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| Member |
It was 35 or 40 years ago. Don't remember. He's fine. Has all his fingers, no scars on his face. | |||
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| Member |
I didn't see it myself. A guy I know was at a jobsite and pond nearby was iced over. He saw air pockets under the ice. He cut a little hole in the ice, took his cutting torch to it and opened the valves for about 5 minutes. Made a trail of gasoline to the hole and lit it. Said most of the ice blew 20 feet in the air in a million pieces. Who says you can't have fun? He didn't say if there were any fish in it. | |||
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Fire begets Fire |
It’s not necessarily the amount of hydrogen… It’s about getting a stoichiometric mixture. One more… In college we drove up to the border about an hour away to pick up fireworks. As we drove home we actually wanted to see how fast a bottle rocket flew so we drove side-by-side with the bottle rockets; turns out they go about 43 mph. "Pacifism is a shifty doctrine under which a man accepts the benefits of the social group without being willing to pay - and claims a halo for his dishonesty." ~Robert A. Heinlein | |||
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Member |
Found it! ____________________ | |||
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| Member |
I hauled hydrogen cylinders on my truck. They told us if we thought one was leaking, hold our cornbroom up to it, if it catches on fire...RUN. No idea what Stoichiometric is LOL! | |||
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Spread the Disease |
I went to grad school at Tech and did work at EMRTC for a while. You get used to those things on campus, too.  Stoichiometric is basically the ideal mix ratio between 2 or more chemical components in a reaction. It represents the ratios that give a balanced reaction. For example, the combustion of hydrogen: 2H2 + O2 = 2H2O (can also be written as: H2 + 0.5O2 = H2O) That means you'd need a ratio of 2:1 for hydrogen to oxygen for the stoichiometric mix. For many explosive mixtures, this ideal ratio will give you increased performance/output. This is a good rule of thumb, while not always true. ________________________________________ -- Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past me I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. -- | |||
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| Muzzle flash aficionado  |
I admit that as a lad one of my buddies and I did make a few experiments with explosive chemicals, but at least we were careful enough to retain all our digits and eyebrows. Back then one could buy KClO3 at the drug store. flashguy Texan by choice, not accident of birth | |||
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| Member |
For us veterans or who are currently serving - MRE heaters and a water bottle with a little residual water inside, screw the top back on, toss into a platoon area and wait for Staff Sergeant to lose his shit in 3... 2... 1... | |||
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| Member |
Yep, made them all. “firecrackers” that sounded like a 12 gauge. Sparklers, fountains, flash bombs and all the rest. That’s back in the day when a high school kid (me) could walk up to the local chemical factory and say they needed pure zinc or magnesium for a science experiment and walk away with it. Other chemicals and underwater fuse were sold by Race-O-Rama (I think that was the name). Rocket engines from Estes were dismantled and re-imagined into duct taped little hellions. Good times. | |||
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Washing machine whisperer |
Played around with black powder in my youth. Made hydrogen balloons. Never stupid enough to try acetylene in a trash bag but heard enough stories about blowing barn siding loose to have second thoughts. If you decide to try it, know that we in EMS have lots of gauze and Fentynal on the bus when things go wrong __________________________ Writing the next chapter that I've been looking forward to. | |||
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| Member |
Had a coworker put a whole bunch of sparklers in his hand and twisted them together. A lot of the coating came off and fell down into his hand. He lit it. Had a bandage on his hand for weeks. I teased him about every July for years. | |||
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| Savor the limelight |
I had a next door neighbor who was an attorney who left his house for a few days and of course his teenage sons did what teenage sons do. I wasn’t bothered by the music or fireworks until about 2am when something went KABOOM! and my concrete house shook like crazy. That’s when I went outside and told them that whatever that was, was not going to happen again. It didn’t. The next morning I asked them what it was and they said potato cannon. I believe they used hair spray for fuel. | |||
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Caribou gorn |
I used to make drano bombs some and my buddy makes some sparkler bombs each 4th. Electrical tape a bunch of a certain kind of sparklers together and they will make a big boom. I'm gonna vote for the funniest frog with the loudest croak on the highest log. | |||
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| Member |
A little trajectory? The old bottle rocket bazooka - ~3ft of 1/2" black pipe - was fairly accurate in the 20yd range. Good enough for redneck cavalry (pickup bed). Much better than holding them & shooting at each other, about 8-10yd accuracy. We used to make 'crater makers' - spent (?)12-gram CO2 cartridges with pyrodex & a sparkler. 30+ second fuse, reliable boom & with a model rocket engine enough missile to move a ~18" diameter sod chunk from one side of the road to my truck hood almost on the other side of the road. The launch was perfect, but it flipped over & came back at us after about 50, maybe 75yds. We hit the ditch pretty quick. | |||
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