Family bonding with high explosives - SERIOUSLY FUNNY!!!

[Jim March]

The item below is starting to get spread around...dunno if it's a true story, and it's anonymous for OBVIOUS reasons. The writer is easily the equal of Lawdog in the funny department.

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IT'S A MAN THING

About 2 weeks ago, I was looking around the Web for the BIGGEST sky rocket that I could get shipped to me via common freight carrier. I located a fireworks importer in Wisconsin who had this mondo skyrocket--biggest thing I had ever seen--called a SkyDragon. These things are 48 inches tall and are mounted on a 1/2-inch wooden dowel. Pure aerospace engineering.

I plopped down a bunch of money and had him send me two cases of these things. They arrived at the freight dock a few days ago and I had to drive the van over to pick them up. Two boxes each 2 feet by 2 feet by 4 feet in size containing 80 rockets each. The 'Class 4 Explosives' sticker on the side of each box was a real bonus. I am gonna have to save them for the scrapbook.

That night, me and the kiddos had a gen-u-ine rocket launch ceremony. I placed one of these beauties in a liter-size glass bottle and the bottle fell over. Hmmmm- this thing was waaay too big. I looked around the shop for a pipe to set it in, but realized that the only dirt I could drive the pipe into was in plain sight of my neighbor's house. I knew he was a cool guy, but I didn't want him to call the cops. You see- 'projectile-type' fireworks are totally illegal in this county. I was surprised that the Buncombe County Sheriff Department wasn't waiting for me at the loading dock when I picked these things up. Anyhow, I finally rigged a launch pad by prying up one of the driveway drain grates with a crowbar and sitting the stick into the deep pit. Looked sorta like an ICBM silo with its hardened lid slid aside.

I asked which of my three kids wanted to light the fuse, but all took a few steps back and politely declined. Chicken$hits. Kids just aren't made the same nowadays. They fulfill their danger quotient by shooting bad guys in video games. About as far from real danger as you can get, if you ask me.

I told the little weenies to stand back as I bent to light the device with a Bic lighter.

The lady at the fireworks importer promised me that these things would NOT make any noise. I told her that they HAD to be relatively quiet so I could shoot them off in my neighborhood without causing 'undue alarm'. She said I wouldn't have any problem. I emphasized the particular legal problems I would have if there were any type of loud report at apogee. I emphasized the fact that I lived right next to a National Park and that any type of firework that was discharged or assumed to be discharged on that property would get me sent before a FEDERAL judge right before I got sent to the COUNTY judge. She again assured me I would have no problem.

That lying bi+ch.

That rocket engine had a burn time about as long as any I had EVER seen, and the ascent echoed off the surrounding trees. Diamond shock pattern extended from the back end. It kept going and going and going. When it hit apogee at about 1000 feet, the rocket disintegrated into a huge shower of silent red sparks. Pretty cool, I thought......until the shower of sparks burned out and suddenly transformed into a cloud of extremely bright and loud explosions. The kids scrambled into the back door 'Three Stooges' style (ie: where all three try to get through the same closed door at once) and left me standing in the smoking haze waiting for the cops to arrive. The dogs that live along our street were all barking their heads off at the apparition they had just witnessed in the night sky

That ended the fireworks test for the night.

(cont. next post)

[Jim March]

The next day, my oldest son Doug and I decided we were gonna 'neuter' one of the rockets so it wouldn't make any noise. I took him into the closet where I store the gardening tools and he saw these two huge cases of fireworks standing there. The kid went nuts. He wanted to open BOTH boxes so he could see what all 159 rockets looked like lined up next to each other. This kid has promise. I told him: "Since mom only thinks I have a few of these things lying around, maybe that wasn't such a good idea." He mulled that over for a few seconds, then gave me a real big smile in agreement.

We pulled one of the rockets out of the box and re-locked the closet door.

He and I both sat down on the driveway and proceeded to take it apart. It was a standard issue big-a$$ Chinese sky rocket. I bet they used these to kill people 500 years ago. As I sat there taking layer after layer of paper off, his brain was filling with the details of construction. Tissue, cardboard, plastic, fuses...etc. Realizing that he was mentally storing the design for some future project sorta made me shudder. All I was thinking was the fact that this thing was probably put together by a political prisoner in a hellhole somewhere who is probably gonna get 'executed' so they can sell his internal organs on the transplant market.

Probably not too far from the facts, but I managed to do a bit of explaining to him from the standpoint of aerospace engineering regarding how the thing worked. Doug is probably the only 4th grader in the U.S. who can now describe the principle of thrust using a control volume model.

