Isolating Sections of Consumer Cakes

[FBpyro]

Has anyone on here ever e-matched individual sections of a consumer cake to take advantage of a certain effect or to create "poor man's" single shots? I had the idea of doing this for my finale. For my finale, I am shooting two Winda Sunshine States simultaneously, spaced apart and mirrored from each other. I also have another 500G cake by BIG fireworks called Pandemic, which has a very similar built-in finale to the sunshine states: 5 shots of crackling mines to time rain peony. I though about cutting the internal fuse of the Pandemic cake between the last shot before the built-in finale and instead, wiring the finale of that cake to go off at the same time as the Sunshine State finales.

[Kooooou]

For your intended effect I think it would be easier to time the Pandemic to end at the same time as the Sunshine States. I haven't isolated tubes on a cake as you described, but have done the opposite where I poke into multiple rows of a cake to have it fire at a more intense rate, usually to create mini-finales for a cue.

[Engineer Cat]

Yes sir, I will be doing exactly that on Friday night. This cake has 4 fan shots in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDqLhButAao The cake is cued up in spot 10 (2:26) but I want one of those fans to go off as cue 5 which is (00:47) when the song exits it's intro and starts rockin. However there are 3 shots that go off at the same time right after that fan would go off so I will be cutting the fuse to the fan on both sides and poking it. Then I will add fuse from the tube before the fan to the tubes after the fan. I will also be adding 3 cans that will go off where the fan would have been so there's no blank sky. (Those will be matched) I also have 2 other cakes where I will be jumping in the middle of them with a fuse to attach some 200 grammars so I have middle and high sky covered. I only have 24 cues available on my Firelinx for this year.

It's pretty simple to follow the fusing on the cake to know what tube would be shooting next.

[mguerra]

I do it all the time. One of my faves is to ematch individual rows of Pyroclastic. Or ematch rows of various fan cakes to make slices.

[displayfireworks1]

Now you see why Articles of Pyrotechnics and single shot AP products were created to meet the needs of firing system users. Computerized fireworks firing systems and in particular musical choreography bought about AP products. Prior to that, competitors at the PGI Convention were taking apart Consumer Fireworks and using individual tubes to get the effects we now see in the AP line. AP products were developed for professional display companies , the nice thing is we can also buy them. I keep saying advanced fireworks enthusiast behave more like a professional display company than we do like fireworks enthusiast from years back trying to make their own fireworks.

[Birdman]

Use to take fan cakes and fire each row like AP fan slices. This year I'm using AP fan slices.

[FBpyro]

For your intended effect I think it would be easier to time the Pandemic to end at the same time as the Sunshine States. I haven't isolated tubes on a cake as you described, but have done the opposite where I poke into multiple rows of a cake to have it fire at a more intense rate, usually to create mini-finales for a cue.

I am more leaning on doing it the way I described due to the fact that I don't have much product to begin with, so the least I could do is make a kickass finale, hence why I'd like to steal the finale from the Pandemic and add it to the Sunshine States. That is what I plan on doing is poking into a single row of the cake, the last one.

[FBpyro]

Now you see why Articles of Pyrotechnics and single-shot AP products were created to meet the needs of firing system users. Computerized fireworks firing systems and in particular musical choreography bought about AP products. Prior to that, competitors at the PGI Convention were taking apart Consumer Fireworks and using individual tubes to get the effects we now see in the AP line. AP products were developed for professional display companies, the nice thing is we can also buy them. I keep saying advanced fireworks enthusiasts behave more like a professional display company than we do like fireworks enthusiasts from years back trying to make their own fireworks.

That is a good observation there, however, for some of the backyard guys such as myself, AP products are still hard to get even though they are legal to anyone without a 1.3 license. I know Spirit of 76 makes a lot of single-shot products they are probably the easiest to find such things from. Even BOSS stuff was probably created as an intermediate step between just using individual tubes from cakes and using dedicated single shots alone.

[mguerra]

Slices from Spirit, Dominator and Vulcan are easy to get once you know the wholesalers who have them. Slices made from fan cake individual rows are available to anyone, and some have very cool effects. I use both.

[Scotty Rockets]

I have done that many times. Mostly I ematch individual rows on single effect fan cakes. Another thing I do is remove the finale row because these often are a different effect all together. I also will ematch the finale end first and sometimes I will ematch both front and back, effectively reducing cake duration in half. And sometimes I’ll dismantle a cake and rack the individual tubes. There’s a lot of modifying you can do to achieve whatever vision you may have.

[Birdman]

That is a good observation there, however, for some of the backyard guys such as myself, AP products are still hard to get even though they are legal to anyone without a 1.3 license. I know Spirit of 76 makes a lot of single-shot products they are probably the easiest to find such things from. Even BOSS stuff was probably created as an intermediate step between just using individual tubes from cakes and using dedicated single shots alone.

Get Dave's AP certification (http://www.pyrotalk.com/ap-certificate.php) and you can buy them from his participating suppliers.