7th Air Cav

With most commercially made effects (theatrical flash pots, small maroons etc) stored in <5Kg NEQ quantities in their original packaging, it's just a case of persuading your supplier that you are competent to use them.

If you're firing canon and muskets or making your own ground effects with BP, you will need a COER1 but there is a simplified version of it specifically for reenactment that is straightforward to obtain.

There's a very informative and up to date guide here:

British Association of Shooting and Conservation guide to MSER, April 2008 (PDF, 332KB)

Thanks for the response & details. We are a vietnam group, so we only use pre-made blank ammo. We do not make anything ourselves, all pre-made. We did it this way to keep thinsg as simple as possible & to eliminate the risk of getting in trouble.

Most of the control is the supplier determining your competence. For Theatrical effects mostly it is cat1 fireworks for indoor use, so risk assessment and insurance is the way you should go. If you need BP then it is 1.1 and you need Police COER approval and a small 1.1 store and maybe a transportable powder safe. And check the insurance, and the certification and evidence of competence of the pyro users.

Were basically using the pre-made fireburst charges, some maroons & groundbursts & thats about it, everything is pre-made so there is no loose powder, etc. The supplier is more than happy to sell them to me as we had a long chat about there use, my knowledge, etc.

So i'm guessing as long as we know what were doing then its fine?

No, it's not HE, but unfortunately is still 1.1. The storage and transport concessions given for 'shooters powders' and reenactment make it a little more usable than it might otherwise be.

Here's a short vid of a medium sized fireball I tested some time ago using the above configuration:

Fireball - 50g BP lifting 500ml fuel (Divx avi, 795KB)

This was filmed at around 50m range and you could really feel the heat. Certainly not a close prox effect...

Looks really good, i think i might need to make it a bit smaller as when we set these off during a display i dont think we will have that much room. We have sufficient room to keep things safe but i wouldn't want to push it. I'll try using less fuel & see how it goes.

cheers

Are you in the UK?

DIY fireballs need some form of propellant which usually being gunpowder/blackpowder is a 1.1 classified HE therefore you need a 1.1 rated and licensed store for your supply.

Commercial fireball pots, by virtue of their packaging become 1.3 which is easier to acquire and store and hence use.

Clipped from a supplier catalogue;

Fireburst Ground Charge, 500ml, 750ml, 2.5 ltr, 1 gallon sizes, poly' bottle, electric ignition. HZ: 1.3G. UN: 0430

Yes i am in the UK.

We would normally just buy the pre-made ones in the plastic bottles with the electronic igniter already in it but the idea was to make the effect bigger without increasing the cost by too much. We were thinking if we used the small pre-made one with the petrol/diesel mix on top as said by Brightstar then the size of the effect would be tripled just with the addition of the fuel. I also have the maroons that you spoke about & can see that as an even cheaper alternative.

Don;t get me wrong though, i dont want to put anyone at risk just to save a few £'s........

If you think this is the best way to go then i will get a morter made up.

Cheers

I suspect you might want a bit more - my SFX supplier starts at 250ml for "poly bottle" flameburst units. PS to keep things tidy should this be in the SFX section?

What do you mean by poly bottle flameburst units?