Deleting threads

We used to make bombs out of a coffee can and HTH (chroline for pools). It would create a mushroom cloud out of this world. Can't believe none of us never lost a body part or worse.

Where I grew up in NY, the streets would be so full of paper from curb to curb after the 4th of July, we would open the fire hydrants up to wash it away the next day. 3 cops on the block that would confiscate fireworks and keep for themselves until the big day plus other neighbors having their own stock, it was like WW III that night each year.

To relive my youth, I now put on a fireworks display each 4th of July that would rival or surpass most community firework displays. Me and 3 friends light em off, non stop for 35-40 minutes. My friend's dad tried to come out to the lighting area one year to help. He ran away in about 4 minutes saying it is awfully dangerous on the front lines. Anyone ever in the area at that time has an open invite to come on out to enjoy.
 
Other lame-brained ideas from my youth:

- Picked up the spent cartridge casings after the Memorial Day gun salute at the local cemetery. One of them had misfired and still had powder in it. I fashioned a "bomb" out of tin foil, cardboard, wax, and wrapped it with wire. Poured in the powder, stuck a firecracker fuse in it, placed it behind a big pile of dirt and lit the fuse. We all ran like hell, waiting for the dirt to cover us from 50' away. Instead, it just sent up a big plume of smoke. No boom.

- Found a lab bottle of thick, yellow liquid at the GE Silicone plant dump we used to sneak into. Convinced it was nitroglycerine, I gave it a careful heave as far as I dared onto some rocks. Again no boom (Thank God!), but we saw some weird green smoke coming from the rocks. Me and my buddy Tommy went over to investigate and nearly couldn't make it out of there. We both started choking, and our other friends had to drag Tommy out of there. We were sick all day after that. Years later I was cleaning some wood files with muriatic acid and ended up spilling some on the ground and there was the same green smoke and acrid smell. Must have been hydrochloric acid in that bottle and we were breathing in chlorine fumes.

- Made a zip gun out of a piece of copper tubing with a threaded cap on one end and a wooden handle taped to it. I took my dad's drill and drilled a small hole through the cap for a firecracker fuse. I'd put a firecracker in, screw the cap back on, put a small bolt head first into the tube and light the contraption with a lit cigarette. It was powerful enough to embed the bolt (usually sideways) into the pine picnic tables at the park.

OK, that's enough. Lucky I didn't receive the Darwin Award for some of my capers.:o
 
Hmm... just checked into this thread after a hiatus from it, and noticed it took a turn that tweaks some childhood memories!

Watchez, I know those neighborhoods you speak of. I grew up in a very Italian section of Yonkers, NY (at the time, anyway -- we're talking the 60s and 70s), and the only way I can explain it is that a couple very ritzy families used to shoot off [what we estimated to be] hundreds of thousands of dollars of fireworks off. The streetlights were knocked out with a .22 from a rooftop just as it got dark. The detritus on the streets got to be so deep, that fires would constantly erupt, and we had the hydrants at the ready to put them up. These families had family members on the force, so police only showed up when the really big stuff (blockbusters and aerial bombs) got to be too numerous or someone from another [competing] neighborhood complained.

I remember I used to take the extremely thick cardboard tubes out of window roller blinds (you know, the kind you tug the lanyard on, and they fly upwards?), and make my own potassium chlorate + sulphur + charcoal bombs with. These things were easily a half-stick. (They were four inches in length, and the pressure-treated cardboard sidewalls of that tube were 1/4-inch thick.) The noise was enough to instantly spiderweb the windows of cars if they were too close.

Thinking back, I can't believe I still have all my digits, even though I do have nerve damage in one from an blockbuster that blew-up about a foot away from my hand as I had released it during a "hand grenade" throw.

Man, I was nuts as a kid!
-Sean
 
Danny:

Picture: a certain golf course nearby where I grew up. Up on a hill overlooking the golf course, I'd take a four-foot length of inch-and-a-half (inside diameter) PVC pipe, and pound it into the ground at an angle overlooking the golf course (e.g. 45 degrees), about a foot deep.

