Fubar512 1,350 Posted June 22, 2009 Sometime ago, I was talking with Dave, about the crazy stunts my friends and I pulled, when we were in our early teens. Such as making our own gunpowder, filling a quart jar with it, and lighting it (incredibly, no one got hurt, though I couldn't hear too well for a week afterwords), detonating cans of starting fluid with blow torches, making rockets out of spray cans of hair spray, etc. You know, the sort of things normal American teenage boys would do, back in the 1970s Well, I found this on another website....enjoy! Around age 10 my dad got me one of those Little Bad-ass Compound Bow beginner kits. Of course, the first month I went around our place sticking arrows in anything that could get stuck by an arrow. Did you know that a 1955 40 horse Farmall tractor will take 6 rounds before it goes down? Tough sumbich. That got boring, so being the 10 yr. old Dukes of Hazzard fan that I was, I quickly advanced to taking strips of cut up Tshirt doused in chainsaw gas tied around the end and was sending flaming arrows all over the place. Keep in mind this was 99.999% humidity swampland so there really wasn't any fire danger. I'll put it this way - a set of post hole diggers and a 3ft. Hole and you had yourself a well. Anyway, one summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows into a large rotten oak stump in our backyard. I look over under the carport and see a shiny brand new can of starting fluid (ether). The light bulb went off. I grabbed the can and set it on the stump. I thought it would probably just spray out in a disappointing manner . . lets face it... to a 10 yr. old mouth-breather like myself, ether really doesn't "sound" flammable. So, I went back into the house and got a 1 pound can of pyrodex (black powder for muzzle loader rifles) to add to the excitement. At this point, I set the can of ether on the stump and opened up the can of black powder. My intentions were to sprinkle a little bit around the ether can but it all sorta dumped out on me. No biggie...1lb pyrodex and 16 oz of ether should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker - you know? You know what? Screw that. I'm going back in the house for the other can. Yes, I got a second can of pyrodex and dumped it too. Now we're cookin'. I stepped back about 15ft and lit the 2 stroke arrow. I drew the nock to my cheek and took aim. As I released I heard a clunk as the arrow launched from my bow. In a slow motion time frame, I turned to see my dad getting out of the truck... OH s**t! He just got home from work So help me God it took 10 minutes for that arrow to go from my bow to the can. My dad was walking towards me in slow motion with a WTF look in his eyes. I turned back towards my target just in time to see the arrow pierce the starting fluid can right at the bottom. Right through the main pile of pyrodex and into the can. OH - s**t. When the shock wave hit it knocked me off my feet. I don't know if it was the actual compression wave that threw me back or just reflex jerk back from 235 decibels of sound. I caught a half millisecond glimpse of the violence during the initial explosion and I will tell you there was dust, grass, and bugs all hovering 1ft above the ground as far as I could see. It was like a little low to the ground layer of dust fog full of grasshoppers, spiders, and a crawfish or two. The daylight turned purple. Let me repeat this...THE DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE! There was a big sweetgum tree out by the gate going into the pasture. Notice I said "was". That mother got up and ran off. So here I am, on the ground blown completely out of my shoes with my Thundercats T-shirt shredded, my dad is on the other side of the carport having what I can only assume is a Vietnam flashback: " ECHO BRAVO CHARLIE YOUR BRINGIN' EM IN TOO CLOSE!! CEASE FIRE GODDAMIT CEASE FIRE!!!!! His hat has blown off and is 30 ft. behind him in the driveway. All windows on the north side of the house are blown out and there is a slow rolling mushroom cloud about 2000 feet over our backyard. There is a Honda 185s three wheeler parked on the other side of the yard and the fenders are drooped down and are now touching the tires. I wish I knew what I said to my dad at this moment. I don't know - I know I said something. I couldn't hear. I couldn't hear inside my own head. I don't think he heard me either... not that it would really matter. I don't remember much from this point on. I said something, felt a sharp pain, and then woke up later. I felt a sharp pain, blacked out,woke later.... repeat this process for an hour or so and you get the idea. I remember at one point my mom had to give me CPR so dad could beat me some more. Bring him back to life so dad can kill him again. Thanks mom. One thing is for sure... I never had to mow around that stump again. Mom had been bitching about that thing for years and dad never did anything about it. I stepped up to the plate and handled business. Dad sold his muzzleloaders a week or so later. And I still have some sort of bone growth abnormality either from the blast or the beating. Or both. I guess what I'm trying to say is, get your kids into archery. Its good discipline and will teach them skills they can use later on in life. Something they won't learn in school. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
