Survey, How dis you get started in pyrotechnics?

[Paradise]

Was it a family member or friend who introduced you? Something you maybe got into and College because it related to your studies? Or maybe and Adolescent fascination with blowing things up that evolved into something serious down the road? What is your story?

I am simply conducting a survey from any or as many people who have the time to respond. I am curious as to the number of people which me have developed the interest in the same way or did most people get into it stemming from vastly different ways? All I'm going to do is put it all together to see if many similarities exist . I'm curious and it's the kind of thing I enjoy doing some times.

No malicious intent, its purely from my own curiosity and fascination with the craft. Thank you in advance for any and all responses.

[Paradise]

I will post the results of my if anyone is interested. If this survey is somehow a bad idea I am not aware of it so I would appreciate if someone did let me know that. Thanks!

[MeowMix]

I've been interested in fireworks/pyro since I was a VERY small child. I remember the summer before preschool all the students had to tell everyone what their favourite things was, and I chose 4th of July/fireworks. I still actually have the paper where it was written. My 4th of July's back then were simply fountains and a few novelties, but since then we've ramped up to massive shows, and this year to making our own shells. I'm,17 now and I've poured everything I've had (as far as money goes) into the 4th every year since then, even if it was a few dollars when I was little. Every year at school I'd always say the same thing whenever I was asked what my favourite interest was.

[memo]

when I was a kid my dad and a group of friends would buy a bunch mail order, he would give me a punk and couple of packs of firecrackers as I got older I would go to the indian reservation and buy fireworks. you had to look for a kid standing around and ask him. he would take you down a back road to a guys house that sold everything including boomers. few more years past met a guy with a class b licence. I would buy from him and sell to the reservations make enough money to put on my own show. I did that for years until one guy in the group was busted for making and selling boomers. brought all sorts of unwanted attention and no more class b shortly after that I moved to central America . class b stuff was hard to get and very spendy. the only way I could fill my need was to build my own. my neighbors look forward to new years eve .... so there you go.. I think I have sent more money on getting tools and machines to build fireworks than I spent in 5 years buying them.

 

memo

[Merlin]

As for me I always thought fireworks were magical and always have wondered how they were made. When I was a kid back in the 60's (teens) I had a friend whose dad ran a big farm. They got cases! Of m-80s for agricultural pest control and how we did battle pests and other things! A few years later I had an uncle with a farm who actually had a dynamite shed. We would get a few sticks and depth charge alligator gar in the nearby abandoned rock crushers - more fun and we never got hurt. Went to college and later worked as an analytical chemist. Through the years I always celebrated the forth and went to professional shows that were awe inspiring. Then came time to retire. Lots of empty time. What can I do besides home chores? Bingo. I stared reading on APC and thought I can do that and I do have knowledge of years of lab work. I do fireworks as a hobby purely for myself. Now I am moving away from shells containing flash bags to traditional Italian shells using only BP. I also do rockets and crossettes and inserts. Once addicted to the smoke..... what can you do? I actually enjoy making my own BP and charcoal!

[Paradise]

Great,👍👍👍 So far. THANKS! So far.

[OldMarine]

Growing up we always had fireworks around and as I got older I started setting up the family fireworks displays on holidays and at family gatherings. I loved it then and still do today.

A couple of years ago my son and I were setting up our Independence Day display and he said "Dad, I bet you could build better stuff than this" and here I am!

[Merlin]

Growing up we always had fireworks around and as I got older I started setting up the family fireworks displays on holidays and at family gatherings. I loved it then and still do today.

A couple of years ago my son and I were setting up our Independence Day display and he said "Dad, I bet you could build better stuff than this" and here I am!

I am 3 years in and I can build bigger but not better. It is amazing how well those little 1.9" shells perform.

[OldMarine]

I agree Merlin but the saxons, gerbs and cakes I make outperform the gram limited stuff I can buy and a 3# rocket with a 4" header is just awesome! Some of the guys on these forums make shells to rival the Japanese ones so I'll keep on aiming high.