Light a blockbuster, toss it down the mouth of the PVC pipe, and immediately follow it with a golf ball. Run! <Boom!> Then watch with binoculars where you see the blast of the turf explode where the golf ball hits.

I always made sure noone was on the course at the time, but one time I did, some guy walks out of the woods with his dog just after the golf ball left the tube. I can only watch helplessly (he was too far away to even hear me yelling) as the turf explosion happens a foot away from him. After all the pieces of turf fall back to earth and the smoke clears, the dog is gone and the guy is flat on his back. He sits up, looks around, gets up and books!

I don't think Jessie Owens could've kept up with me as I booked myself, getting my *ss out of there before the police showed up.

A "time of crazy" in my life for sure.
-Sean
 
Sfleinen - you were a little north of me (Canarsie) but the same time frame of the early 70s.

We also use to get a 1" x 4", hammer a nail in one end, then with a long rubber band, have it connected to the other end and the projectile was a flattened out bottle cap. We would wear those big puffy down coats as 'protection' and have wars. Survived that as well.
 
I had taped several crackers together with electrical tape. Found some copper wire in the garage and stripped the insulation off.

Wrapped the crackers as tightly as I could with the wire.

Tapped that to my next door neighbors bedroom window. I had twisted the fuses together.

Never blew the window out but made a heck of a mess.

Probably lucky that it didn't.
 
home cook'n

Pinky ma'am, this thread ain't out yet!

Along about the time of the british invasion I had taken a day off from the rigors of jr high school. It was a pleasant six or eight years I spent there but everyone needs a break now and then.

It was a quiet peaceful morning so I pulled the powder from a few firecrackers, then a few .22's then a few twelve gauge shells. I had learned kinda like an H-Bomb, I needed a little bang to make the big one happen. Forget what I packed the powder in but it was a pretty solid body for my bomb. I had known all along that I had fuse issues, no cannon fuse and it would be insane to light this off with a firecracker fuse. I might have been crazy but not insane!

Fortunately we had boxes and boxes of bayberry candles we had been shipped after dad closed down a service station. This was back when a service station pumped the gas, checked under your hood, washed the windows front and back. If you asked they checked the air in your tires and washed the windows all the way around. They also gave you neat gifts, measuring dippers, playing cards, bayberry candles, . . . . OK it was cheesy crap! However I knew a bayberry candle was a fifteen minute delay.

Dug a hole in my front yard and emplaced the device. A calm day so I lit the candle and commenced the wait. When the explosion came it shook the house and apparently every house in the neighborhood judging by how many people came outside in the middle of a workday morning. I wanted to act cool and innocent but there was a crater in my front yard that was kinda a dead giveaway plus the smoke had been injected into the ground so that smoke leaked out the ground, enough to be easily seen for the next half hour.

That was the last of my ever larger homemade explosives. Seemed like that was ending on a high note or going out with a bang as PL would say!

It wasn't long after that before I started reloading for a 44magnum but that is a tale for another day or another year.

Hu
 
ShootingArts said:
Pinky ma'am, this thread ain't out yet!

Along about the time of the british invasion I had taken a day off from the rigors of jr high school. It was a pleasant six or eight years I spent there but everyone needs a break now and then.

It was a quiet peaceful morning so I pulled the powder from a few firecrackers, then a few .22's then a few twelve gauge shells. I had learned kinda like an H-Bomb, I needed a little bang to make the big one happen. Forget what I packed the powder in but it was a pretty solid body for my bomb. I had known all along that I had fuse issues, no cannon fuse and it would be insane to light this off with a firecracker fuse. I might have been crazy but not insane!

