What was the closest call or actual accident that resulted in injury

[yardarmwheeze]

What was your closest call or actual accident that resulted in injury, and what can be taught from that experience.

Edited February 27, 2021 by yardarmwheeze

[SharkWhisperer]

What was your closest call or actual accident that resulted in injury, and what can be taught from that experience.

You go first. Top 3 events/situations. What'd you learn?

[yardarmwheeze]

I really only had one incident and it was pretty damn stupid. It was about a year back when I was getting into pyrotechnics and I was your typical beginner and I really was only interested in flash and boomers at first . This experience is pretty self explanatory, I had made some 5-3-2 (with aluminum) and I was clueless to how powerful even this composition was. I had lit some bp before but flash is nothing like bp and I tried lighting a gram of it off with a bbq lighter. Dumb idea..burned all the hair off my forearm and I was lucky I wasn't really burned. Lesson was that I realized how serious even a small amount of flash was, and I subsequently avoided handling and making flash, unless I was going to need it for something at that particular moment. If you are going to test flash, test no more that .3 grams. Use the lit paper method, long match, or a fuse. If you have a bbq lighter then use a very small amount (0.2-0.1 grams). That incident was a wake up call to not f with flash and then my interest turned over to 4oz bp rockets (still is my main interest). Most people (you included) already know this lesson so its not really anything crazy or different. But since you asked, this was my only accident I had and what I learned from it. I still pretty new to fireworks and pyrotechnics so I wanted to ask about any accidents that experienced pyros have had so I can garner some info from their experiences so they don't happen to me.

 

Now thats my only experience, your turn now.

Edited February 28, 2021 by yardarmwheeze

[Carbon796]

One of the most common incidents that you'll see reported. Is from burning off "hot trash" or scrap stars/comp. They underestimate how energetic even small amounts of comp can be. They don't allow enough time, to move to a safe distance once lit. And avoid being caught by a much larger flame envelope than expected.

[SharkWhisperer]

One of the most common incidents that you'll see reported. Is from burning off "hot trash" or scrap stars/comp. They underestimate how energetic even small amounts of comp can be. They don't allow enough time, to move to a safe distance once lit. And avoid being caught by a much larger flame envelope than expected.

Hot/fast powders are the worst & most dangerous in the burnpile.

 

But if you aren't overzealous, know your comps/scraps, and are especially careful, it can also be a very colorful way to get the firepit started! Never, of course with huge quantities of anything and never with FP of any type. Or BP, though I can't think of too many reasons to destroy any BP mix--can be used at minimum to prime something.

[ronmoper76]

Drying a full cookie sheet full of stars under a woodstove!!!! It was my go to spot for years and it dried stuff out like nothing else. till some hot hot ash floated out when i was bent over fooling around with them because someone opened the door. 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my whole left side ,face,arm and hand,and my leg and knee. I picked it up and ran it out the front door to save the house but got fucked up in the process. I was screaming in pain the whole ride to the hospital a half hour away and didn't stop till they jabbed 4 needles in my ass and kno0cked me out at the hospital.... Needless to say i don"t use the wood stove anymore or anything but a fan for that matter to dry stuff out.

[yardarmwheeze]

Drying a full cookie sheet full of stars under a woodstove!!!! It was my go to spot for years and it dried stuff out like nothing else. till some hot hot ash floated out when i was bent over fooling around with them because someone opened the door. 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my whole left side ,face,arm and hand,and my leg and knee. I picked it up and ran it out the front door to save the house but got fucked up in the process. I was screaming in pain the whole ride to the hospital a half hour away and didn't stop till they jabbed 4 needles in my ass and kno0cked me out at the hospital.... Needless to say i don"t use the wood stove anymore or anything but a fan for that matter to dry stuff out.

Yeah thats a great example of why you should use an electric oven. Great story and great response!

 

Edit- Damn dude I hope you recovered fully from that traumatic experience!!

Edited February 28, 2021 by yardarmwheeze

[ronmoper76]

yeah it was traumatic. i was nervous for months after just picking up and handling certain items. That tray went up in flames in 2 or 3 seconds flat and filled my house so full of smoke upstairs and down,that my old lady was hiding in the closet with a wet rag over her face so she could breathe. After that the ball mill went in the back yard and alot of other shit changed. Stars are nothing,all i could think was what if that was something else like flash,i would be dead

Edited February 28, 2021 by ronmoper76

[SharkWhisperer]

Yeah thats a great example of why you should use an electric oven. Great story and great response!

 

Edit- Damn dude I hope you recovered fully from that traumatic experience!!

