Mumbles Posted July 11, 2007 Posted July 11, 2007 Well, seeing as I work at a pyro factory, and was at a fellow pyro's house, I suppose it counts. I fell down the stairs and broke my toe. It fucking sucks. 2nd time I've fallen down the same set of stairs, same place too. Must be some slippery carpet.
Frozentech Posted July 11, 2007 Posted July 11, 2007 Well, seeing as I work at a pyro factory, and was at a fellow pyro's house, I suppose it counts. I fell down the stairs and broke my toe. It fucking sucks. 2nd time I've fallen down the same set of stairs, same place too. Must be some slippery carpet. Alcohol related ? How's it going in Big Sky Country, anyhow ?
gods knight Posted July 11, 2007 Posted July 11, 2007 wow fell down twice? lol thats just like when i was using my hydraulic press and the steel bar from it keeps on dropping on my foot,hurt like hell. (i wore steel toes after that )
flying fish Posted July 14, 2007 Posted July 14, 2007 Here's a little lesson that is semi-related to pyrotechnics (since I was working on a scale used for pyrotechnics). Not so much an injury but definetely an accident. If my carpeting could feel, it would be an injury. Today my already damaged electronic scale stops working, so I take it apart to find the switch contacts were rusted. Instead of cleaning it off and putting it back together like a normal person would, I decided to transplant the components of the damaged scale into a new radio shack "project box". In the process, wires start coming loose from the board, and I have to keep soldering them back on. Only... my work place (my bedroom floor) has TWO identical soldering irons on it, one that is unplugged, and one that is in use. I grabbed the wrong one, and the plugged one was knocked onto the floor (at this point I still *think* I'm holding the hot iron even though I'm not). It took me a good 10 seconds to figure out where the smoke was coming from: http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b330/WhyAreAllUserNamesTaken/holeincarpet.jpg Next to a US dime. Lesson? Stay organized and removed unnessary items from the work area so you don't get them confused with the necessary items, lol. Plus, working over carpeting with a soldering iron isn't such a good idea. Pretty much anyplace over a hard, non-combustable floor would have been better, with the notable exceptions of the pyro workshop and the bathtub.
tentacles Posted July 15, 2007 Posted July 15, 2007 the acid burns were indescribably painful, especially when its hot due to the chemical reaction Two words for you: baking soda Or any handy carbonate(except barium!), something to react with the acid.
Mumbles Posted July 16, 2007 Posted July 16, 2007 Believe it or not, alcohol was not a factor. Montana is cool, except for the last week and a half, which everything conceivable has gone wrong. Also much bitch work has been done at the factory by me, with unfortunatly little chemistry being done. Someone actually had to supervise me using a digital scale the other day to be sure I could handle it.
gods knight Posted July 17, 2007 Posted July 17, 2007 Do you have any pictures of the factory? Ive never actually seen a firework (pyrotechnic) factory before and i want to know what its like. if there are no pictures then thats fine I know how they love to keep their work(formulas&machinery) confidential, thats how it is when I drove by one, it had a big sign saying no trespassing, or is that just me being paranoid ?
jacob Posted August 5, 2007 Posted August 5, 2007 Thankfully it has been a while since i have posted here, but i just had an accident that is worth telling you about, i made a smoke device with sulfur, KNO3 and charcoal, the comp was Sulfur: 54. KNO3: 42.Charcoal: 4. it seemed to burn too slow and just kind of smolder so i threw in a pinch more KNO3 and put it in a tin can and then folded the top over to keep out oxygen so it would smoke, i lit it witha piece of visco and stood there and watched it start to flame, it wasent smokeing so i tried to step on it with my foot to put the flame out and get it to smoke, but it's burn rate sped up and as i tried to get away it flipped around and sprayed what i think was sulfur and KNO3 slag on my leg, also when i jumped out of the way i hit my self in the head with the torch i was holding. my leg and head are healing and i think i'l live to light things another day, but it just goes to show you even the smallest of things can hurt you.
