spykke

ROFL.

Friend Anthony has a long standing reputation at a number of forums such as the EIG, UK Firework review and Noel Tobin's firework site. I would add, not a good reputation. Enough said.

I am very much actively involved in the industry although I no longer actually make explosives.

May I ask... why did you join the forum?

Good point. I had rather misguidedly thought that I could offer advice which might influence those who do experiment to do things safely and legally. I am somewhat dismayed to have the totally reasonable standards which I was taught and apply being consider to be at the extreme end of the industry. It is a depressing reflection of the standards which BigG appears to espouse. This is definitely my last word on this thread.

We don't argue about the fact that your views on safety are in the extreme end of this industry

A disappointing view which speaks volumes. You might not argue but I would certainly disagree. However, I think this debate has run it's course and I won't comment any further.

To a large degree this debate isn't really relevant in the UK because we no longer have a fireworks manufacturing industry as such. Looking back at the days when we did, the firework industry wasn't as good as a performer in terms of health and safety as the rest of the explosives industry. Possibly because they did consider themselves to be different. Certainly their routine testing and characterisation of compositions was poor. I don't think the fireworks industry is any different to other explosives manufacturers. They are faced with the same issues. In many cases the hazards may be lower but in many cases the risks are higher. People may not get blown to pieces in fireworks accidents but they do tend to get burned badly.


I tend to react badly when people start talking about the nanny state and the balance between safety and sanity. Personal safety, which I am talking about here, has nothing to do with the state or law enforcers. Its all about the risks an individual is prepared to take. I'm no risk taker and I have no desire to be burned or lose a limb or worse because of something I could have done but didn't. I can't prevent the unexpected accident but I can and will do something about the foreseeable.

Does this mean that you don't trust any compositions found in Lancaster or Shimizu?

No!!! What I said was I would not handle any composition without knowing it's properties first. I'm sure the compositions quoted in those books do what they intend. (give a red light or crackle or whatever) What they don't do is specify the purity, form or grist of the ingredients. (see my earlier post) These of course affect the behaviour of the composition. That is why I would want to establish the sensitiveness of the actual composition using the actual sourced ingredients before undertaking batch sizes more than a gramme or two. This is standard practice in Research and Development in the explosives industry - that was my work for 12 years.

You don't walk into a dark room without turning on the light. So why handle a composition without knowing how it behaves?