subject: The Practice Of Fuse Safety With Pyrotechnics [print this page] In the preparations for a fireworks spectacle, you need to spend some time to carefully make plans for the fuse. Even if the lowly fuse will hardly be noticed at the height of the display, it nevertheless plays a pivotal role in the success of the presentation. A haphazardly selected and laid out fuse line can spell disaster for your show.
Fuse safety tips
Whether you intend to purchase or make (probably not advisable for safety fuses) your own fuses some important considerations should be remembered. The fuse line has to be securely made and should be capable of intensive manipulation without breaking or becoming non-functional.
Proofed against water and well sheathed
The flammable components of safety fuses are usually sealed by double layers of cloth tubes. A final layer of plastic sheathing is also installed. If the materials for these tubes are easily damaged by manipulation, the combustive powder could spill out. This occurrence can cause the fuse line to stop burning at that point. On the other hand the spilled black powder can be the cause of accidents.
Always ask for a small sample length of a fuse line before purchasing it. Be ready with a wide-mouthed water bottle. Any open areas in the sample should be sealed with water-proof tape. Immerse the fuse in the water. If it is soaked when you remove it, forget about it.
Fuse safety requires that the safety fuse should be water-proofed. For this purpose, most of them have a two layers of cloth sheathing which are both water-proofed with asphaltum or plastic. Keeping the fuse dry is essential if you don't want to have to troubleshoot it in the middle of a pyrotechnics performance because a portion of it got wet.
Easily manipulated
You should be able to twist and bend the fuse line in many contorted ways without making the fire stop at the twisted portion of it. This is a very important characteristic, especially for extravagant displays.
Fuse safety Allows for some time
One reason why fuse safety required the making of safety fuses is the need to give person time to take cover or move to a safely distanced place before the pyrotechnics extravaganza explodes. Safety fuses should burn slowly. Make doubly sure you are not getting a quick match, instead. Quick matches accelerate rather than slow down the speed of burning. They can cover 100 feet in one second. They are not used to initialize shows. They are, instead used to connect sections of the display together.
The risks involved in fuse safety
It may sound ironic but fuse safety can be a source of danger. To understand this statement we need to remember that just as the best safety fuses are durably sheathed and water proofed, they cannot also be easily stopped once ignited. State-of-the-art fuses can even burn under the ocean. These are what are used for detonating underwater explosives.
So before you set that match to the fuse, double check that you should be doing so at that precise moment. In this regard, when engineering a fireworks panorama, you should probably take the trouble of writing down the sequence of your program. Be sure everything on that checklist is accounted for properly before lighting that fuse.
A good pair of sharp gardening scissors can be handy for cutting the fuse line in cases of emergency.
