Instant Blasting fuse.

[kato13]

kato13 09-06-2008, 09:30 AM Does anyone know the designation for the instand blasting fuse included in the Engineers Demo Kit. I cannot find it if the field manuals I am referencing. This is the stuff described as


Fuse, Instant(2x100m coils): Burns 5900

meters per second; for use with nonelectric

blasting caps. May be ignited by any igniter

or by flame, and it can be combined with itself

(to set off more than one cap) or with time fuse.

Wt: 3 kg/coil Price: $100/coil (C/C).


edit changed timed to instant. Timed is the "Fuse, Time Blasting M700" i think

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weswood 09-06-2008, 11:40 AM I'm not sure of the "ignite by fire" part, but it sounds like Det cord to me. But I'm not the resident explosives expert.

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Law0369 09-06-2008, 01:18 PM It's shock tube ...look it up on google

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Targan 09-06-2008, 02:09 PM Definitely sounds like det cord to me (maybe shock tube is the American name for it, I dunno). I've used det cord IRL many, many times but I have no idea what its US military designation would be.


Handy stuff det cord. You can use it as fuse, instant to link charges together but you can also use it for tasks such as cutting up fallen trees in the same way you'd use a chain saw (but det cord does it much faster). If you wrap a length of det cord three or four times around a tree trunk and let it off it will cut through wood very effectively. Det cord is just thin plastic tubing containing PETN compound, the same fast burning, high explosive found in detonators and some primers.


I'm not sure of the "ignite by fire" part, but it sounds like Det cord to me.All the types of det cord that I've used does the same thing that detonators do if exposed to fire - goes bang in a major fashion.

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weswood 09-06-2008, 05:48 PM Definitely sounds like det cord to me (maybe shock tube is the American name for it, I dunno). I've used det cord IRL many, many times but I have no idea what its US military designation would be.


Handy stuff det cord. You can use it as fuse, instant to link charges together but you can also use it for tasks such as cutting up fallen trees in the same way you'd use a chain saw (but det cord does it much faster). If you wrap a length of det cord three or four times around a tree trunk and let it off it will cut through wood very effectively. Det cord is just thin plastic tubing containing PETN compound, the same fast burning, high explosive found in detonators and some primers.


All the types of det cord that I've used does the same thing that detonators do if exposed to fire - goes bang in a major fashion.


What little training I've had with it either didn't cover exposing it to fire, or I've forgotten that tidbit.

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kato13 09-06-2008, 07:10 PM Thanks guys I had already researched shock tube but did not make the connection since the T2k reference does not mention the explosive potential of the fuse. I thought it was just a really really quick burning wick.

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Grimace 09-07-2008, 03:30 PM I can only let you know based on the explosives I handled in a mine. We had a striped cord, black and...I think...red. It was just known as Det Cord. It burned at roughly 30,000 fps, which is quite a bit faster than the 5900 meters per second (about twice as fast).


Technically it is capable of being set of with "flame", though I wouldn't want to be close enough to it to do it, as its essentially a cord packed with a little amount of explosives to make it burn very, very rapidly. Usually the part that was lit was the safety fuse, which was usually about 2 feet long. It had a burn rate of 1 foot a minute. The safety fuse we used was orange in color. It was hooked to the det cord, and then lit. That gave time for people to get out of there, because if they just lit the det cord, the charges would go off almost immediately.


So the safety fuse burned to the det cord, the det cord when *FST* and chewed through the hundred feet or so that was attached to all of the blasting caps in under a second, and set the blasting caps off. That, in turn, set off the dynamite (PETN) "initiators" that were in long holes filled with an explosive slurry. Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam, Bam (for about 50 times) and then the entire round was done.


So if they're talking about a cord that burns really fast as it used for non-electric fuses, I'd have to assume they were referring to Det Cord. And generally speaking, det cord is det cord. We never called it "Shock tube". Our det cord had a white interior, so that meant it was filled with PETN explosives. If it's pink inside, then you have either RDX or HMX explosive in the det cord.


I've also heard that you can have safety fuse that's black or grey, but I never saw any of it. Even then, safety fuse burns so slowly that it couldn't be what was being talked about in the initial post.


Hope this helps some.

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kota134 09-08-2008, 10:58 PM Ive always treated and called it det-cord in my games, and the descriptions already set forth by Grimace and Targan are sufficient to describe it, it really is handy stuff.

Shock tube is a little more new to the scene and I hadnt seen it used until I did a training with our local bomb squad. Its basically a hollow plastic tube with flash powder coated on the inside of the tube to make it burn very rapidly; in effect, non-electric means of firing charges with nearly electric results. Its not instantaneous, you can see the spark moving through the shock tube as it burns but you have to look fast. Its neat stuff, and waterproof as well.

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Targan 09-09-2008, 12:15 AM Ah, so that is what shock tube is. I've seen used in the past pneumatic detonators connected to hollow plastic tube with a standard det at the other end. The shock wave from the initial det travels down the tube and sets off the pneumatic dets down the chain. Don't believe the tube had any powder in it though.

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