That's bad advice, the electric oven. Sheesh. The ONLY role an electric oven has in pyro is to dry individual hygroscopic chems like Sr/K nitrates and charcoal! Make a friggin' safe dryer box with a protected ceramic heater and ventilation, ffs. With mesh racks. An oven??? Sheesh.

 

Temp controlled (and verified) hotplates can be used for sugar candies, outside or in a dedicated workshop that is not your kitchen, and a pot of boiling water easily melts a container of wax, but please don't put pyro stuff in your oven. Ever. In your kitchen? Sounds like a good way to take a trip to the hospital and have the alphabet or local authorities waiting to discuss right after. Your kitchen should NOT be your workshop. Or your basement.

 

How many fire extinguishers do you have immediate access to?

Edited March 1, 2021 by SharkWhisperer

[yardarmwheeze]

yeah it was traumatic. i was nervous for months after just picking up and handling certain items. That tray went up in flames in 2 or 3 seconds flat and filled my house so full of smoke upstairs and down,that my old lady was hiding in the closet with a wet rag over her face so she could breathe. After that the ball mill went in the back yard and alot of other shit changed. Stars are nothing,all i could think was what if that was something else like flash,i would be dead

yeah thats crazy man!! The worst burn I got was when I was 15 and my little sister left this red hot marshmellow poker on the ground camping. I stepped on it and i had a real bad 2nd degree burn. I was in a lot of pain for a few days so I cannot imagine what you went through. That was definitely a good lesson though and I am glad you are ok.

 

Don't listen to my post with the oven. SharkWhisperer was right about that one. Dumb idea. I post things sometimes very quickly without much thought. I really have no experience with stars, I do with model rockets. If I were making some stars I probably would just let them air dry outside honestly. Very bad comment and thank you Sharkwhisperer for that reply b/c that was once again, a stupid comment.

[WRAITH]

I believe it was the time i tried to eat a slurry of pyro grade charcoal, but ended up having bad gut pain & little later constipation. I was shitting BBQ charcoal bricks for at least a week, then made an appointment to see a specialist, then he said to me "you idiot, who said eating pyro charcoal is ok ? If you want charcoal to work & not make you sick, then use Activated Charcoal".

Thank God that worked

It didn't really happen, but some should get the point.

[Piccaso]

I believe it was the time i tried to eat a slurry of pyro grade charcoal, but ended up having bad gut pain & little later constipation. I was shitting BBQ charcoal bricks for at least a week, then made an appointment to see a specialist, then he said to me "you idiot, who said eating pyro charcoal is ok ? If you want charcoal to work & not make you sick, then use Activated Charcoal".

Thank God that worked

It didn't really happen, but some should get the point

BBQ charcoal bricks contain other things besides charcoal , like clay being the main one. I bet you did crap a brick literally.

Edited March 15, 2021 by Piccaso

[Richtee]

BBQ charcoal bricks contain other things besides charcoal , like clay being the main one. I bet you did crap a brick literally.

And I believe nitrates. and floor sweepings. And alien parts...

 

Eat LUMP charcoal. That’s fine Also better for grilling!

[Kevisima]

I had a close call when I was 19, a million years ago.

I was into making 2g to 4g salutes from powder painstakingly obtained by opening small firecrackers with an X-Acto knife.

My neighbor made me a shiny stainless steel mini mortar that was 1"i.d. by 12" for aerial bombs. I just put the fuse out the end of a salute and buried it in the lift charge. The mortar had a fuse hole in the base.It worked.

Problem was that I had no real amount of bp. So, I took apart Estes rocket engines and ground up the powder. Risky enough, but I later tried compressing it in the mortar with a wood ram and rubber hammer. I wanted more lift/height.

Naturally, the powder ignited from my hammering and blew the hammer and wood ram out of my hand and high into the air of our backyard. The hair on my arm was burned along with my hand. The muzzle flash also burned my hair and my left eyebrow. My hand throbbed with pain.

All this because I tried fixing something that wasn't broken. The mortar worked perfectly without compression.

They say God watches over children and fools. It SCARED THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS out of me and my friend Bill who was with me.

I learned my lesson:1) NEVER abuse compositions in any way, EVER.2) Never fix something that isn't broken.3)Never put any body part over a mortar that you can't afford to loose, EVER!4)Work outside when possible if you have no build house.5)Never work alone. A bystander who is a safe distance and not involved is the best.

I still remember that day and what happened and what ALMOST happened like it was yesterday! I "got the memo" and have been a safety freak ever since.

Thanks God!

[Phil]

What was your closest call or actual accident that resulted in injury, and what can be taught from that experience.

