Duds, misfires and the twenty-minute rule

Every year some crackers fail to light properly. Most of the injuries we hear about each season do not come from crackers that work, but from people handling ones that did not. Here are the rules we give every customer.

If a fuse burns down and nothing happens, do not walk up to it, look into it or try to relight it. Leave it where it is for at least twenty minutes. Fuses sometimes smoulder inside the casing and catch late, and a tubri that flowers in your face is far worse than one that never flowers.

After twenty minutes, pour a bucket of water over the dud from a step away, and leave it soaking. Once it is cold and soaked, pick it up with tongs or a piece of cardboard and put it in a separate bucket of water overnight. In the morning, wrap it in newspaper and put it out with the dry waste. Never throw duds into a bonfire or the kitchen bin.

A few myths are worth clearing up. Blowing on a fuse does not help. Cutting open a dud to reuse the powder is dangerous and pointless. And a box that had one dud is not a bad box; most failures are caused by damp or a fuse that was bent in handling. If a whole box of something fails, keep the box and the duds wet and send us photos, and we will look into the lot it came from.