Excalibur Recall- New Hampshire

[Ctpyro180]

News release from the New Hampshire Department of Public Safety- Fire Marshals office.

All Excals are pulled from the shelves in New Hampshire until further notice.

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Problems are occurring with fusing being too short below the tube muzzle and inconsistant tube lengths..

[Fulliautomatix]

Shucks, here I was hoping the current batch may have been loaded a tad hot. Aside from the OCD aspect of it, a little variance in tube length isn't a big deal, and fuse length? Is there a fixed standard for that? "X" seconds from light to launch... or "X" inches long past the edge of the tube?

[displayfireworks1]

I suspect they shortened the fuse in an effort to stop people from loading it upside down. If you make the fuse too long , when you load it upside down you will have fuse exposed so people thing they did it correctly. I wish someone in the industry would look at what I think are design flaws with the canister shells. I still feel the fuse going under the paper from the top of the shell to the lift is part of it. Novice users need to visually see that fuse go to the bottom of the shell.

[mb_pyro]

I believe excalls have TOP written on the top of them. How much more do you want?
Perhaps a penny counter figured if we give a couple inches less fuse per shell it would add up to significant savings.
It has annoyed me for some time the short fuses on a lot of the ball shells. They barely reach the top the tubes in my racks.

[BMoore]

I?m becoming more and more convinced that the way canister shells are packaged contributes to them being loaded upside down. The average consumer doesn’t do prep work like we do. They are opening these in the dark. Ripping through tape, staples and plastic. Shells are falling everywhere and they are in a hurry to load them in the dark. Ive watched people doing this and they are lucky to find all their shells much less read the tops. Contrast this to most ball shells where the top of the box slides off and the shells are in cardboard holders oriented correctly.

[Mattp]

it says a retail store filed the original complaint.. maybe the fuses were legitimately way shorter than the tubes... or maybe they’re annoyed with those plastic tops they all have now .. which after removed does make the fuse a good 2” longer ... to me what’s crazy about the people who have loaded upside down .. all you need to do is hold it by the fuse,, and lower the shell into the tube (can do it with one hand) gravity will orient it in the right direction... they are physically grabbing the shell turning them upside down and putting them in

[cptnding]

Hey CTpyro. Have you seen any of these? They must be REALLY short to cause a recall. I've seen several lately that had shorter fuses than in the past. Just figured it was to discourage loading upside down.
I'm kind of surprised Jake's didn't just take them back instead of the state having to get involved.

[upNdown]

Here's a fun theory. Summer's over and a store has a giant overstock of Excalibur. They're already priced cheaper than all their other shells, but they're not selling because everybody seems to agree that Excalibur has devolved into the least impressive 60g canister. If they manufacture some fakey complaint and get the state to recall them, can they claim some sort of loss on their taxes that's actually more profitable than keeping these non-selling shells on their shelves forever?
Hmm . . .

[topshelfpyro]

I know every excel shell I had this year the fuse barely reached the top of the supplied tube. I add fuse to all my shells anyway so it was a non-issue for me, but I can see how it could cause issues.

[Rick_In_Tampa]

My cans from SO76 were like that this year too. I had to remove the plastic tops to get enough fuse out the top to connect the leader fuse to. I think they were the hellcat cans.

[Chubbles]

Awesome. I recently bought 12 excal shells. The store broke down kits. That's my luck. It's ok, I can add fuse.

[jamisonlm3]

Personally, I think any short fuse is done by the factory. Maybe it's done to save a little money or they already had it cut so they used it. Who cares if it's a little short, it'll work, use it. Now, if it was Jake's that did it and they have to recall lots of shells, that's going to be intersting.

[jknepp1954]

Just FYI - the excal factory also make same shells for other companies - just saying....

[Ctpyro180]

Our Managers report concerning Excaliburs we had stocked. Although we were not the initial dealer in New Hampshire that brought up this issue to the NHOSFM, we appreciate the efforts that this issue with this product was raised as a safety concern. and it is....

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[jamisonlm3]

Wow, that is short. Do you know if any of those had a second lift?

[Fulliautomatix]

Interesting, I've never seen the warning labels placed on the reinforcing collar on those tubes. It has always been near the top of the tube. I wonder if they have another plant assembling shells/kits, or expanded/created an additional line in the existing facility that has different machinery/workers that hadn't been tweaked quite right.

[Fulliautomatix]

Side note, the current batch of Excals that I used this year all had plastic caps, not the paper tops that were labeled "TOP" as they were in the past. (which would lend themselves to a double lift charge). I had a few of the plastic caps come off during my loading process, which involves pulling the fuse out of the plastic eyelet to get a little more play in the fuse, and there was nothing under it but a clay plug. All the fuses were wrapped in the long-style shown in that PDF, with tape affixing it to the wrapper.

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