The rocket was pretty simple. It had a very large booster engine topped with a warhead that contained the red sparkly things that exploded. Removing the warhead was as simple as giving a quick twist, and I assumed the neutered rocket would fly higher without the payload. I was correct. Doug and I did a daylight 'stealth' test and were able to add about 50% to the altitude attained the previous night. We decided to modify four more rockets and put them aside in the closet for easy access. When this was done, Doug had a jar full of stuff that came out of the warheads including: 12 fuses about 3-inches long each, some paper, 4 plastic nosecones and a big handful of these little black balls about the size of 12-gauge buckshot that turned out to be the 'red sparkly popper things'. It appeared that the outer layer was a simple gunpowder coating designed to quickly burn off as red shower of sparks. I surmised that the inner core had some kind of magnesium thermite that gave off an intense white light and a loud bang. Pretty cool if you ask me. Lots of energy packed into one teeny little ball.

I didn't want to see the popper thingies go to waste, so I told Doug we were gonna put them in a hole in the ground and set them off. He gave me another big smile.

It's amazing how kids think alike...even when separated by 30 years.

As I was digging a shallow hole with my hand, Doug asked if it would be alright to put an army man next to these things so that "When they go off, it would look like he was getting shot with a maching gun". Dang....exactly what I was thinking. I agreed and he ran off to his room to dig something out of the mess. He returned in about 3 seconds, out of breath and holding a cheap plastic imitation of Robert E. Lee on horseback and a Civil War cannon. I pointed out that they didn't have true machine guns in the Civil War, but we would overlook this for the purpose of the demonstration. He handed me the action figure and I placed it and the cannon next to a rather large pile of black beads from which a few of the fuses extended.

I figured that three inches of fuse would take 2 seconds to burn, so I had at least that amount of time to stand up and take a few steps back. I neglected to recount the night before.....when the warhead ignited IMMEDIATELY upon reaching apogee. Tricky Chinese. They had installed extremely fast-burning fuse in these things and that fact totally escaped me.

I squatted next to Robert Lee and gave a short eulogy. Doug laughed. I took the trusty Bic lighter and placed it next to the fuse. One flick got the lighter going and THIS IMAGE IS ONE I WILL REMEMBER FOR A LONG TIME. My hand holding a lighter next to a pile of explosives.

There is usually a short but noticeable mental pause that occurs immediately before something bad or really stupid happens. It is where that little voice in your head says: "You dumba$$."

The fuse burn time was in the 1/1000ths of a second range. The pile of little popper thingy's immediately ignited into a tremendously brilliant ball of fire. All I could think was ..."...th....th.....thermite..." Unfortunately, when they are viewed at ground level, these little popper thingies become REALLY BIG POPPER THINGIES and have a tendency to jump up to 15-feet in every direction from their point of ignition. I instantaneously became engulfed in a ball of fire that sounded a lot like being in a half-done bag of Orville Reddenbacher's popcorn.

It was all over about as fast as I could snap my fingers.

After the smoke cleared, Doug started laughing his butt off. That meant I was still in one piece. Doug does not laugh at dismembered limbs. He said I jumped about 10-feet, an action that I do not remember. I checked my clothes for burn marks, and found none. He checked my back to make sure it was not on fire. No combustion there. The driveway was peppered with black holes where the concrete had been scarred from these things.

A close one. Another REAL close one. My mind ran the tapes again to re-hash what it had seen. All I remembered was being inside something akin to a 30-foot diameter........flaming dandelion. Whew.

We examined Ol' Robert E. at ground-zero.

Instead of a machine-gun peppering, he got nuked. He and the horse he rode in on.......and his cannon too. One side was untouched, but the other side was arc-welded. Real warfare. Doug examined it real quiet-like and then started laughing again.

I assume he will remember the finer points of the lesson as he grows older. When I now speak of 'almost being burned beyond recognition' he will have a slightly better understanding of what I mean. I hope that this vivid image tempers the knowledge he now has regarding rocket construction. O well. After all, if your dad isn't gonna teach you how to get your a$$ blown off, who will?

[Rolkin]

My dad always took empty oil quarts and lit his sedolin oxide (I can't spell it was his welding stuff)torch to burn a hole in the side of the empty oil quart, smuthered the flame and filled it with the sedolin oxide mix, then quickly stuffed a black cat in the hole, perfect fit then we would go outside and stand back, now black cat have like a less than 1 second fuse, so he would light and run normally not getting to far. BOOM big bang better even when put on the bushes so it echoed off the other houses rattle the windows type of thing there was normally a 2' black mark where the oil quart used to be, with very few pieces to be found It took a few weeks of mowing to get rid of that black mark


ever have an electric gas BBQ that doesn't light itself? then turn on the propane with the lid closed and find out that it had rained on the matches? so you search the garage for 5 mins and come back out side and put a match under the BBQ to light it? ...yea my dad was one of the smart ones burnt all the hair off his hand and nearly blew the lid off the grill....