Fortunately we had boxes and boxes of bayberry candles we had been shipped after dad closed down a service station. This was back when a service station pumped the gas, checked under your hood, washed the windows front and back. If you asked they checked the air in your tires and washed the windows all the way around. They also gave you neat gifts, measuring dippers, playing cards, bayberry candles, . . . . OK it was cheesy crap! However I knew a bayberry candle was a fifteen minute delay.

Dug a hole in my front yard and emplaced the device. A calm day so I lit the candle and commenced the wait. When the explosion came it shook the house and apparently every house in the neighborhood judging by how many people came outside in the middle of a workday morning. I wanted to act cool and innocent but there was a crater in my front yard that was kinda a dead giveaway plus the smoke had been injected into the ground so that smoke leaked out the ground, enough to be easily seen for the next half hour.

That was the last of my ever larger homemade explosives. Seemed like that was ending on a high note or going out with a bang as PL would say!

It wasn't long after that before I started reloading for a 44magnum but that is a tale for another day or another year.

Hu
Click to expand...

:rotflmao1::rotflmao1: Hu, I wished I could've seen that.
 
Sloppy Pockets said:
Other lame-brained ideas from my youth:

- Picked up the spent cartridge casings after the Memorial Day gun salute at the local cemetery. One of them had misfired and still had powder in it. I fashioned a "bomb" out of tin foil, cardboard, wax, and wrapped it with wire. Poured in the powder, stuck a firecracker fuse in it, placed it behind a big pile of dirt and lit the fuse. We all ran like hell, waiting for the dirt to cover us from 50' away. Instead, it just sent up a big plume of smoke. No boom.

- Found a lab bottle of thick, yellow liquid at the GE Silicone plant dump we used to sneak into. Convinced it was nitroglycerine, I gave it a careful heave as far as I dared onto some rocks. Again no boom (Thank God!), but we saw some weird green smoke coming from the rocks. Me and my buddy Tommy went over to investigate and nearly couldn't make it out of there. We both started choking, and our other friends had to drag Tommy out of there. We were sick all day after that. Years later I was cleaning some wood files with muriatic acid and ended up spilling some on the ground and there was the same green smoke and acrid smell. Must have been hydrochloric acid in that bottle and we were breathing in chlorine fumes.

- Made a zip gun out of a piece of copper tubing with a threaded cap on one end and a wooden handle taped to it. I took my dad's drill and drilled a small hole through the cap for a firecracker fuse. I'd put a firecracker in, screw the cap back on, put a small bolt head first into the tube and light the contraption with a lit cigarette. It was powerful enough to embed the bolt (usually sideways) into the pine picnic tables at the park.

OK, that's enough. Lucky I didn't receive the Darwin Award for some of my capers.:o
Click to expand...

:bow-down::bow-down::bow-down: You da MAN! :D

What do you do for a living now? Just curious.
JoeyA
 
Just sayin'

watchez said:
We used to make bombs out of a coffee can and HTH (chroline for pools). It would create a mushroom cloud out of this world. Can't believe none of us never lost a body part or worse.

Where I grew up in NY, the streets would be so full of paper from curb to curb after the 4th of July, we would open the fire hydrants up to wash it away the next day. 3 cops on the block that would confiscate fireworks and keep for themselves until the big day plus other neighbors having their own stock, it was like WW III that night each year.

To relive my youth, I now put on a fireworks display each 4th of July that would rival or surpass most community firework displays. Me and 3 friends light em off, non stop for 35-40 minutes. My friend's dad tried to come out to the lighting area one year to help. He ran away in about 4 minutes saying it is awfully dangerous on the front lines. Anyone ever in the area at that time has an open invite to come on out to enjoy.
Click to expand...

Sorry about the hijacking of this thread, I just went with the flow. :embarrassed2:

If this thread doesn't do anything else, I hope everyone goes and talks to their children and grandchildren about the dumb and dangerous things youth can do when it comes to fireworks. They and you only have one time to go around. Better to have all of your eyes and fingers to do it with.