[Paradise]

Btw, It was 2 years ago I started putting time into it. Since then...well I am sure u know. So I'm DEF still pretty green. learning how to respect it. But in respect to the trade and. the people around me I can't go much further.. this site has taught me most of what I know now. This survey will help me 2 begin a foundation of respect for it. So I don't blow my face off👍 thank you

[dynomike1]

I always liked fireworks. Three years ago i was looking for some igniters for some trip wires and harry Gillam sent me an email about making them, during that time a friend of mine forgot to renew his lic. so i went with him and picked up his fireworks. During the trip i learned that another friend had a bunch tubes and racks he wanted to get rid of. So there i sit in a trailer truck in line at the grainery for hours reading here and skylighter trying to learn how to make fireworks. Another thing that got me started was that year we lost our duck hole and i got bored. That was 4yrs. ago. I am still not as good as anyone else here. Now i am so busey that fireworks have been pushed back. Maybe one day i will retire and concentrate more on fireworks. ( i would have to get disabled to retire)

[Paradise]

MY retirement plan Seems real similar lol! This is all very inspiring to me. Especially when I hear "it's amazing to me how well those little 1.9" shells perform". It really drives home the point that ya gotta learn to crawl before you walk (let alone run marathons like ALOT of the members here).

Once I realized "I could build bigger but not better" is when I pulled in the reigns. Then i concluded (sadly enough) it was not as much for my own sake as for the people around me. Sooo... I had a "wtf are you doing!" moment. Trial and error at that level + overzealous newb = disaster. This site has defiantly shown me the light! TG

[Paradise]

Btw, depth charging alligator gar is something my friends and I get a GOOD laugh over! The stuff we do when where young! He, he Thanks.

[Paradise]

I'll give no more commentary. Got carried away. S happens. My bad.

[Sparx88]

I found a small paper bag half full of old school firecrackers that had green fuses when was 8 yrs old. We just moved in a new home and I went to go pee and started looking through all the cabinets and drawers. And that's when I found them and knew already if I said setting first I wouldn't be allowed to play with them.....so....I went and grabbed my dad's zippo of his smokes he kindly left on the kitchen counter. And proceeded back into the bathroom locked the door and started lighting them and throwing them out the 2nd story window when our neighbor came out because of all that racket and told my parents what I was up to and well...my daddy got the rest of them and that was that. I was hooked on the smell of the smoke.

[WilConine]

Pyro has been an important part of family celebrations since I can remember. In an undergrad chem class we made smoke balls out of KNO3 and sugar, the rest was history. Started reading everything I could find (mostly garbage, but a few reputable finds where there) and thus started a journey. I've always been amazed by what a few "simple" compositions can produce. Always wanted to know how every consumer "firework" worked... from snakes to shells.

[Seymour]

I used to buy fireworks when I was 8, 9, 10 and loved them as is, or modified. 11-12 a friend and I had "gunpowder club" where we made incredibly slow BP and made fountains, small rockets and "firecrackers" that could barely damage a leaf. from 13-14 I went back to modifying store bought, including ramming rockets which worked really well, but I shudder to think of how I rammed unknown compositions that were definitely not BP.

At 14 I wanted to know how crackle worked and found the answer on a website that was then the "UK Rocketry" forum which was about 95% about hobby fireworks, which is why it ended up being named the UK Pyrotechnics Society. I was amazed that there were people who just got all the chemicals, bought or made tools and made all the effects and different fireworks. I bought my first 25kg bag of KNO3, built a ball mill out of junk (and it was a really shit ball mill!)

 

The UK pyrotechnics society is doing great things, but the forum has much less practical discussion of making pyro than it did in 2004 while this forum has since grown and improved a lot.

 

I spent three years using just KNO3 and made fountains, rockets, shells and on occasion burned enough KNO3/Sucrose to literally seed a cloud that lasted hours above my neighbourhood. I imported 10kg of 44 micron atomised Aluminium for glitter stars... and yeah, thermite... Eventually I bought Barium carbonate and 70% Nitric acid for under $1 per kilo (things were good as a 14 year old in 2004 around here) and made my own Barium nitrate. Copper oxide, Strontium carbonate, Gum Arabic and many more came from the same supplier as the Barium carbonate. I got a small amount of KP, MgAl, Parlon and imported 2lb of Indian Dark Al, and some Bismuth trioxide. Sodium benzoate was cheap from local suppliers, as was Erythritol...

