Arthur Brown

Like every other business, contacts and contracts come to people who can sell. Doing the job is secondary. Many work providers have their usual people for every SFX job, BUT they also keep spare phone numbers of people who they know, who get the call if their first choice isn't available. Your first work will be at very short notice.

The pans I saw were about 15" square by about 9" deep in a four sided pyramid made from 6mm ish plate steel. I've also seen cooking woks used! Also short firework mortars ( I have some 10" long 6" DIA mortars that work with BP. I also have some gas powered cannons.)  

Strangely I don't care what the break height is! I just care that it's close enough to be interesting but high enough to be safe.

It's far from hobby fireworks, I'd suggest that the chemistry is the easy part, getting planning permission and a HSE licence for the factory and process could be expensive and time consuming. Remember that AP always associates it's self with bad things. 

Well an aircraft in flight may not normally fly below 500ft above the locality, so if you have checked clear of local landing grounds and have good reason to say that your peak altitude will be less than 300ft, then that seems clear. If you have read and understood the ER2014 and the guidance on here then compliance with that should make you legal. Then it's up to you to ensure that you have appropriate safety distances and don't frighten the neighbours or animals.

The two aspects to consider are the explosives (rocket fuel issue) and the flying issue -where will the rocket go and how high will it travel. Careful reading of the Acts and their associated Regulations will get you through the rocket fuel question, but there is a LOT to consider with regard to the flying issue. You need to be able to make some estimate of how high your product will fly or you risk entering controlled airspace.

Fountain mix is a name for BP that's too slow to be useful! 

It looks as if the regulation will backfire because I wouldn't travel far for a kilo but maybe I would for 50 kilos, Would this mean that every pyro hobbyist would suddenly transition from a small stock to a HUGE chemical stockholding 

 

Actually the more I think on it a small LTD company will be cheaper than getting a hobby pyro chemical permit as then I can just send an order and receive a delivery.

Maybe it's time for the Society to organise regular meets where pyro can be talked over lunch and traders can deliver ordered material on sight of certificates. Maybe it's time to more of the suppliers to more closely work with the Society.

Comet roman candles will be available from a firework shop near to you, in cat4 there may be single shot comets as both in tube single shot and cat 4 comet for firing from mortar.

Whoever it was was GOOD a nice round stable ring for long enough for someone to photograph it. If it wasn't one of us then there is a potential new member there!

Five strand QM burns fast however you tie it -no significant delay. Single strand "Spanish Match" will slow down nicely if you tightly bind  a length -it effectively becomes fast visco where tied.

From the Equinox series, once an essential vid for a pyro found in pieces on youtube.

 

Seaarch your favoured supplier for 8A Darlington then. CPC certainly have several so RS, Rapid etc will have some and Maplin may have.

To have much certainty of a planning permission success you need to OWN the safety distance area, so you may need to OWN 500 acres - that's a BIG farm. Then you need to fit in with the Council's area structure plan and get consent to build a permanent building group in an open area.

500 acres currently will cost you 500 x £5000 and that's a LOT of money -but you can farm it -even rent the farm out, but you must OWN it to prevent buildings encroaching on your safety distances.

When you have your land and outline planning consent for an explosives factory without objections from the neighbours (!) then you can pay HSE about £200 an HOUR for their inspector's time to supervise your application so that's about a thousand pounds a DAY for HSE work -double if two HSE officers have to travel. Oh and you get regular bills from other authorities too!

Hardly surprising that 0.5g of slow flash prepared for retail sale (a small maroon) costs £5 - 10 according to supplier.