tube Racks"
"8 Ways To Make Your July 4th Class C Fireworks Show Better"