Built in a garage. Aimed at the sky.

This started the way most good projects start — with a problem nobody had solved cleanly, and a stubborn suspicion that it didn't have to be that hard.

Why this exists

If you've ever tried to plan a real backyard mortar show, you know the routine. Sketches on a notepad. Angles guessed by eye. A fuse plan reverse-engineered the night before. And the slow, sinking feeling that you're about to spend a few hundred dollars on shells and light them off a rack you sized with a tape measure and crossed fingers.

There's no good software for this. The pro-grade tools cost thousands and assume you have an event-operator license. The free tools are spreadsheets your friend's cousin emailed you in 2014. Everything in between is YouTube.

Forge and Boom is the thing that should have existed. A purpose-built design tool for the backyard pyro enthusiast — someone who's comfortable with a 3D printer, comfortable with a circular saw, and serious enough about the show to want to design it before they light it.

Who built it

I'm Chase Richardson. I live in Maryville, Tennessee. I build things in my garage. I write software for a living, and I've been firing backyard fireworks shows long enough to know exactly which decisions you make in October that catch up with you on the 4th of July.

The first version of this software was built in evenings and weekends, on a laptop next to a half-assembled rack in my shop. My kid recorded the launch and burst sound effects you'll hear inside the app's sky preview. They are exactly the sounds you would expect a kid asked to make fireworks noises into a phone microphone to make. They stayed.

What we believe

A few things, plainly:

• Respect the craftsman. If you're using this, you can handle a hammer and you can read a cut list. The software won't talk down to you, and it won't pretend the work is easier than it is.
• Show the work. Every number, every angle, every cut comes from real geometry and real physics. If you want to check it, you can. There's no black box here.
• Patriotic, not preachy. This is software for the 4th of July, Memorial Day, and the random Saturday in August when you and your buddies decide to make some noise. It's not a political project. The flag stays in the background where it belongs.
• Cheeky, never cynical. The toast that says "Lights. Camera. Acoustic trauma." is staying. The one that calls a finished design "Time to stack some tubes" is staying. The humor comes from genuinely loving this stuff.
• Safety-aware, not lawyer-led. Backyard pyro is real. People get hurt every year. The software is honest about that without burying you in CYA paragraphs. Your craftsman friend reminding you to keep your spacing tight — not your insurance carrier.

Where it's going

Today, Forge and Boom is software. You design a rack, simulate the show, download the STL files for the 3D-printed parts, and get a DIY cut plan for the lumber. You build the rack yourself, you load it yourself, you fire it yourself.

Soon: physical racks, shipped direct. Pre-cut lumber kits. Printed parts already on the doorstep. A featured-build series where the best community-built racks get spotlighted. None of it gets shipped until it earns the boom.

Where the forge meets the boom.

If that line lands for you, you're the audience. Welcome.

— Chase Richardson
Founder, Forge and Boom
Maryville, Tennessee