[Bear Flare]

Rolkin:

He's using an Oxy-acetylene torch set. This is flamable acetylene gas mixed with pure oxygen gas.

Bear Flare

[Rolkin]

Thanks I always heard people say it but never seen it spelled

[Azrael256]

ROTFL!!!

[LawDog]

When my brother and I were wee pups, Mom and Dad got us matching chemistry sets.

Not the wussy ones that stores sell now, but the good, old-fashioned, "Hey, Dad! What's potassium chlorate?" ones that would send the EPA and ATF into conniption fits.

'Course, the first thing Chris and I did was blow the back steps off of the house, resulting in Mom removing the chlorates, and permangenates from the kits...

Anyhoo, Chris and I had found a procedure for separating water into its component hydrogen and oxygen, and immediately saw the potential for lighter-than-air craft design.

Wait for it.

Well, we whipped together a dirigible from Dads spare pipe cleaners -- all of Dads pipe cleaners -- and a thin plastic Leventis shopping bag, ten-gallon size.

Into our contraption, we piped the contents of the hydrogen generator, and waste not want not, put the contents of the oxy side of the generator in for good measure.

It was not a resounding success. We had lift, but only enough to drag the bottom of the blimp across the carpet, whereupon Mom promptly banished us to the Great Outdoors.

After fruitless pondering on the lack of lift we were displaying, we went to Dad and inquired as to what he would have used to lift a balloon. Pater replied, somewhat distractedly, that he would have used hot air.

Huzzah! Perfect!

Obviously what we needed was a dual-system design, using hydrogen/oxygen for the intial lift, and hot-air for the distance.

Well, to make a long story short, shortly thereafter we had a Leventis bag floating about six feet off the floor of the garage, with a soft-ball-sized, alcohol-soaked, flaming chunk of cotton suspended below the gas bag.

Flushed with success, we hared into the house and chivvied our parents out to see the aeronautical wonder engineered by their progeny.

Mom made appropriate enthusiastic noises as Dad murmured, "Nice work, boys," around the stem of his pipe, "Hot air. Nice system."

Jumping excitedly, we informed Dear Old Dad that we had a dual-system hot-ar/hydrogen and we wanted to patent it...

Said dissertation being interrupted by Dad dropping his pipe, and Mom abruptly sagging against Dad.

Followed by the brightest, hottest white light from the general area of the garage.

And the boom was simply...fantastic.

The chemistry sets disappeared shortly thereafter, but by that time we had discovered the fascinating field of medieval siege artillery and really didn't miss the sets all that much...

LawDog

[Hemicuda]

I skipped the chemistry set, but did build a sweet trailer mounted (on dad's trailer) Trebuchet, (with the help of 2 cousins)

there wasn't a mailbox on the block after that that didn't wear some battle scars...

Dad was so impressed that I think he STILL has the Trebuchet and trailer in his polebarn...

nowadays, that'd get us kids some serious trouble... but it sure was fun then!

(it'd launch a full size watermellon about 100 yards, no problem...)

[4V50 Gary]

(Lee's favorite horse)

[Rolkin]

I was watching on tv this rich guy had spent his time building trebuchets and he was launching cars or flaming pianos any thing he could get his hands on, he had like a 3 ton counter weight flinging stuff, pretty damn cool....

[sven]

Reading all this, I was just transported back to North Dakota in the early 1980s. It was a family reunion with the 'hick' side of my family...

In the end, we were all standing on adjacent docks (by family) shooting bottlerockets at each other.

Ah... the good ol days.

[vertigo7]

George Goble has a neat hobby. He likes to experiment with ways to light his BBQ grill as fast as possible, with the biggest fireball possible. MPEGs and RealAudio clips are available. From his page:

Still photo of lighting of the grill with 3 gallons of liquid oxygen. Started with 60 lbs of charcoal, and burnt up 40 lbs of it in 3 seconds. Result is a grill ready to cook in about 3 seconds, and all the old grease, etc burned off. Don't try this at home.

WARNING: an ignition source, such as a lit cigarette or one glowing coal, must be present before pouring on the LOX. If charcoal is PRESOAKED in LOX first, an explosion will result. One briquette presoaked in LOX is approx equiv to 1 stick of dynamite.

Yikes.