JoeyA
 
Not to mention what a person could do with crushed charcoal briquettes and salt peter, if the mixture was compressed enuff.

I still have a box of farm fertilizer mix in the garage that I found at the side of a grid a few years ago. I will have to look into it and see if there is anything worth while inside.
 
ShootingArts said:
Before the banning we would buy a few dozen grosses of bottle rockets for wars. The trick was to light them and give them a fling underhanded so they ignited on the way to the target. My neighbor two doors down and I had the wars for years until the neighbor in between got whiney. The midair launches could be unpredictable which was some of the appeal.

Back in the day roman candles had a nasty tendency to ignite all at once, sometimes blowing all the balls out the back. Usually made the newspaper every holiday about somebody getting badly burned with one so I never played with them. Stick them in the ground or a bottle and step back.

Joey's story about the cherry bomb reminded me of my brother. He was standing over the 12" culvert in the front ditch dropping cherry bombs from his waist like marbles. The goal was to have them explode as they touched the water. He did it six or eight times successfully thankfully.

I had one of the silver salutes blow up just after it left my hand, close enough to numb it but not do any real damage. That was enough to make me a little more cautious. I do remember going across the levee when I was a kid and finding some glass bottles. A silver salute was just a little less powerful than the agricultural m-80s and wedged in the mouth of a glass bottle. We thought it was cool to wedge one in the mouth of a bottle and throw it like a molotov cocktail then duck behind a rotten log. We would admire the big pieces of glass stuck in the log then do it again!

Just counted, still have standard issue number of fingers, toes, and eyes. The Lord really does look after fools and drunks!

Hu
Click to expand...

Hu,

I was engaged in a quite a few bottle rocket battles. We got very good at timing the fuse to were we just tossed the rocket just a bit in front of us & they would shoot off at rather low attitude. Well one time when I had some rather long hair, one launched by our opponents lodged itself in my hair. I swiped at it twice & the second swipe got it out of my hair & it blew up less than a foot from my ear. It was loud & left me with some ringing in my ear for quite a bit of time. Thank God it did not get me in the eye.

Teenage memories are some of the best.

Best 2 Y'a,
Rick

PS New studies have indicated that the human brain does not physically fully develop until around the age of 26. I can certainly see that has being true.
 
Last edited:
JoeyA said:
:bow-down::bow-down::bow-down: You da MAN! :D

What do you do for a living now? Just curious.
JoeyA
Click to expand...

Spent some time in cancer research, then I became a fishing guide for a while. Most of the time, though, I've been a musical instrument restorer.

Now I have a different job. See the pic below to catch Danny at work these days.:cool:
 

Attachments

  • Danny at work.jpg
    Danny at work.jpg
    63.9 KB · Views: 182
I hope it's obvious to all involved that the simplest solution to dealing with explosive topics here on AZ is to start talking about explosives. Seems there's one thing we can all agree upon...

Blowing up stuff is fun!
 
Pros are just a "sleeper cell," waiting for the green light to take over the world?

This is also a great way to get HOMELAND SECURITY to read all our posts. I wonder what agents think about professional pool players and if they "real eyes" we are just a "sleeper cell," waiting for the green light to take over the world of sports?
Homeland-Security.gif




Sloppy Pockets said:
I hope it's obvious to all involved that the simplest solution to dealing with explosive topics here on AZ is to start talking about explosives. Seems there's one thing we can all agree upon...

Blowing up stuff is fun!
Click to expand...
 
good for business

CJ Wiley said:
This is also a great way to get HOMELAND SECURITY to read all our posts. I wonder what agents think about professional pool players and if they "real eyes" we are just a "sleeper cell," waiting for the green light to take over the world of sports?
Click to expand...


CJ,

I'm thinking this one thread may bump the gross of pool halls coast to coast ten or fifteen percent just from the federal business while they look for all the pool players with a side hobby of playing with HE!

Hu
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top