Umphrey Posted August 8, 2007 Posted August 8, 2007 WOW. I was at a party last night, several people were lighting off their leftover fireworks from the 4th, I didn't see any cause for concern, as they were a good 40 feet away. A couple idiots were throwing firecrackers at eachother. someone eventually yelled out at them to knock it off. They disappeared for awhile, they come back about 10 minutes later and fucking actually lit a whole jumping jack brick and chucked it up at the deck! I got burnt on the neck and leg. I don't understand how people can be so stupid.
gods knight Posted August 13, 2007 Posted August 13, 2007 another thing happened to me THIS morning: You know how you always have to wait for a pot to warm up to cook breakfast?, I decided to put some oil in it watch a halo trailer and then come back, the problem was I was so caught up in it that i ended up spending 30 minutes on it, I quickly remembered that the stove was on(by now the place was foggy with smoke) and my smoke detector was being replaced. I walked to the kitchen, hmm whats that smell, WHAT THE HELL I panicked so bad i threw water on they extremely hot oil,(STUPID) It burst into flames right in front of my eyes, the flames looked so thick(panicking) , like when a gasoline explosion occurs. As fast as I could I grabbed the fire extinguisher and put it all out(took about 20 seconds for the flames to die down) . The area was charred,my parents went out , I don't think I remember the last time I cleaned so hard, when they were back the area was spotless,( the little smoke fan in the kitchens right under the stove, was burn beyond recondition, a quick drive to home depot fixed that, went to another store to buy acid stain remover which to care of all the darkened areas, I explained to them what happened and they were very calm and said at least no one got hurt,and everything was clean, what a day
Boomer Posted August 13, 2007 Posted August 13, 2007 Reminds me when I had a half liter bottle with a really stubborn Henry reaction refluxing on the kitchen stove. Solvent was toluene btw.Remembered it during lunch some hours later.At my parents place. Did I mention they life in another part of town? How nice to come home in the evening, while home is still there ....
willowmp Posted August 17, 2007 Posted August 17, 2007 well i havent been into pyro for very long but ... this has got to be the stupidest thing i have ever done. i made TT BP for rockets. i didnt test the powder or anyting just rammed it and the rocket catoed like salutes. i decided to make a small fountain to see what was wrong with it. sadly the fuse wasnt working so i spiked the nozzel hole with bp and lit it with a birthday candle. it delayed before lighting so i stupidly put my face over it and bam the fountain catoed shhoting the very large nozzle clay in a dust like shotgun buck. it hit my eyes and everything, the eyes were the worst soooo much pain. it turned out to be pretty funny because our neighbor had come out right when it went off in my face and watched the whole thing. i rolled around on my back like a turtle cursing for about 2 mins lmao. no perm injury luckly, it could have eaisly destroyed my right eye.
Boomer Posted August 19, 2007 Posted August 19, 2007 The two prime reasons for accidents are: 1. It goes off too soon. 2. It goes off too late. No 1 got me in 2003, No 2 now nearly got you. I got cured of "go look why it wont work" in my early days, when trying to set NG off with BP, in a pipe filled half way with each (cello-tape to keep BP dry): It was placed in a 2-feet dia concrete sewer pipe, me standing to the side of the opening. Fuse hole was too big, so the BP made a fountain. Then nothing for several seconds. Later a faint hissing and spitting sound. I was about to look into the opening when the nitro detonated, totally fragmenting the lower half of the metal pipe.Later learned it's called cook-off, when HEs are slowly heated through the whole mass. Didn't smoke back then, but later made it a rule to first smoke a ciggie, then go looking. One of the few occasions when smoking is good for your health!
willowmp Posted August 23, 2007 Posted August 23, 2007 Probally the most stupid thing i have done at camp involved matches. it was summer camp and i was the fire instructor guy. the people had to build a fire then got 1 match to start it. So i was sitting there with some other fire instructor and i was playing with matches .Well everyone probally knows the trick where you flick the match on the box and it shoots off and when it hits whatever it ignites, yea fun when you are really board right, well it was fun untill i flicked a match and it slid into the small gap between my palm and the box. it got wedged in between and im sure you know what happened next, it ignited and burnt the matchhead chems into my hand. like there was unburned chems burned and incased like a tatoo in my palm in this bump probally a good centameter big. and man did that b**** sting like hell, the chems burned and stung for like 2 days. i guess smokie the bear was right about one thing.
oskarchem Posted November 11, 2007 Posted November 11, 2007 well, this could sound a bit stupid but I burnt myself with hit glue... Your careful with some potentially dangerous stuff but then whem it comes to stupid shit llike that you burn your self with hot glue :/
h&k machineguns Posted November 12, 2007 Posted November 12, 2007 I have always wondered it Hot glue could be hot enough that if it came in direct contact with Flash or whistle mix it would set it off. I'll have to try it in a small amount and report back .
