Planning ahead of time

[FireworkNewbie]

I like to work ahead of time, which I'm assuming we all like to do. I plan to get my boards ready, fuse run between cakes, taping and liquid nail to secure. I plan to do that this week, preparing for memorial day show. I plan to use Talon initiators, and would like to secure them to the cake fuse and tape and prepare accordingly. My question is, does preparing those Talon clips ahead of time (month in advance) compromise the success rate. I know they can be quite delicate from past experience...

[hatsgoods]

I like to work ahead of time, which I'm assuming we all like to do. I plan to get my boards ready, fuse run between cakes, taping and liquid nail to secure. I plan to do that this week, preparing for memorial day show. I plan to use Talon initiators, and would like to secure them to the cake fuse and tape and prepare accordingly. My question is, does preparing those Talon clips ahead of time (month in advance) compromise the success rate. I know they can be quite delicate from past experience...

ill say you should be fine as long as you tape the talon on to your cake or rack so it cant move if the wire moves.

[jamisonlm3]

Do Talons have the same danger with ESD as regular ematch.

[hatsgoods]

Do Talons have the same danger with ESD as regular ematch.

no, they do not for a talon it take 3 times the amount of electric to fire a talon then a ematch so you should be safe. but its always a good practice to shunt the wires on the end that go to the firing system by twisting them together a few times tightly.

[jamisonlm3]

I've wondered about it. I know with the cheap firing system I have, it's recomended to hold whichever cue you're trying to fire. There's a slight delay in them because the talons have to heat up. It's not instant like ematch. If there's no ESD hazard, I don't see why clamping them on the fuse in advance would b a problem.

[short fuse pnut]

When I used talons many years ago, I would attach them to my cakes about a week prior to my show. I would tape both the wire and the talon head to the tape. This helps avoid pulling the talon off the fuse. Those filaments are very easy to break.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

How many boards are you using? I assume you're using 1 talon per board to light a main fuse, yes? Unless you have a ton of boards, I would wait to fuse each board until the day of your shoot. I can't imagine you have more than a half-dozen boards, yes?

I'd really move away from those talons if I were you. Those things are hit and miss in my experience. I had 2 out of 3 fail on my finale racks last year. Very disappointing. If possible, up you cue count so you can use initiators instead.

[FireworkNewbie]

I'm only using 17 cues for my memorial day show... it won't be that big, just wanted to prepare as much as I could ahead of time. About 8 of those will be dedicated to a single 500g. And 6 will be igniting main fuses that run to product that lasts for a minute duration for each one. The others are for racks. Yeah, that filament has me worried...

[Rick_In_Tampa]

17 cues sounds very manageable day of. But... If you attach them and tape them down and are careful not to jostle them around before you place the boards into position, you should be okay too. You might even want to consider running 2 talons per board (in parallel) just as an insurance measure.

[MontanaMike]

We've used Talons in our show since we started with the Cobra in 2015 and have never had an issue with them. 100% fire every time.

We're going to the MJG initiators this year so I'm excited that our show will be timed more precisely to the music. I'm a little nervous about the MJG's having never used them before, so...wish us luck!