The power cable I made for my firing module that goes from the battery to the box shorted out after I made a more permanent repair because the crimp on terminals kept falling off. I was fucking pissed after driving 30 minutes to a spot to shoot off when I learned I was going to have to rip out the igniters and shove in some backup visco and light by hand. The stripped ends were too short to reach the opposite terminal so I think what happened was the insulation started to melt after I applied solder because I noticed a strand of wire was stuck to the iron as I pulled away and it pulled up through the insulation. I may not have noticed a stray piece that came off and bridged the + - side. This was one of those sealed lead acid batteries used in UPS and alarm systems. The negative cable insulation melted pretty bad and the room filled with smoke. No open flame but it freaked me out. Glad I didn't have anything sitting out. This happened yesterday btw. The battery still works. I'd just make another cable but I don't have any more DC jacks, radio shack isn't a thing anymore and the place I buy electronic components from online ships from Thailand. Timely delivery is out the window.

[markx]

Burnt my left hand really badly by trying to relight a failed permanganate/Al charge when I was just a pup. Really really stupid game plan and oh boy did that hurt bad...skin and fingernails came off. Healed up nicely though and left no permanent damage.

Got shrapnel in my right hand from trying to carelessly open a live blank rimfire cartridge and setting off the primer in the process. What a mindless act....to this day I still can not conceive how braindead of a moment I must have had to undertake such a foolish approach.

Exploded an electrolysis reactor playing around with browns gas and having acidic electrolyte sprayed in my eyes.

Trusting a dead and fired round with another bullet reinstalled on the spent cartridge for chamber fitting purposes is really inert and having the primer (with a good firing pin mark on it) go off while testing for trigger mechanism functionality.

Witnessing a close friend of lifelong military background sitting right beside me perish instantly, because he was careless with a firearm. That one is going to haunt me to the end of my days, although I was by some miracle spared without any physical damage.

[gifovaco]

I fortunately have had none with Pyro (Unloaded weapons another matter). I post this link because it brings home the point that EVERY little thing matters. Those are the devils in the details here. It's titled "Life after detonation" I searched for that here but not found. Hope the link works. It's worth it.

 

http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=22554

[cmjlab]

Jesus that's the best warning story I've ever seen. And a chillingly, very accurate sounding response experience, speaking from similar personal experience (but with legs and in Iraq)

[Richtee]

I fortunately have had none with Pyro (Unloaded weapons another matter).

 

There is no such thing as an unloaded weapon.

[AZpyroredneck]

You go first. Top 3 events/situations. What'd you learn?

Well, this was a stupid one on my part. Before I really knew what I was doing, I used to light the visco fuse in the bottom of my mortar shells and then drop them down the mortar. One day while doing this with a rather high-yield salute, I figured with it being so powerful, I put an extra couple inches of fuse in so I would have enough time to get away in case it flower potted. In doing so, what wound up happening was the fuse caught on the edge of the mortar tube and curled itself upwards bypassing the majority of the fuse itself. My hand was still over the tube when it went off. I looked down expecting to see a bloody stump and was amazed when I saw I still had a hand. The pain was unreal, it felt like I had just high-fived a porcupine that had hot sauce on every one of its quills. To this day I still do not have feeling in the fingertips of my left hand. Since then I redesigned my mortar tubes to break apart at the bottom so I can safely load the shell and light it from the bottom so no part of me is ever above the tube. Obviously, some very basic safety protocols were ignored here: 1) NEVER light a shell in your hand, regardless if you're going to drop it down the tube or not, 2) NEVER place a body part like a hand over the top of your mortar tube, 3) always make sure that your shell is properly loaded and has the proper amount of fuse before lighting. The couple of things I did do right? I had a buddy close by to administer first aid had I needed it. That buddy was also filming so I got a video of me almost blowing my hand off. The Final thing I did right: I NEVER DID THAT AGAIN!

 

You didn't think I would film it and not provide a link, did you? I'm not that mean... Here it is, watch me almost blow my hand off:

 

https://youtube.com/shorts/Qjzk1lBSyfQ?si=aOQ5nOXBwhicG9Om

Edited October 31, 2023 by AZpyroredneck

[SharkWhisperer]

Dang, that looked and sounded painful! You got a good up-close view of that flame, too!

 

In my early days I was grinding away at a few ounces of BP in a mortar all happy as a clam. With a lit cigarette hanging out of my mouth like a complete idiot. Yeah, you can guess where that led. Good thing I had most of the summer left for my eyebrows to mostly grow back. Fire's hot. Was lucky my BP skills were pretty poor still back then...

[gifovaco]

♫ In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man ♫

Now...Pay attention.... & don't do it again....

[All10Fingers]

I recently made a stupid rookie mistake. Always remember when your doing a test burn of a small pile of something, don't be holding the container with the rest of the comp in your other hand.  It's better now but I looked like Harvey Dent for a couple weeks. Bought myself a coin and everything lol.