 

And it was all on from there.

 

At least for me, as long as I worded my emails right and checked my spelling, companies would often assume I was a business and not a teenager making explosives. Things have changed, but I'm sure that this will still go a long way. If they ask, honesty often results in people helping you, so long as the honest answer involves the art of fireworks, or rocketry,

Edited August 13, 2016 by Seymour

[FlaMtnBkr]

I was born on the 4th of July. Fireworks have been a part of me since I was born.

 

I was caught with matches when I was 5 and my mom figured I would always be curious so instead of punishing me so I would try to hide it, she gave me a lighter that I could have whenever I asked for it and as long as I only played in a big sand pile.

 

When I was 8 I got a box of fireworks twice as big as I was back when you could still buy them mail order. Been hooked ever since. Used to but potassium nitrate and sulfur from the pharmacy when still in my single digits and made something that burned. Been experimenting and making things ever since. In my late teens almost 20 years ago I made a ball mill and started making real fireworks and have been learning and making them ever since.

[AzoMittle]

I wrote the following for an English class so forgive me for the 'lyrical' nature of it. I also took a few liberties with the dialogue for story reasons but it's all based on what people have actually said at one point or another. So forgive me if I (mis)quoted you or someone you know in here, consider it as a "based on a true story"-kind of thing.

 

-------------------------------------------------

 

One of the most poignant memories of intrigue, fascination, and idyllic suspense I have had the pleasure of taking part in is waiting for night to fall. Like any good story, it all started with a lovely lass:

 

“Soooooooo, um, uh, what are doing for the fourth?” She asked coyly as our small group begrudgingly dispersed into varying nearby classes.

What followed was an exchange of meaningless ‘um’ and ‘uh’ and ‘.....’ filled bumbling. A vocalization of growing awkward confusion. No less than you would expect from a pubescent girl and boy.

 

What followed that however—near on an hour later I should add—was a light bulb clicking on, the realization there was more than a plain faced inquiry in her innocent little question. Through what I can only assume was an attempt by the Fates to have a chuckle, I was by the end of the day set for a date.

 

While the two of us sat atop a hill overlooking the valley, a crowd began to slowly gather in the grandstands far below. From bellies full of backyard barbeque and grandmother’s slaw a gentle laughing and jabbering could be heard, growing louder and rowdier as the crowd expanded. Just then, when the stands far below had transformed themselves into an unyielding cacophony of noise and movement that undoubtedly could grow no more, came a singular moment, the foreshadow of a crescendo. That jarring instantaneous moment was startling but greatly anticipated by child and adult alike—much akin to the first rain of a new year—a resounding, chest thumping, BOOM! Then, silence as eyes were drawn skyward.

 

The gal may not be around anymore but the emotions which that moment sparked within me still are.

 

“How in the hell did they do that? How could I do that?” paced back and forth through my mind for the days and weeks that followed. “Someone out there knows how, for it has already been done, now, to find that someone and learn.”

 

In the months and years that followed I decided upon learning to play the role of Prometheus. I learned how to steal the spark given unto me and kindle it. I turned that spark into a torch, and with the help of a great many people that torch has had a steam engine built around it. Now I lay the track down to turn that engine into a locomotive, hopefully so that it will carry others onward.

 

I spent the next three years reading every last book and paper I could find, watching every video the internet could dig up, and recording every last factoid I encountered. I read volumes of work spanning hundreds of years, I had to know the path laid out by those who had come before me. I learned all the methods and knew how to do what to achieve this or that effect, or so I thought at the time. I may have read a lot, but I knew little.

 

“This is wonderful!” I thought, “Fireworks combine art and science, they require an engineer’s technicality, the playfulness with color and timing of a painter and poet, and the craftsmanship of a woodworker.”

