The new kid needs lots of help!!!

[iskilton]

Hello all, as you can tell I’m the ‘new kid’, and have I got some questions to start with.

 

To give a quick overview on who I am and what I do, I am the technical / hardware manager / engineer of our so-far successful family business currently specialising in weddings and large corporate parties. We are being requested for more and more firework displays and have a few jobs including fireworks and stage pyros for next spring. Rather than keep loosing a large part of out profit margin to keep subcontracting these big displays we are looking at investing, and running this department in-house.

 

Although I have been on a le maitre stage pyro course back in the late 90’s when I worked in the clubs and a bit of tour work, we have been making do with the larger CAT3 stuff and just letting several units off at the same time, unfortunately this looks scatty and somewhat unprofessional.

 

1) The first question you have probably been asked a lot… CAT4, to use and buy CAT4 what is the requirements. I gather from other Internet info it is only available to licensed persons / companies. What is the licence and who governs and issues these licences and how do I go about getting the safety and ‘how to’ training course? I appreciate there are issues such as insurance and informing the authorities which we do even with our CAT3 displays (cover our butts).

 

2) Something else I am still a little in the dark with is fusing. With CAT3 we often connect the factory fitted fuses together to light multiple units at the same time and we have also ignighted the CAT3 fuses electronically… dose this mean the CAT3 units are now CAT4 although we have not tampered with the factory fitted fuses (just lighting them in the non conventional manner) as my head engineer battled with the HSE officer over this.

 

3) If the above dose not mean I’m modifying CAT3 to CAT4 can anyone advice me of the correct name for the green fuse string that is used in CAT3 and where I can obtain this. Or, another type of fuse which has reliable burning time for lighting multiple fuses to the CAT3 units, i.e. 5 roman candles in a fan rack? The reason for needing a ‘reliable’ burn time on the fuse is for linking other units such as SIB’s and cakes as so they fire within a few second of what we want using the fuse to act as a time delay in the case we are firing 2 cakes, one lasting 50 seconds and the second lasting 70 second but we want them to finish roughly at the same time on just one ignition light as so we can get on with putting some rockets in the air and ready to light the next set.

 

4) As its been quite some time since I used stage pyros, is there a legal licence requirement for these and are they catorgrised in the same way as fireworks. Iv used confetti cartridges and basic gerbs in the past but am interested in possibly using some large 20-30ft stadium comets as part of the display.

 

Sorry, I know it’s a lot of basic stuff. And know doubt im going to irritate you with loads more.

 

Ian

Ru Leisure

 

PS. Hello to Jivemaster... we have met before.

[gareth]

Hi Ian. That's an awful lot of questions! ;) More importantly, though, they're not really the sort of things that you can expect to get definitive answers to on an informal public forum like this one.

 

If you're looking at going into the fireworks business on a professional level, you need to take professional advice, from people like insurance brokers, health and safety experts, experienced pyrotechnicians, and a friendly supplier of material. You also need to have proper storage facilities - these might range from locked steel shipping containers to purpose-built buildings.

 

Perhaps a good starting point would be to get in touch with your fellow BR member MarkLeMaitre, who is our resident Le Maitre representative. He'll be able to send you off along the right lines, I'm sure.

 

With regard to the stage pyro side of things, Lincoln would be a good person to contact - he's our resident stage pyrotechnics guru.

 

EDIT : I don't know whether you've already found the UK Rocketry & Pyro Forums?, but they might be of some use to you.

 

Also, while we're on the subject of fireworks, I'd just like to mention John Bennett's Fireworks Magazine. It comes out twice a year and is a very interesting read for anyone who works with, or has in interest in, fireworks. Sorry, it's not really relevant to the original post in this topic, but I just wanted to give it a mention! ;)

[lonfire]

hi,

I run a firework company and I recon the best way to get into it is to find a friendly local firework company and do some stuff with them.. alot of firework companies have part time firers that help them do shows.. alot of the time you find these people are unpaid as they do it for the love of fireworks or to just get experience..

 

another good site for info is www.fireworks-review.org if you join and look in the forums.. some really helpful people and companies that you could get todo work with..

 

its alot of hard work putting on the pro cat4 display, and you'll have todo a fair few hours with a firework company in order to be competant..

 

rgds

chris

[Lincoln]

Firework companies can be found here

 

British Pyrotechnists (!) Association

 

BPA

 

Lincoln