European Salutes

[NWPA]

Looking through European firework sites and thinking about the size of the salutes available, It made me wonder. With sizes containing 40, 60, even 100 gr of flash powder how do they possibly mix such large amounts of powder on a commercial scale. It must be incredibly dangerous. Back in the early 60's I watched an operator at a fireworks plant in Ohio mix maybe a pound and he was behind a blast shield pulling ropes alternating each pull that lifted the corners of a rubber mat. He told me that was the maximum amount that could be mixed at one time. With the amounts of European salutes sold I assume they are mixing 10's of pounds at a time. Yikes. Some brave people.

[PyroJoeNEPA]

Bear in mind that the European [and Asian] pyro makers are not strapped with rules & regulations by BATF, EPA, CPSC, OSHA, DHS, & all the other "alphabet" regulatory bureaucrats that we have here. Having said that, if you look at some of the You Tube videos you will see "rooms" dedicated to mixing flash. Yes, they mix bigger batches than we would ever be allowed to do, but I don't think you will see a cement mixer tumbling 50 pounds of flash either. I would assume they mix smaller batches of a couple pounds at a time & stock pile it. You could do that all day long relatively safely.
I do remember seeing a video from China where they were constructing flash broken ball shells & the person putting the flash in the hemi's was scooping it off of a big piece of brown paper with a pile of maybe 5-6 pounds [at least] of flash on it.

[NWPA]

Made me wonder if it was a true 70/30 mix or rice hulls or something similar added because some of the items say shake before using!

[PyroJoeNEPA]

]some of the items say shake before using[/COLOR]
That would be what is referred to as a "binary mix" where the two chemicals used to make the flash are added into a tube without miking them together. Simple handling of the device is sufficient to mix the two chemicals into flash---and, no, it isn't that sensitive that the binary mix will deflagrate on its own just by the binary mixing.

[NWPA]

Yes, I didn't think of that. I have seen people mixing by shaking in a plastic condiment cup. Thanks. Yet another curiosity moment satisfied.