Consumer Igniter Failures

An in-depth look at Talon and consumer e-match failures.

  • Category: Firing Systems
  • Last updated: February 10, 2023

In this video, I take a closer look at consumer igniters, specifically to investigate their failure rate when being used to light visco.

By consumer igniter I mean an igniter designed to be used by a consumer – a member of the public – by way of attaching it to a consumer firework’s safety fuse, a type of slow-burning fuse known as visco.

There are two types widely available: Talons, which clip over the fuse and use a heated element to light it, and consumer e-matches which are essentially professional e-matches but with a special plastic shroud through which you feed the fuse.

This investigation was inspired both by my own failures getting visco to light, plus continued reports from UKFR readers having the same problems.

Conclusion and next steps

As you will see from the video above, Talon clips get a clean bill of health and I experienced no failures on a variety of visco types.

The situation with consumer e-matches is a little more complicated. Significant failures were experienced once I switched to the thinner visco taken directly off consumer fireworks in order to emulate an actual firework set-up as closely as possible. I cannot unfortunately recommend consumer e-matches based on my initial findings. It would appear that thinner visco allows too much of an air gap around the igniter which allows the flame to dissipate rather than focus on the fuse. Despite trying a variety of ways to thread the visco into the shroud – including cutting it to expose black powder – I could not get a 100% fire rate.