And for my own family yarn, there was the time my dad won a gas grill in a golf tourney. He brought it home and put it together in the living room. He hooked up the gas tank and started fiddling with the regulator and the igniter. Father, myself, and the offending grill were swiftly ejected outside by Mom. She sat and watched briefly as Dad got to work grilling dinner, but wasn't nearly as amused as I was to watch steaks being grilled on both sides at once by the flames shooting 5 feet up from the grill's cooktop.

Not long afterwards, the grill mysteriously went missing and to this day Mom strenuously denies any knowledge of its whereabouts.

vertigo7

[foghornl]

Gotta add My story....

Worked in a fireworks stand a couple of years as a teen. One year, I had to run the "remote" stand, way out in the boonies. I got bored, so i started looking inside the rockets to see what made the "stars" at the end of flight. The biggest rocket was about 18" tall, with big plastic fins. i went though all the other rockets, and took 1 or 2 "balls" from each one, and put them in 'my' rocket. Not satisfied with this, I tied together 6 or 7 regualr "black cats", twisted the fuses, and placed them in the top. I figured that the black cats would give extra distance to the star balls. This rocket was supposed to go up to 500', but I forgot to allow for the extra payload. Anyway, when launced, rocket climbed to about 30', then took a 90 degree right. Some folks on the next street were having a new years party. The rocket just cleared their 8' privacy fence, and dissappeared from my view. A few seconds later, there was a white flash that could only be described as nuclear, followed immediately by a similar intensity BOOM ! ! !



In about 5 minutes, all the city cops were screaming through the neighborhood, sirens/lights at full blast. I hid in the house, bedroom door closed, and lights out

[pax]

The "sky dragon" the guy described is legal in Washington state.

Fact is, we spent the weekend on the beach at Long Beach, WA in the company of thousands of other people, ALL shooting off fireworks that size!

Literally as far as you could see in every direction, there were people playing with high explosives. Bottle rockets, 'artillery' shells in packages of 100 or more, roman candles, coils of 1000 or more firecrackers, 3-foot-long sparklers -- those are just toys for the kids during daylight hours. After dark, people start shooting off the real stuff.

I highly recommend that people who like high explosives be there on the 4th of July.... it's a blast.

pax

[Mr. James]

heh - thanks Jim and LawDog

It is where that little voice in your head says:"You dumba$$."

Funny, mine never gets beyond "oh, S**T!!!"

[dfaugh]

Balloon concept:

In college, we'd fill dry cleaner bag with methane from Chemistry lab...Only slightly lighter than air, but it would climb...To this we would attach a slow burning (several minutes) fuse....So, It would float up about 40-50 feet, and often 3-4 times as far laterally before about 30 cubic feet of methane ignited, in a split second...BIG fireball....And we could be a LONG ways off, by now...College Security never did figure this one out....(We also made nitro-glycerine in chem lab, but that's another story, better left alone)

At that time, they also outlawed fireworks, so they were available CHEAP...We used to have bottle rocket wars, in the dorms (we got seriously busted for this, although I personally escaped, smart enough not to keep evidence in my room!)

Usta bring fireworks across the border from Canada, by the TRUNKLOAD (Illegal here, but sometimes tolerated, back then)

Dropped a "boomer", similar to big ones described, about 20' over someones backyard(it went sideways, instead of up)..they were having pool party for 4th at the time...

Like Mr James, I've rarely gotten past "OH S$IT, that's gonna HURT)

Oh the good old days!

[LetsFetz]

thanks a lot ... I actually have trouble typing this, 'cause of the tears ...

what a treat
LetsFetz

[Lord Grey Boots]

Jumping excitedly, we informed Dear Old Dad that we had a dual-system hot-ar/hydrogen and we wanted to patent it...

Cool, Garage cleaning via the use of Fuel Air explosives....

[particlebeam]

Scuz around your local army surplus outlet for a "hydrogen generator", used to fill weather balloons for use by the military in the field. They consist of a can of what looks like gravel that you add water to and the byproduct is heat and Hydrogen. Use that to fill a large balloon/fuse arrangement similar to what's mentioned above. Hydrogen being the lightest gas really makes the balloon gain some altitude before the fuse ignites it. With a little breeze, it also gets away from your position quickly. Be very careful as hydrogen is extremely flammable. Those really big balloons work the best, as they don't leak like cleaners bags, and are safer. No real explosion, but a nice flame at altitude. Close your eyes and imagine the Hindenburg on a smaller scale.

