Making balloons shred

Re: Making balloons shred

My two favorite balloon pops into shreds, which happened to me:

Qualatex 24" - clear:


Sempertex 16" - clear:


Both balloons burst while blowing them to pop

Re: Making balloons shred

Hi,

I also love it when balloons burst into lots of tiny shreds. Usually this also means they go with a really loud bang. My experience is about similar - Qualatex balloons are the ones that most often burst this cool way. I have some pics somewhere I think (I’ll try to find them and post then). The 18” stuffing balloons are very strong and often explode into a cloud of mere tiny shreds when blown up too much. They are somewhat expensive though.
When it comes to other balloons than Qualatex I don’t think Tuftex are so bad either though, even though they tend to make a little bigger shreds they still shred up completely - even the 24”.
I have also noticed that metallic color balloons normallængde burst into lots of tiny shreds.

And finally there is of course this ‘odd one out balloon’ that one stumbles upon now and then that just goes on and on far beyond anything one could imagine and finally explodes into so many tiny tiny bits - almost like confetti - it is so cool. I don’t know how to spot these balloons beforehand though. My guess is that more or less by coincidence a balloon gets made completely without any weak spot, which makes it able to grow until the entire surface of the balloon gives in a the very same fraction of a (milli-) second.
I wish I would stumble across such balloons more often even though it is quite a job to clean up the remains.

Finally I will mention the cool feeling of laying of my back and blowing up a tight balloon until it suddenly pops and all the tiny shreds rain down on me. I fell so brave and cool when this happens

Thank you for reading my posting.

Sincerely
Susie

Re: Making balloons shred

Hi,

In my posting below I promised to find a few pics to show some how balloons (can) shred). I will insert the pics I found below. I have to say that the Oaulatex balloons are shredded the way the practically always do, whereas the two Tuftex balloons are 'odd one out balloons' that went exceptionally big and bursted into far more pieces than they usuaælly do. I will try to blow a couple of Tuftexs when I get the opportunity to show how they usually 'behave'.
If anybody should want to know how to make balloons shred this way it is pretty simple: I just take them brand new from the bag and blow them up until they pop. I do blow somewhat slower towards the end though - this greatly enhaces the excitement (at least for me it does).

Here are the pics:

Q16 - Purple:


Q16 - Red:



Q18 - Spray Stuffing Balloon:



TT17 - Clear:



TT24 - Green:



I cannot show the balloons before they were inflated, because the pics are not recent, and as you can probably easily see, the balloons are all gone.

Thank you for reading my posting.

Sincerely
Susie

Re: Making balloons shred

Uniques shred quite well, but I find it’s usually into long thin strands rather than confetti.

U16 blown to pop after a few inflations to stretch it.

Re: Making balloons shred

In my oppinion metallic colors go to confetti shreds easily, especially when preinflated few times and blown to pop with an inflator. I like crystals and know only metallic Qualatexes 16, Belbal 14 and chinese 12", but all they go into microscopic shreds after such a treatment. I think that many depends on an gas used to fill them. Dry gases like He or inflator air make more shreds than moist air from our lungs.

Re: Making balloons shred

Using cheap or old balloons, will also almost guarantee shredding. Certainly with cheap balloons that you buy in supermarkets, grocery stores and some toy/card shops, they will burst into shrapnel with ease.

Re: Making balloons shred

Hi,

The above is not my experience - more like the opposite. Old balloons are usually pretty weak and tend to pop less loudly and into only a few bigger pieces. My experience with cheap balloons - something that is a bit unclearly defined actually - is that it varies very much how they end up. However balloons that contain additional chemicals (and these are no longer sold in the EU - not as toys anyway) might behave differently. I have very little experience with this kind of balloons.
Summed up my experience is somewhat like, the better the quality and the newer balloons, the tighter they get, the louder they pop and the bigger is the likelyhood that they pop into many shreds.

As I almost entirely have my own experiences to judge from I cannot speak for anybody else, - and certainly not in general. I do have some experience with blowing to pop balloons though.....

The pics I sent were - as I think I mentioned - not recent, so I couldn't help testing a couple of balloons to see if they behaved similarly. I will send the results in a separate posting in a moment.

Thank you for reading my posting.

Sincerely
Susie

Re: Making balloons shred

Here are the pics from todays little test.

Q16 Orange:



TT Blue:

Re: Making balloons shred

Susie, you must be and obviously you are the Master

Re: Making balloons shred

Susie, you're correct...the fresh, new, un-stretched balloon will normally shred with a good slow BTP. Love the anticipation of when that satisfying loud pop will come! There is a great quote in the original Willy Wonka movie..."The suspense is terrible! I hope it will last." That's the way I feel as a balloon inflates and gets tighter and tighter.

Re: Making balloons shred

yes yes yes yes yes!

Re: Making balloons shred

A good shredded balloon means two thing to me. You bust that thing at its max and got the most out of it. But it will have its revenge when you are finding little bits of it for weeks after.

Re: Making balloons shred

It was an interesting post to read. Thanks for sharing the post

Hey susie, do you still have the pictures. It has been quite a while, so I would understand if you don't. But since the site update I cannot see your pictures anymore. Maybe it is just me, but I don't think so. Would really appreciate it, thanks.