I saw thes on un and have seen them in some aerial display things. I was wondering if i could buy the hdpe tubes somewhere and cut them and make them myself. I have yet to find any. Does anyone know of a store that sells it?

http://www.unitednuclear.com/tubes.htm sells mortar tubes

he's looking to make them not buy them...

i would just suggest a very thick walled carboard tube wrapped in duck tape the most your going to get is carboard fragmentation .. and with that you should be away from the tubes when they fire any way so not biggie ....

Actually, I was thinking.... Could you take a pvc/abs tube (if you dont have HDPE) and wrap it with several layers of paper, could it hold it together if the shell were to blow up in the tube?

that would not work the best as when somthing blows in pvc .. well lets just say the fragments are very very sharp and painful

possibly get a wooden dowel the size you want and wrap wax paper around it and then fiberglass it.. make a couple layers of fiberglass

or if you have contacts in the fireworks factorys you can get some kevlar cloth then do the same process but with kevlar ... and well that stuff is stronger then steel if you do it right ...

fiberglass is also very strong but if you make it about 1/8 inch thick or a little thicker there is a very very low chance even with a shell explostion that you will damage the tube ...

Just the other day I got some tubes from here:

http://www.kastnerhdpemortars.com/

Pretty good prices, cheaper than UN at least.

I wouldn't suggest trying to reinforce PVC/ABS tube, most likely it'll still shatter and be very dangerous if anything larger than a class C shell goes off in one.

PVC works good for the 1.75" mortors me and a friend made a 36 shot rack for the fouth this year out of 2" Scheduled 40 PVC and we had a couple of the mortors go off in the tubes and it didnt blow them. It did though shoot our tube out of the rack and about 5 feet in the air LOL. We Build a box out of 2x6 and plywood to contain the tubes and routered groves for the tubes in the bottom halfway though the 2x6 and used Comercial strength Glue "Though as Nails" to glue them in and them packed the rack with Non-Fiberglass Insulation to help keep doqn shrapnel if there was any and so it wouldn't catch fire if one did go off in the rack.

We also discovered that you can use 1.75" PVC so were using that next year hehe. The mortors fit that perfectly with 1/8" clearance on each side. So we could get higher breaks. With 2" X 18" we were geting about 150' or so and that was lower than we wanted at the time.

Yeah we went all out this fourth $750 in mortors and Cakes hehe we still didnt set off everyting lol. Next year were spending $2,500 for everything hehe. We also get discount . For our grand finally were spending a total of $1500 hehe it will have about 20 cakes in it hehehe. There all the largest you can get without a licensed pyro there 500g a piece. Hopefully by next fourth I can get my manufacture licening and my BATF approved Magazine and I can make some special stuff for the display hehehe a few 6" mortors here and there with tripple or quadruple breaks ohhhh yeah.

OK sorry about the whole rant thing LOL I guess i got a little excited ROFL. Anyway I hope that answered your question.

I dont really liek fiberglass. If you touch it you get a heap of needles imbeded in your skin and its annoying, (it took me like half an hour to figure out all that pain was from fiddleing with a snaped fiber glass arrow). If the tube explodes i wouldnt want all that glass blasted at me

I hear yeah there static messing with Fiberglass insulation sucks all the tiny little fibers get into your pores and the only way to get them out is to soak teh area in warm water and then use something to scrape off about a layer of skin or so. I know this because I have worked construction for several years for my dad it sucks.

fiberglass cloth and fiber glass insulation are two diffrent things.. and i usally spend about $1.50 on laytex gloves so as two avoid any slvers you may get but once you add the epoxy it works it's way into it's pours and then once that happens it's not like fiberglass it won't break off in tiny peices with will just rip open .. but that is rare unless it is really strong explostion...