[Boondoggle]

Originally Posted by William May ↗

Was this a firework? or Military ordnance?
It looks like military ordnance to me, with the green metallic finish on the tube. Fireworks usually have silly pictures on them, not an industrial finish.
The box may not have any connection to the shell, just being a box he put some of them in to carry.
Maybe some of our Russian members can translate the box?

But anyway, he did a good job!

Those are professional fireworks, not the commercial stuff sold to the public. You know, the stuff you see at big fireworks displays. They're basically mortar shells, so not much different from military weapons aside from lacking a housing that produces metal fragmentation. But if one hits you, the fact that it won't fragment only means the bystanders won't be killed too.

[TargetX]

Originally Posted by Boondoggle ↗

Those are professional fireworks, not the commercial stuff sold to the public. You know, the stuff you see at big fireworks displays. They're basically mortar shells, so not much different from military weapons aside from lacking a housing that produces metal fragmentation. But if one hits you, the fact that it won't fragment only means the bystanders won't be killed too.

This. They are reloadable, professional grade firework mortars. The tubes are either cardboard, HDPE or fibreglass resin composite, in this case the latter. Steel tubes are allowed and are sometimes the only viable solution for large, heavy shells requiring large lifting charges, but they must be buried 3/4ths of their length in sand in a mortar box in case they burst. The shells are made from 2 paperboard hemispheres, filled with various compositions, black powder, flash powder, stars etc. A black powder lifting charge is placed at the bottom, and then the whole thing is papier-mâché'd. They are usually fired electronically when they are this size, it's just not safe or practical to light a fuse for one of these in the traditional manner. The cord at the top of the shell is just for lowering them into the tube. The tubes are supported either by embedding them in a box of sand or in a wooden mortar rack. The quickmatch fuse, when ignited by an ematch, can produce enough reaction to tip an unsupported tube.

The kinetic energy of one of those shells is quite high, enough to fuck you up but if it hits something hard, like your head, the paper shell will get deformed, the burning time delay fuse will then ignite the rest of the charge and you'll get all the chemical energy turning your head to mush too.

I used to make fireworks like these when I was younger, never any bigger than 3" but even still, enough to seriously fuck up your day. I had a rather large rocket with one large flash powder salute as the only payload. It was gonna be a loud report after about 4 to 5 seconds of flight. Well there must have been a crack in the grain of the pressed, core burning black powder rocket and it exploded a fraction of a second after it lifted off. I had made several before that had worked and knew how loud they were but I didn't appreciate how much louder and brighter it was when the BP and flash went off together at 6' off the ground. It was an assault, extremely disorientating, flash blinded and half deafened. Was funny at the time, but only because I was at a relatively safe distance and noone was hurt. The payload in the shell that killed that dude was an order of magnitude larger, other people were very close to him and were probably flash blind, deafened and covered in blood and brain. Hell, his skull fragments could have injured others nearby. Fireworks like these are best left to people who know what they're doing.

[sharpypointy]

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