 

All the while though there was one nagging thought on the front of my mind that I could never quiet, “But you live in place particularly well known for not much liking things that burn.”

 

It would be an understatement to say that this place is not the most fireworks friendly. I had to find a solution, not being able to create was not an answer. I dug through page after page of Google searches, eventually landing on the Western Pyrotechnics Association. Them. They were my answer. I knew it right then like Love’s first sight.

 

It took some doing, the building of tools, of knowledge, of relationships, and—most importantly—of trust, but now, three quarters of a decade shorn of but a handful of days, I stand as a journeyman pyrotechnician. I am a practitioner of a dying and esoteric art, one that is at the same time familiar to near every last person, to create light.

 

Maybe one of my fellow guild members had it right when he toasted to the end of our most recent event, “Aye, aye, quiet done y’er yappering fer a moment. Hey! ‘Ey! John, yes, that includes yous too. I’m standing up here in front of y’all tonight as yer club admin, t’is is true, but more so as your brother. Here I am looking at all of y’all and what I see is a family. We’ve all must have an axle loose, a rusty bolt, and a squeaky wheel to be out ‘ere doing what we do, but I’ll be damned-ded if we ain’t not a family built upon building ooohs and aaahhs. Y’all do that with yer rockets and yer shells, all them whizzers and crackers, yer ground flowers, pinwheels, saxons, and fountains, those there girandolas and even them god damned beraq’s.”

 

I’m a young man who has been given a metaphorical pacemaker by an adopted family, and it is a mortar cannon. Every time is the first time: the slow, deliberate walk to the outfield; the turn of the knob releasing a ‘fsssssshhh’ of propane; the sharp ‘click’ of the torch’s trigger as a solitary blue flame jets out to alight upon the end of a fuse; the calling out of “FIRE IN THE HOLE!”; the feeling of your heart slowing as the fuse burns down. As the last trailing sparks disappear down the tube so too does the beating of the heart. In a moment that feels like an eternity cut short, a moment of pure silence no matter the amount of surrounding commotion and noise, comes that extrinsic heartbeat igniting:

buh-BOOM!

[GalFisk]

My mother got me started - but at the time she had no idea what she set me up for.

Her motivation was some unpleasant experiences from her own childhood. Her mother was deathly afraid of fire, and as a child she was never allowed to even touch any matches. When my mother began first grade and Christmas was coming, one child was allowed to light an advent candle each morning in class. She had never held a match, and so when it became her turn, she burned herself in front of everyone.

This sort of shame shouldn't befall her children. So when we got to the age of... five? we were given a metal platter and some candle stumps, in order to learn to handle fire in a safe way.

I did occasionally burn my self of course, but I'm a quick learner, and was never discouraged from experimenting, neither by the odd blister or by my parents.

My siblings grew out of their fascination with fire. I grew into it.

My parents never bought fireworks except for sparklers, but on New Year's Eve (the only big fireworks night in Norway) they'd wake us up near midnight so we could see the spectacles put up by various neighbors. I have fond memories from those times.

Eventually we started vacationing in Sweden during Easter. My half-sister bought fireworks for me and her son, because we both had an unstoppable fascination with the subject, and she'd rather we shot fireworks under supervision and with her consent, than doing it on the sly. We did not always do the smartest things, but we weren't completely dumb and we did our best not to cause trouble. Wouldn't want to lose that privilege or disappoint our benefactor, did we?

For many years I was happy with consumer fireworks. I did sometimes combine or modify the pieces for more spectacular effects, and learned how fireworks were built. I had many other hobbies though, electronics and computers being bigger, so I only developed slowly.

Some years later I took up potato cannons as a hobby, learned quite a bit of combustion-related chemistry and physics in the process, and fed my fascination for things that go boom and fly.

One day, exploring an abandoned storage room, I found a small can of "sodium nitrate".

"Hmm, interesting." I thought. "I wonder what I can do with this?"

