Vintage Black Cat individual Crackers

[FinnAmerican]

Looking for the time period that these were in production...
Single crackers not from a strip.

http://www.pyrotalk.com/bulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=6092&stc=1

[FinnAmerican]

On New Year's, I lit two (1 1/2") Black Cat logo crackers dating from the 1950's. Man, they were so much LOUDER than today's 50mg crackers. They must be the 2 grain(133mg) crackers that I heard about. I can't imagine what a 16s or 20s strip would sound like...Whoa!
Has anyone here ever lit vintage 2 grain crackers before..?

[RalphieJ]

On New Year's, I lit two (1 1/2") Black Cat logo crackers dating from the 1950's. Man, they were so much LOUDER than today's 50mg crackers. They must be the 2 grain(133mg) crackers that I heard about. I can't imagine what a 16s or 20s strip would sound like...Whoa!
Has anyone here ever lit vintage 2 grain crackers before..?

When I was 10 in 1956, my Dad bought me a brick (80/20's) of Jet Bomber brand flashlight crackers. They were made with newspapers, the brick wrap was white, and the individual pack wraps were yellow, white, green, blue, and orange. The better question would be "Has anyone here ever had a vintage 2 grain cracker go off between their fingers before?" Because if you have, you sure would remember it...................

[halk]

Have some 1-1/2" BC crackers from early DOT era (1972-76) that came loose in boxes of 50.

[leftiluci]

Makes them numb for a good hour. Back then, I was told to pinch the very ends when lighting and throwing. The other big difference between icc or earlier, and dot and later , besides powder content, was the paper fuses were made with bp instead of flash. you could light one and wait until the fuse burned down to within a quarter inch of the cracker, then throw it. Dot crackers,while having less content, were actually alot more dangerous for kids that got a few packs and tried to make them last by lighting them as singles like they were used to doing

[halk]

Chinese firecracker fuse has never been made with flash powder. A small amount of potassium dichromate was added at one time in the '50's, according to Dr. Lai's book, but I don't know the reason for that.

[PyroJoeNEPA]

Chinese firecracker fuse has never been made with flash powder. A small amount of potassium dichromate was added at one time in the '50's, according to Dr. Lai's book, but I don't know the reason for that.

Potassium Dichromate is an oxidizer. It might have been used to slow down the burn time of the powder used in the paper fuses. ** I am speculating here--don't have anything about it in any of my old formulae.

[leftiluci]

Sure looks like and performs like the same as what is in the crackers themselves, if not the same,than a very close cousin. I don't have any lab results, but knowing how they like to cut costs assumed it was the same, but maybe slightly slower from being a slurry applied to paper. Head bombs on tau rolls are covered in this type of fuse to ignite instantaneously. Seems flash like to me. What does your book say it is?

[leftiluci]

Dr doctor please, if it looks the same And performs the same ,than a duck is a duck. That's why visco was added to the dot crackers, . cause they burned so fast, us old school kids couldn't enjoy them individually like we could with icc, Used to call thunder bombs "finger bombs" in the very early 70's because of this. maybe leave what your book says, and apply cognitive intuition.

[RalphieJ]

Potassium Dichromate is an oxidizer. It might have been used to slow down the burn time of the powder used in the paper fuses. ** I am speculating here--don't have anything about it in any of my old formulae.

From the folks at Skylighter :

https://www.skylighter.com/products/potassium-dichromate-orange-crystals#:~:text=Potassium%20dichromate%20is%20use d%20for,potassium%20perchlorate%2C%20often%20in%20 primes.

[halk]

Lefti all Chinese firecrackers used fuses made with black powder. And no, they never tried to slow down by any means. In fact one of the main selling points of the premium brands was 'fast lead time.' Think of it as small diameter quickmath. And the flash powder in the premium brands was made with fine silver flake AL, not fine German dark, as silver gives a larger flash. I don't know what they use in the crapcrackers made today; all I know is they have an unpleasant sound and small, ugly flash envelope. There were several reasons to go to visco leaders and full length visco in the braids. One was the stupid safety mandate that often resulted in the whole pack not going off when tossed into wet grass, tempting people to try and relight. Another was it reduced the skill needed to properly braid.

[halk]

I didn't quite finish in under 8 minutes. Hopefully administrator will post full reply.

[RalphieJ]

"And the flash powder in the premium brands was made with fine silver flake AL, not fine German dark, as silver gives a larger flash."

I remember breaking open duds and the powder on you fingers was as shiny as silver paint. I wasn't aware that it produced a larger flash. Is that where the name "flashlight crackers" came from?

[displayfireworks1]

I didn't quite finish in under 8 minutes. Hopefully administrator will post full reply.

.
Not sure where to recover a timed out posting. In the future if you want to post something that may take a long period of time to type , type it in Microsoft Word , then copy and paste on the forums. Or if you feel you took too long to type your post. Just before you hit post. Copy and paste the paragraph from your post to Word. Then if it times out , you will have it .

[halk]

All I wanted to add is that today’s firecrackers are not braided. The crackers have short (<?") fuses bent and held parallel to a piece of fishfuse (like visco, but burns much faster and brighter because of metal content) and then bound to it with fine threads into a strong unit that the machines can lop off at any desired length. The old loop for hanging is gone as is the ability to easily disassemble packs and safely shoot crackers individually. Shooting a whole pack of firecrackers at once was almost unheard of when I was a kid.

[halk]

I should elaborate a bit more here. In his book on the Taipa firecracker trade, Dr. Lai mentioned 'flashpowder fuses' when describing the addition of potassium dichromate to make fuses faster burning than the traditional blackpowder fuses. He should have mentioned that the new powder was used strictly for flash firecrackers. These are the thin fuses used on premium firecrackers like Zebra and others that caused us kids so many stung fingers when we lit and tossed them one at a time back in the '50's. The advantage was fewer duds and a shorter time (advertised as 'fast lead time') for the whole pack to be consumed. But I have found no evidence that any powdered metals such as aluminum were added to the fuse composition, so his term is sort of a misnomer. I know of no flashpowder mixes used in commercial firecrackers or salutes that use any oxidizers other than chlorates or perchlorates. Would be interesting to know what fuse composition is used in flashcrackers nowadays.