13 replies to this topic

[pyrotechnist]

Hi this is just a warning to others so that my mistake is not made by anyone else, this was out of my own tiredness and stupidity. I was cleaning some magenta star comp up and went to dispose of it like I normally do by burning it and put the paper tissue it was in in a paper cup,stupidly!,I then lit it and is all I remember was an extreme bright light and an orange light in my right eye and being thrown backward. I then smelt my hair burning and my hand was white. So I ran in and stuck it under freezing cold water though the titanium sparks that hit me left me with a very badly burnt hand and burnt the side of my eye and eye lid, VERY SORE! So lesson DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE LOOSE STAR COMPS! Typing with one hand at the moment and luckily I am heeling.

[Vic]

Hell mate! it's so easy when you are tired to make mistakes i think we have all done it,I hope you make a speedy recovery.

[BrightStar]

Firstly, thanks for sharing this - I'm sorry for the burns. It's important that we share accident reports so thanks for doing so. I'm guessing that you had some fine MagnAl, some Perc and maybe some Strontium Nitrate in your magenta mix. I've been told of similar mixes self-confining and reporting in tissue paper in less than 1g quantities.

I'm planning to put together an up to date safety review for the forum in the next few weeks. We can't really comment on amateur testing in the UK until we make some progress with the HSE, but there's lots of recent info from abroad. Please let me know by PM if you have any experiences or tips that might prevent more burnt fingers...

[crystal palace fireworks]

Hey pyrotechnist,

Im sorry to hear about your accident, were you wearing goggles or face shield? (even if you did) - If you have not already done so, and as a precautionary measure for your long term vision - please do try and get yourself off to the doctor to have your eye checked out.

As Brightstar said,.....thanks for sharing this info with us,.... when you feel fit enough, please do supply him with more details so we can learn from your experience.

Get well soon!

[Mumbles]

I hope you have a quick recovery. My face and head were largely spared luckily. Hopefully your burns heal quickly and you don't have any scars or vision damage. My only other accident happened very similarly to yours with a pile of what I thought was very slow burning burst.

[pyrotechnist]

Thanks for the heads up guys, the best part of the night was my cake, ill upload pics, then I stupidly did this but my hand looks better today with all the boils kind of slowly going down. Face still stings, surprisingly my eye seems perfectly fine which shocked me. Ill send you a PM BrightStar.

[Deano 1]

Have a speedy recovery pyrotechnist. I think the pride takes a battering in these situations aswell. Keep applying the cream to reduce scaring and take it easy for a while.

[Atom Fireworks]

Not having a dig at you in any way, shape or form but ime curious as to to what the advantages of using good fast bp would do for lighting you fire. Its too fast to ignite coal or wood, its too volatile to even think of putting in a lag burner hell just the ammount of gas a teaspoon would create would fill your room full of gas and just leave you fire fuel charred. My bp wont even light paper its that fast , Maybe you should stick to the conventioanl paper methods mate far safer and i bet a lot more effective.

[pyrotechnist]

Dumper truck it was not BP but a magnalium fuelled magenta star mix with +5% added spherical TI and left over crackling micro-star comets.

[pyrotrev]

I guess the basic rule for burning comps in anything more than sub 500mg amounts has to be to treat them as if they were a fully fledged device i.e. a time fuse of suitable duration and appropriate PPE. Get well soon Pyrotechnist! - thanks for being big enough to share your error of judgement.

[icarus]

I guess the basic rule for burning comps in anything more than sub 500mg amounts has to be to treat them as if they were a fully fledged device i.e. a time fuse of suitable duration and appropriate PPE. Get well soon Pyrotechnist! - thanks for being big enough to share your error of judgement.

my last mistake - I was batch testing a smoke composition bonded with resorcinol, I used ice cube trays to produce the pellets .Whilst they were curing I inserted a length of visco into each cube . I remembered i had a batch of bridgless electric igniters made a few weeks ago. It was about 3 AM . Without thinking I fused a tray of cubes with them and put them in the dryer .Out they came and i started recording burn time, I placed the first electrically fired pellet in position and pressed the fire button on my box stopwatch in hand . DOH!!! wakey wakey the recorcinol bound pellet ignited in the centre self contained went with a loud pop and threw small burning smoke flares in every direction .This was totally as should have been a predicted outcome .but that would have required thinking methodically at 3AM . I had a large batch of lovely little mines to fire off .No damage to report , but definitely a wake up call!!! . My firing area is an old anderson shelter with a sand floor. I have a silicon nitride hot surface igniter on a 20M cable it has lit dozens of visco fuses over the months and is still glowing well! +its a lot easier than lighting a fuse and running back to the monitoring area ,next upgrade is a cctv camera behind a toughened screen for safe close up viewing

[phildunford]

And the moral is...

Get some sleep!

[pyrotechnist]

I do think things like this truly wake you up to the danger in our hobby and make you respect things a lot more than you probably thought you did previously. Luckily I am fine now and never want to experience that again.

[dr thrust]

and the moral is... never change icarus, the world is a more interesting place with people like you in it