Salute (pyrotechnics)
In pyrotechnics, a salute is an explosive device primarily designed to make a loud bang with a very intense flash of light. Salutes are made from flash powder, most commonly a 70:30 mixture of potassium perchlorate and dark aluminium powder. Titanium flakes may be added as a special effect 5% to the total mix. A salute may be fired on the ground or launched from a mortar as a shell (aerial salute) or (aerial bomb). Salutes are one of the more dangerous type of fireworks. "Mortar tubes" used to launch aerial salute shells in commercial firework displays vary from 1.75 inch to 8 inch diameter. The shells they fire can come in ball or canister form. Ground salutes most commonly come in a paper tube but may also come round as a (cherry bomb) or triangle as a (palumna cracker). Salutes may have aluminum, antimony, titanium or other metals. Flash Salutes are much louder when they are 2/3 full of composition allowing for 100% heat/gas conversion/expansion before combustion. All commercial salutes are made this way for this reason. The most common aluminum is "Dark Pyro Al" or "Bright Pyro Al". Dark Al's preferred are Dark German Al or Indian Blackhead Al - 3 Micron. Both are known for being the most violent/reactive/explosive. Bright Flake Aluminum -325 mesh is a cheaper alternative but does not burn as fast and is not as explosive. "Flake Aluminum" is the only al used for flash powder. Spherical Aluminum will not work. All ground salutes over 50 mg and air salutes over 130 mg are restricted by the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) and the Child Protection Act of 1966. 99% of all salutes ground and aerial are made with flash powder, but older salutes predating the early 60's carried black powder. These salutes were called "Cannon Crackers". Flash powder is significantly more destructive than black powder (BP). Black powder has a slow enough burn rate to push objects within the blast radius where as flash powder totally destroys anything within its range. This is why gunpowder is the standard for firearms and why black powder salutes need heavy confinement to work.
Though news reporters and black-market dealers compare the M-80 to a 1/4 stick of dynamite, the two are nowhere close. For reference; a typical stick of dynamite contains over 10 times more explosive material than an M-80 (35 grams of nitroglycerin versus 3 grams of KClO4 and Al). Nitroglycerin detonates with a shock wave that moves faster than the speed of sound where as flash powder used in salutes or black powder used in fireworks/firearms deflagrate with a shockwave slower than the speed of sound. Detonation and deflagration is what separates high from low explosive. Quote from pyrouniverse.com: "Another assumption people make is that M-80's have some relation to dynamite; as the terms "quarter-stick" or "M-80 half-stick" are widely used to describe the power of such explosives." All "salutes" have a significantly slower burn rate than high explosives such as nitroglycerin, c4, tannerite, etc. Flash powder is a low explosive while ranking the highest explosive used in pyrotechnics. Names like 1/4 Stick, 1/2 Stick and Full Stick only serve as a size reference in the pyro community while the media, police and even black market dealers will take the label literally and out of context.
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