Skylighter Fireworks Making: Recently there has been a spirited discussion on the merits of using electric matches to fire homemade fireworks shells at our club shoots in order to improve safety. I belong to The Crackerjacks, a mid-Atlantic fireworks club. This use of ematches would mark a change from the club’s traditional approach of attaching a length of Visco fuse to the quickmatch on each shell and lighting with a flame, manually of course.
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Do Ematches Make Fireworks Safer?
Skylighter Fireworks Making: Recently there has been a spirited discussion on the merits of using electric matches to fire homemade fireworks shells at our club shoots in order to improve safety. I belong to The Crackerjacks, a mid-Atlantic fireworks club. This use of ematches would mark a change from the club’s traditional approach of attaching a length of Visco fuse to the quickmatch on each shell and lighting with a flame, manually of course.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Firstly, while it doesn't surprise me that there are clubs of people who shoot big fireworks for fun on the weekends, I didn't know about them and it is certainly something of which I wouldn't mind being part.
Their conversation about safety is an important one, and is very analogous to what we encounter in our industry, even in Purnell, everyday; conversations about how increasing the design factor of our rigging assemblies and possibly implementing that thing that makes table saws stop that shall not be named, where the pros are a possible increase in safety and the cons are that people who learn on idiot-proof equipment can get by with being, well, idiots.
I imagine that like saws, soldering irons, and hanging stuff overhead, the minute you fail to respect the potential catastrophe associated with the ignition of fireworks is the minute that they become dangerous.
That aside, electronic matches can be integrated into show control systems, and that gives them a big plus in my book!
I personally think that when it comes to safety the battle of ematch's vs fuse there is no necessary advantage over either except eliminating the possibility of a burning flack coming back down and lighting a fuse earlier then expected or some idiot deciding to smoke while setting fuse. On the same side Ematch's have had their issues. Every summer they shoot fireworks off a barge in the center of the lake i work at. Two summers ago my captain had to pay to replace his county issued cell phone due to throwing it in the water after receiving a text while on the fireworks barge.now where i have to disagree with Daniel though is the idea of integrating full pyrotechnic control into a show control system. Pyrotechnics is a very temperamental theatrical element and to be controlled by a board op that is not directly monitoring the actual execution of the fireworks just screams for something to go wrong
I think that one of the biggest problems with the ematches is that by transferring the danger to somewhere else in the process, people begin to forget how dangerous these fireworks are, because they are not the ones being placed directly in danger. Ans when you forget how dangerous something is, and begin to think that one change has made things totally safe, you begin to act carelessly which then increases the chances of something going catastrophically wrong.
I feel that this article and everyone else realize the risks of improving technologies. There is always a safety issue when dealing with anything hazardous or any process for that matter. Ematchs vs. fuses is partially a concern for safety, but also a concern for ease of use and many other factors related to the overall design. Ematchs might be safer in some systems, but in many transfer the safety concern. The technology behind ematchs is the major benefit. No matter how things get standardized or used in conjunction with one another there are many more factors that need to be considered than what the length of ignition cord is whether it is wire or fuse.
Post a Comment