[freeride21a]

here is my big boom firework...derived from safe and sane stuff in kali.

one 1liter soda bottle(aquafina..or any pepsi based product)
it has to be soda company bottle..regular water bottles are too thin.

one piccolo pete

a plastic grocery bag

and awl or knife

pound piccolo pete so the insided powder...open bottle lid, take plastic bag and put it over the bottle opening loosely and stick your finger in creating a little pouch, then screw the lid on and cut away the excess bag(i tear it..quicker) then take lid back off and fill the little pouch you just created with the powder from the piccolo pete....once all the powder is out pull the bag out till the powder reaches the top of the hole...screw lid back on tight and make a hole and stick your fuse from the pete in it.

light and enjoy. it burst the bottle with presure from the burning pete powder..so it doesnt take much

puts m-80's to pure shame

i set off car alarms repeatedly with it and ****** off neighbors...rather impressive

it is a version of pool acid tinfoil bomb or dry ice bomb...but i think its louder than those due to faster reaction.

the previous message is for entertainment purposes only, do not reproduce the product in any way shape or form...good luck

[Hand_Rifle_Guy]

Ah, acetylene bombs. Takes me back...

We just took a regular party baloon, and filled it to the size of a fat grapefruit with acetylene, and then topped it off with oxygen until it was full size. Then we went to the upstairs balcony, leaving the baloon down on the ground, and lobbed miniature molotovs made out of christmas balls and alcohol. We were rewarded with a white flash about four feet across and a shockwave that pushed us back against the house and blew out the downstairs sliding glass door. And of course, a TITANIC blast.

Then we had to go out front with ringing ears to pretend we didn't know what had happened, as every neighbor on the block was out in the street looking around quizically, and they all knew we were there. We managed to play it off, and no-one caught on.

A buddy of mine used to get fine powdered magnesium. He would mix this up about equal with potassium or sodium nitrate, and light it by shoving wooden matches into it. Once, he did this behind a stadium at school while a football game was playing. There were lots of people, and the game was loud. The stadium was built up next to a hill that overlooked the field. With a pile of mix about the size of a basketball, he fired off his pile behind the stadium at the base of the hill during the game in the middle of the summer afternoon.

It lit up the hillside MUCH brighter than daylight. No boom, just a puff of white smoke.

And COMPLETE SILENCE from the football game. You could of heard a pin drop, and we're talking about something like 10,000 people, here. I think they thought they were about to be vaporized, as this was during the height of the Cold War when Nuclear Threats were taken seriously. Needless to say, my buddy proceeded to beat feet outta Dodge, and failed to get caught.

Ah, that's why we called 'em our Dangerous Teenage Years. So young, so ignorant, so damn lucky...

[MLH]

When I was about 10 me and my buddies got a hold of a few m-80's. After blowing up a few odd and ends we decided to see if it was true that the fuses were waterproof and would go off underwater. We walked down and dropped one in the corner sewer and ran like h*ll. Must have been a large amount of sewer gas built up as I swear the resulting BOOM raised most of the houses on the block about 2 feet off the ground! We spent most of the rest of the day hiding in the woods while everybody was trying to find out WHAT happened.

[Jim V]

A friend of mine was driving his police car around a semi-large mid-Michigan city one night in July when the streets were deserted (a strange occurance for that city) and decided to drop a largish firecracker down a sewer grate. He did not lift any buildings off the ground but all the man hole covers along that street for 3 blocks each way lifted and smoke billowed out for five blocks. For some reason there were a number of building alarms that went off and he sorta disappeared from the area.

[Flotsam]

One of the guys in my guard unit used to take the MRE heaters, take the generator out & stick in a 2 liter soda bottle, add a little water & toss it in the woods - a few minutes later the gas would build up & the bottle would explode - scared the crap out of the OPFOR guys during their mock raids

[MichaelJay]

Way back in the day, when I was in college we had a guy in the dorm that was in ROTC. He would bring all sorts of stuff back to the dorm to show-n-tell. On one occasion he brought back an ordinance tear gas canister. While we were looking over and fooling around, it was “accidentally” set off and dropped in the hallway. It burned nine feet of carpet in the hallway and if the construction of the dorm hadn’t been cinderblock and concrete I’m sure most of that wing would have gone up in flame. The gas cleared out three floors and took the better part of 20 hours to clean up. My fondest memory of the episode was the ROTC guy standing near the exit barking orders inside of a gas mask. The fire trucks were cool too. The trip to the Dean’s Office and resulting call to home – I could have done without.

Same guy brought a tank on campus (Reserve training base was next door to campus) and took us for rides. Really did a number on the blacktop, not so bad on the grass, but knocking down a tree was definitely a mistake.

The other stuff that happened in four years was just – wrong. :-)

Michael.