Fireworks Blog

One of the most interesting hand firing operations I ever seen is the tradicional Japanese quick firing method of aerial shells! Essentialy, it consists of a special made shell wich has the lifting charge attached and enveloped with a thin kind of Japanese tissue paper usually named " Kozo ", made from vegetable fibers, a handle attached to the top of the shell (so the pyrotechnician could hold it), a metal mortar and a hot iron piece (may be a chain or a spiral). In the image below, you can see the shell components and the ignition metal :   Image from the book - Fireworks - The Art, Science and Technique by Takeo Shimizu The firing procedure is simple: First, the metal piece is heated in a furnace or a bonfire until it turns incandescent and put inside, at the bottom of the mortar. Next, the operator takes a shell and drops it inside the mortar. When the lifting charge contacts the hot glowing metal it explodes.   Image from ...

The main fuel that compounds Black Powder and many other pyrotechnic compositions is  Charcoal . Charcoal is basically burned wood, but for an excelent Back Powder the kind of wood and how it is made matters. In this post I'm going to talk about how I made a good quality charcoal for Black Powder. First, I started by collect some young and thin Willow branches from some Willow trees near a river close to my home. Then, I cut them into small pieces and put them to dry in the sun for a couple days as you con see in the picture below: The next step is to "cook" the wood. For that, we need a metal pot with small holes on the top. In this case, I used a large tin can: Now, all we need is to put the wooden pieces inside, close the lid and put in the middle of a bonfire. After a few seconds you will start to see the wood gas  going up and it (the gas - smoke) will start burn. Let it "cooking" and wait until the wood gas stops ...

First of all, there is a crucial word I want to tell you about - Hanabi - the Japanese word for Fireworks . The birth of Tezutsu Hanabi is the sanctuary of Yoshida , city of Toyohashi , Aichi province, Japan . Is said that this kind of fireworks are seen in Yoshida since the XVI century . These fireworks are fully hand made (from the bamboo collecting to the powder packing) by local people and each piece has 10 cm diameter and 80 cm length. Rope is coiled around the tube for more resistence and then the tube is filled with a black powder composition mixed with iron powder to produce the beautiful sparks. During the festivals, each tube is hand held and fired, burning like a huge fountain that could reach 12 meters tall and ends with a small but a little scary explosion (called "splash")! There are also some bigger tubes, although these are not hand held, but fixed in a wooden structure. Its considered one ot the first types of Fireworks in Japan and t...