To prime a case with match laid flat on the mouth. Take a piece of thread, or fine string, and fold, or bend it, in the middle, as at fig. 76. Tie a knot near the bent end, as at a, fig. 77. Bring the knot, a, up to the side of the case, as at fig. 78; pass the loose ends round, and tie in a knot, at b. Lay the bits of match flat across, as at e, fig. 79; bring the threads together, and tie them at c. Or bend tape match across, and tie, as at d.
To get a fine thread through a long pipe, or the hem of a bag. Take a piece of copper wire, and bend it round at one end, as z, fig. 88. Pass the end, z, forward, and push it through to the other end of the bag, &c., then bend it to the form of x, fig. 89; pass the string through the loop x, and pull the wire back.
[SAUCISSONS.]
These are a large kind of serpent, charged on a nipple, like a wheel case, with solid drift and mallet. They may be 5⁄8 or 6⁄8 or larger; about 31⁄2 inches long. Drive in brilliant fire, or gerbe, fig. 84, 11⁄2 inch; fill up to within 1⁄2 an inch of the top with F grain powder; and plug the end with plaster of paris, or a bit of wood, fastened with a tack or two. Press a piece of touch-paper, or double-crown, into the shape of a deep pill-box; fill it with F grain powder; fit it to the mouth of the saucisson; tie round the choke; brush, with meal paste, the outside, at bottom, and dip into dry meal. These saucissons are to be fired in a volley. Procure, say 2 dozen, iron tubes, a, b, c, &c., each a foot long; fit them with a wooden bottom, fig. 92, having a tenon, t, an inch long; let it be fastened with a screw on each side. Bore a hole through, to make a communication with the mortar formed by the tube. Take a board, an inch thick, of suitable length and breadth; bore in it 2 dozen holes, of a size to fit the tenons; glue these in, so that the tubes, or mortars, stand upright, in rows, side by side, like the pieces on a chess-board. Invert it. Nail a rim all round, so as to make a box, 2 or 3 inches deep. Cut a groove from hole to hole of the tenons; connect all the holes with naked match, also push a bit of match up all the holes in the tenons; now fill the box with sawdust, and nail a board on, to serve for a bottom, and to keep the sawdust in. Invert it; and put a saucisson, mouth downwards, into each mortar. Fig. 84 represents a single saucisson; w, w, w, fig. 85, saucissons in the mortars. On firing the match at s, it is evident the cases will be driven out rapidly, one after the other. The sawdust prevents the flash igniting the whole at once.
[PEARL STREAMERS.]
Paste brown paper all over, and roll up a case, of four or five thicknesses, on an inch and a quarter, or an inch and a half former, like a rocket or other case; when dry, cut it in the lathe (see fig. 27) into inch lengths—inch-deep bottomless pill-boxes. Set one on a foot, fig. 9, to enter about 1⁄8 of an inch; mallet in the pearl streamer fuse, till nearly full, then a little meal powder; remove it from the foot, and press in flat, with a knife, a little plaster of paris, to form a bottom. They will have the appearance of bungs; fire them in volleys, like saucissons, from suitable-sized mortars. Primed end downwards, of course. Match may be tied on, as in figs. 78 and 79.