This thought precedes many of what turns out to be my most interesting and fulfilling hobbies. The internet, which is where I found the "Hmm" moment for potato cannons several years earlier, didn't disappoint. I found Flashback (Swedish forum with a pyro section), Passfire, Sciencemadness, UK Pyro Society and, of course, the APC. I bought chemicals; I experimented; I learned. The potato cannons lay unfired while I concocted rocket candy, pingoing ball lacquer, sodium nitrate+benzoate stars (both ingredients conveniently sold as food additives in the spice section of the food store), and eventually black powder, benzolift, tiger tail, Winokur glitters and Veline colors among others.

A police raid (on groundless suspicions of drug manufacture) did put a dent in my hobby, but everything taken was returned a year later. I used the intervening time to meet a girl, lose her some months later, and take up skydiving.

I'm not the most active pyro at the moment, with a move and new job imminent, skydiving eating my free time and money, and a new girl and bonus daughter. The things that I do nonetheless are fun and popular. Every NYE I've fired small experimental pieces and modified consumer stuff for my friends. We collect money for me to buy fireworks, so they can drink and have fun and I can shoot spectacular shows for their enjoyment and have at least as much fun as they do. The skydiving club has also been the scene for some good shows, as well as the home for the simplest potato cannon.

The dream still exists to set up a dedicated lab and to become properly licensed - a path successfully taken by several pyros here in Sweden. We will see what comes of it.

Edited August 16, 2016 by GalFisk

[Dasmoofler]

I started as a little kid in the 60s. What kid didn't enjoy firecrackers? That's when it started. Even though I can now afford to buy fireworks I find it more fulfilling to make them. I am new to making shells and such and I am really enjoying learning how everything is done and the chemistry involved.

[joeyz]

i started at age 8 with a fascination of birthday sparklers. it was the most important thing to me then the birthdya cake, balloons or presents. since then, i was always fascinated on how fireworks work.

 

by age 10, we were setting up little plastic army men in the backyard dirt with my friend everytime he came over. we setup two field armies, 50 each and each got 20' x 20' grid site. rules of war: each of us had 1 pack of lady finger firecrackers and the plan was to stick half the firecrackers anywhere you want in each other army ranks, take turns lighting one firecracker at time that were buried in the ground to simulate tank, bazooka, grenade firing. after the ground attack was done, we took turns lighting and throwing the other half of firecrackers one by one to simulate artillery and air attack to each other grid zone. the army with the most men standing won the war. i liked placing my firecrackers under jeeps, tanks, trucks, near prone riflmen and kneeling bazookas because they were the hardest to knock over. the prone guys, tanks, trucks and jeeps didnt count as a kill unless they were flipped on their backs. blowing up those key targets made the standing ones easier to knock down by fragmentation of flying dirt, rocks, men and vehicles. i am sure almost all little boys done this. we use to have fun blowing up ant hills too and fragout (throw firecrackers one at a time) to kill the swarm of ants. mom never had to buy ant killer, no worry mom, we got this! lol as kids, we never had computer games and you could not keep us in the house for 5 minutes, it was always outdoor activities; baseball, summer camp, swimming and fireworks. we attended every public fireworks display we possibly could. we get there early, sneak past markers and watching the pyro guys setting up through cheap binoculars saying to ourselves, "wow, thats how they do it, it would be so cool to that!" back in those days, a couple of guys were running around manually lighting mortars with ground flares on long sticks. this method is still used today but i do all my displays with computers and ematches and prohibit the manual practice because as added safety.

 

at 16, i was fascinated with bottle rockets. a year later i joined the army to be a missile crewmember to play with and fire real rockets. next thing you know, i was at white sands missile range working with a range of short and long range air defense missile systems. my expertise was more surrounding the complex computers, robotics, electronics, guidance section, target acquisitioning and warheads of rockets and not so much the engine itself except the basics of its fuel type. my military skills advanced into air defense missile technologies and it became a career and remained in the army until i honorably retired after 22 1/2 years of service.

Edited August 25, 2016 by joeyz

[DaMounty]

I got laid off a couple of years ago and while vegging out on youtube I came across some vids of people making there own fireworks. Did a little research and low and behold here I am.

 

DaM