calvin 0 Posted June 22, 2009 That is an awesome read. I did a variety of blackpowder "experiments" in my youth. My chosen ignition methods were flashbulbs fired via a model train transformer through ALOT of wire. Luckily I started small enough that even the bid shots were done fairly safely (i.e with me under sufficient cover). Reading that brought back memories! -Calvin Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
ONETINSOLDIER 2 Posted June 22, 2009 (edited) I, amazingly have a story kinda like that. (imagine that) I had just moved to a one horse town in the middle of nevada and was quite bored one day. Somewhere I had come across an electric blasting cap but alas, I had no energisers. I thought to myself, "dont these things go off if hit hard?" Hmmmmm, I looked around for something heavy and I spied a ten pound shotput. AHA! I grabbed the, well, lets call it what it was at this point, cannonball and I set the blasting cap on the tongue/trailer hitch of our mobile home, and while standing there holding the cannonball above it and looking straight down, I took carefull aim. Im gonna stop there and let you ponder that a moment, OK, amazingly enough, my 16 years of accumulated wisdom told me Id better not do that, so I moved my punkin slightly to the side, and I let go, There then came a noise like no other noise Id ever heard and a bright flash, Now, you can relate to how the hearing comes back and about how long that takes, and im standing there, an awful whining in my ears and Im counting fingers and toes , and little birdies flying around my head, and then I thought to myself, "I wonder where the cannonball is?" Just about then, a loud THUMP hit the dirt about five feet away. I have no idea how far up that sucker went, but I figure I used up a lot of karma points on its way up as it went past my head, and on its way down to terra firma next to me. Yeah, the adventure and exuberance of youth, its a forgiving creature at times,,, One of my best friends in nevada later on was from a mining family, and we had access to all the TNT and caps and det cord we wanted, and I learned quite a bit about explosives and the safe handling thereof, luckily. (did you know an atlas 80% stick of dynamite can lift a chevy truck about ten feet in the air? the 80% sticks are about as big around as a salami , 3 inch diameter and about the length of a road flare, the common sticks that you see on tv that look like a road flare are 40%, percentage meaning % trinitrotolulene) Edited June 22, 2009 by gwar Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
DaSpungie 1 Posted June 22, 2009 oh man that rips i have not laughed this hard in ages thanks man gives me flashbacks of my youth blowing up apples frogs home made pipebombs and crazy stuff i know i beat the odds cuz if i had to do it again i would nor survive Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Caesar 305 Posted June 25, 2009 That was friggin' hillarious. I have to say that even when I was younger and screwed around with making explosives/-ions, I never did anything like THAT: I always had some safety system involved when the boom was gonna be big (slow fuse, barricades, etc). Not that they always worked... Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
serverandenforcer 33 Posted June 25, 2009 What 10 year old boy hasn't done something like this? My dad did it back in the days with blasting caps and I did it with a couple of freinds when I was younger. Face it, things that go boom and blow the crap out of your rear is cool! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Rambler 1-1 9 Posted June 25, 2009 ...I never did anything like that. I used to shoot at Air Hogs with Nerf guns (later, a BB gun) and one of my favorite things to do was to take all dozen of my various flying toys to the park and send them all out in a massive airshow. But I never really blew things up. Probably because I grew up with my mom, and she was a foster parent, ao anything dangerous was quickly done away with. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
FastCargo 412 Posted June 25, 2009 What 10 year old boy hasn't done something like this? My dad did it back in the days with blasting caps and I did it with a couple of freinds when I was younger. Face it, things that go boom and blow the crap out of your rear is cool! Yep, something about boys and making crap blow up just go together. One of these days I'll relate my various misadventures with the dark side of model rocketry (yes Virginia, you can make a functioning LAWS rocket launcher...). FC Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Fubar512 1,350 Posted June 25, 2009 I'm somewhat surprised that neither myself, nor my friends, lost any limbs due to our "experiments". One of our most reckless experiments , was when we attached a M-80 to a triple-cluster of 1-ounce bottle-rockets. Luckily, the combined thrust of the three rockets, was just enough to get the whole mess no more than 50 feet (straight up), before the M-80 went "BOOM!" We were, of course, hoping for something a bit more impressive, like a range of two or three city blocks. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
