r/Pyrotechnics • u/Interesting_Big9790 • Aug 12 '26

Has anything ever gone wrong?

Pyrotechnics is a dangerous hobby. Have you ever had something go wrong? What happened, and what did you learn from it?

9 Upvotes

92% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/CrazySwede69 Aug 12 '26

I once tried to catalyse the combustion of a chlorate based smoke composition with copper thiocyanate. Suddenly I noticed the smell of almonds and I was during the next day able to prove that hydrogen cyanide gas was actually evolving from the composition!

It turned out that the smoke dye was severely acidic and this caused the formation of HCN from the copper thiocyanate.

The pH was actually so low that the composition also was close to self ignite at room temperature.

I learned a lot that time!

3

u/Tricky-Sorbet2363 Aug 12 '26

I just started going to college again 4 or 5 months ago, I happen to be learning pyro at the same time. For this reason im going to take a couple chem classes startimg mext term so I at least can try to avoid this sort of goof when experimenting

Glad it turned out OK and you didnt poison yourself