No hablo...boom Jaime Solorza
On Wed, Jul 4, 2018, 10:33 AM <ch...@wbmfg.com> wrote: > Various thoughts.... > > I used to make all my own fireworks as a kid. Get potassium nitrate from > the druggist, grind up some charcoal briquettes, add some sulfur from the > druggist, do endless mixture variations until you get one that works and > you have your powder. Red devil stump remover is also potassium nitrate. > You can get that at home depot. > > You can mix that with sugar and also get something that works. In that > situation you want to cook it to melt the sugar. Rocket Boys (Homer > Hickham) used that to do their missiles. > > If you grind it all up (never did blow myself up by literally grinding > these components together in the basement of my parents house) and them mix > it with water into a slurry, you can spread it out thin on a cookie shoot > and bake it in your mom’s oven at low temps until it is hard. Then you > break it up into small chunks. That process is called “corning” and makes > the powder work all that much better. > > Then you can wrap up balls of the stuff (again wet to form a clay type > consistency) in paper towels. Then you load a paper towel roll with some > powder, a ball, more powder, another ball etc. And you have a great roman > candle. > > Hard to get this stuff to go off like a fire cracker. You have to really > compress it. I made a small cannon out of water pipe (hole drilled in a > cap for the fuse). Crammed and hammered a bunch into the pipe followed by > cotton ball wadding them a bunch of fishing sinkers and solder for the > projectiles. Put it on a chunk of fire wood with nails hammered in and > bent over the pipe to keep it still. Homemade fuses can be made by soaking > paper into a potassium nitrate and water mixture and then then left to > dry. Best to roll them into the fuse while wet. Thin paper like > yellowpages worked pretty good. > > My fuses were crap though. On the cannon/pipe bomb the fuse went out so I > lit a dry pine tree needle as a punk and probed the hole in the pipe cap to > get it going again. Stepped back, nothing. Went back over there and got > down and put my ear next to the pipe cap. Yep, could hear it sizzling in > there. So I got up and took a few steps back. KABLOOM!!!! Huge huge huge > explosion. My best ever. Blew the pipe cap off. Split the pipe. > > My dad came running out of the house looking to see if he could find all > of my body parts. I had a grin on my face a mile wide... He demanded that > I dump all my powder into the dirt. That was a very memorable 4th of > July. I think of this incident every 4th. I give thanks for coming away > unscathed. (And I lived in dry land wheat farming country in central > Oregon. Always and extreme fire hazard). > > I also perfected acetylene bombs. Made nitrocellulose in my mom’s > kitchen. Tried to make nitro glycerin and mercury fulminate in the HS > science lab. They were both flops. > > Still have all my digits and my eyesight. Probably not going to be > allowed to pass this knowledge to my grandchildren though.... people just > don’t want kids to have fun anymore.... (I would totally freak out if I > knew my grandkids were even thinking about trying some of this stuff). > > Some say I am not risk averse. I say I get bored easily. > > > > -- > AF mailing list > AF@af.afmug.com > http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com >
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