mormanman Posted November 12, 2007 Posted November 12, 2007 I have always wondered it Hot glue could be hot enough that if it came in direct contact with Flash or whistle mix it would set it off. I'll have to try it in a small amount and report back . I don't think so b/c it cools pretty fast and would smother the flash and it doesn't like bp. Then again I have little to zero experance with flash.
crazyboy25 Posted November 12, 2007 Posted November 12, 2007 it might set it off if it was in contact with the glue gun tip itself for an extended period of time but the gule itself probbably wont i have burnt myself pretty bad with hot glue the most recent one was incredibly painfull for 2-3 days it sucked
oskarchem Posted November 12, 2007 Posted November 12, 2007 Well when I was sealing a calcium carbide cartrige the hot glue went in contact with it and well you probably can think of the rest...
rev.redneck Posted November 12, 2007 Posted November 12, 2007 Boomer your right.. The two prime reasons for accidents are: 1. It goes off too soon. 2. It goes off too late. My most recent was a 3" dummy shell and poor homemade fuse, It did nothing for 3-4 Min. I go look close to try to see it any smoke is there, nope no smoke, I look TOO close to see if the fuse quit, nope no fuse, Just FIRE, did not get hit by nothing by damn it scared me! cinged some hair and my face was black but no burns. now 10% of my free time is making Ematch, it never fails.
Boomer Posted November 14, 2007 Posted November 14, 2007 And if it does, there is hardly a hangfire, unless you use E-match to ignite a small lenght of fuse goung into the device. This defies the purpose (exceptions being e.g. one E-match for a row of mortars quickmatched together). I mean if the E-match is inside a flash- or lift charge, it won't be smoldering in there for long. With electric detonators it is even more a yes/no thing, if it does not detonate the charge within 0.1 seconds you can call it a dud. This is with capacitor discharge, and the primary close to the bridge. With steel wool and a latern battery on a long cable, I would still have a ciggie before going for a look! Upgrading to EBWs, the time after which you know it is a dud is 0.00001 seconds, otherwise by then the whole cap has long desintegrated. My worst nightmare is lighting the fuse to a really BIG charge in the woods, running 300 yards for cover, then watch some kids from a pathfinder camp walking towards the blast site to investigate the smoke from the fuse. While I can only watch the desaster while they ignore my yelling. That's how the man in the ICE/TGV locomotive must feel when he sees kids playing on the tracks 300 yards ahead, knowing he needs over a mile to stop the train.
Mumbles Posted November 14, 2007 Posted November 14, 2007 For safety reasons commercial shells that come pre-ported for, but without e-matches use a small portion of fuse going into the lift. Their logic is that it's safer to put an e-match into quickmatch than to jam it into the lift bag. But if making something yourself, and are going for imediate launch, yes directly into the lift is the way to go. I still know many people who attach a full length of quickmatch and place the e-match in there. Using multistrand quickmatch all but totally eliminates the possibility of a hangfire.
oskarchem Posted November 18, 2007 Posted November 18, 2007 Hey, boomer so I guess nothing happened to them?They must have been bloody skeared (sorry for the spelling) once it had gone off...
ActiveA Posted November 18, 2007 Posted November 18, 2007 I once somehow managed to light a fuse leading into a 20g BP aerial salute while putting the fuse in place with wax... I threw it out a window and Hoped for the best. I managed to accidentally throw it into a bucket of water and it extinguished. Lucky but yeah.
NUKE Posted December 3, 2007 Posted December 3, 2007 I spilled 1L of 96% H2SO4 all over my clothes and luckily I didn't get any of it on my skin (Fortunatly it was winter and I wasn't wearing shorts). I was afraid of conc. H2SO4 for like a year from that event. Plus I had one accident day before that H2SO4 accident I was ''refluxing'' (I used rubber stopper on 500mL erlenmeyer flask with ~400mL of acetone/conc. HCl mix) I put that flask into a boiling water and I putted on that rubber stopper ~1kg of ice in glass bottle. Pressure build up and imagine what happened when 1kg of ice falled down due to a pressure build up in flask and rubber stopper went airborne. Suddenly I got a stinking boiling and burning geyser of chlorinated organic compounds,HCl and acetone with some of that mix spilling in my face (Ironicaly I put down my safety gogles seconds before it happened). My last accident was ignition of 50g smoke mix KNO3/shugar (60:40) and as a result I got a burned desk in the kitchen. That's all from my side I hope I won't have any accidents anymore.
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