Archery Experiment

One of the best emails Ive had in a very long time...

Around age 10 my dad got me one of those little badass compound bow beginner kits. Of course, the first month I went around our land sticking arrows in anything that could get stuck by an arrow. Did you know that a 1955 40horse 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. Ill put it this way- a set of post hole diggers and a 3ft. hole and you had yourself a well.

One summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows into a large rotten oak stump in our backyard. I looked 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 that 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).

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 16oz ether should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker you know? You know what? F**k 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 2stroke 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 SHIT 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. Shit.

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 f**king decibels of sound. I caught a half a 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 F**KING DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE. There was a big sweetgum tree out by the gate going into the pasture. Notice I said "was". That sumbich got up and ran off.

So here I am, on the ground blown completely out of my shoes with my thundercats Tshirt 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 2000ft over our backyard. There is a Honda 185s 3 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.

Whenever a Liberal utters the term "Common Sense approach"....grab your wallet, your ass, and your guns because the sombitch is about to do something damned nasty to all three of them.

Reply to
Gunner Asch
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My dad never had any black powder around, but you can get a six foot long flame out of a can of starter fluid (hair spray is only good for two).

Reply to
Tim Wescott

Funny story snipped.

I had a similar experience with a 55 gallon barrel, two tbsp. of gas, and pure O2.

When the cops got there, they asked us if we heard a blast.

"Huh?" was our response.

By then, we had picked up the pieces of the barrel we could find. My hearing is still wacky.

I have set industrial explosives, but I have never heard one like that. Maybe it was the range .........................

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

Me, too. It was Mom's 15 yr. old collection of Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs she finally realized were useless. She said burn 'em in the burn barrel. I dumped them in the empty barrel, which they just barely fit. Knowing they'd be difficult to burn because of the tightly packed pages, I decided to help them along with about 1 gal. of av gas, then realized I'd forgotten the matches. To keep all that good gas from getting away, I put a torn open fertilizer sack over the barrel (you can see where this is going). When I got back with the matches, a couple of neighbor kids and my brother had arrived.

I proceeded to strike the match, lift the sack, and flick the match in. In the next instant, we were all knocked down around the barrel by the concussion, and I had an impressive view of about a 150' tall column of catalog pages with fire between them. Then the damned burning pages drifted into the dry grass in the pasture next door. After Dad pounded me, we got to spend the next 30 minutes putting out the grass fire. The neighbors about 1/4 mile away said it shook all their windows.

A rather unique tech I had working for me once spoke my favorite quote of all time. " I believe the best value for your entertainment dollar is gasoline."

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

Yeah, those burn barrels. I remember throwing half a can of motor oil on the red hot side of a burn barrel. Until then I thought that oil was not flammable - or explosive.

Me, too. It was Mom's 15 yr. old collection of Sears and Monkey Wards catalogs she finally realized were useless. She said burn 'em in the burn barrel. I dumped them in the empty barrel, which they just barely fit. Knowing they'd be difficult to burn because of the tightly packed pages, I decided to help them along with about 1 gal. of av gas, then realized I'd forgotten the matches. To keep all that good gas from getting away, I put a torn open fertilizer sack over the barrel (you can see where this is going). When I got back with the matches, a couple of neighbor kids and my brother had arrived.

I proceeded to strike the match, lift the sack, and flick the match in. In the next instant, we were all knocked down around the barrel by the concussion, and I had an impressive view of about a 150' tall column of catalog pages with fire between them. Then the damned burning pages drifted into the dry grass in the pasture next door. After Dad pounded me, we got to spend the next 30 minutes putting out the grass fire. The neighbors about 1/4 mile away said it shook all their windows.

A rather unique tech I had working for me once spoke my favorite quote of all time. " I believe the best value for your entertainment dollar is gasoline."

Pete Keillor

Reply to
Robert Swinney

Buddy and me were tossing a .22 shot shell back and forth tossing it at the concrete next to each other's feet. I mastered the dynamics of toss and impact a bit quicker than Steve Rivers, he got a load #11 shot in his leg. He knew it was a cartridge, I knew how it worked. That was about 41 years ago.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

Reply to
Wes

i used to know a guy, i think his story was like, as a kid he was told to rake the leaves, he had an abandoned well (that had gone dry) in his yard, i think the story was that it had stone slabs over it but there was a large enough space between them were he had the idea to rake the leaves down into the well and then burn them there (or, maybe it was that he noticed there was a large accumulation of leaves that had fallen down the well between a smaller gap?) he too wanted to accelerate the process and so poured gasoline down the well onto the dry leaves. i think the story was that the "rapid oxidation" caused the stone slabs to be thrown completely free from the well. there was a lot more hysterically funny detail that i've forgotten. i think, like the first story, his father may have just arrived to see the show too, can't remember.

b.w.

Reply to
William Wixon

Fathers have a way of showing up at just the right (or wrong) moment...

Jon

Reply to
Jon Anderson

We went deer hunting in Central Nevada. Brought a big tent and expedition gear. We found a cabin with a sign above the door that said, "Use it, just don't tear it up." We thought we had died and went to heaven.

The people before us were pigs, so we decided to pick up and burn some trash. We filled the can with debris, then set it afire. I think there was a propane canister in there. One hell of a bang. Fires all over the place. We managed to stop the worst one just before it got to the cabin. The cabin and all our stuff would have gone up.

We were sweaty dirty sooty do gooders.

Steve

Reply to
Steve B

Around 1969, SWMBO bought a pair of those couch beds that flatten out into a 3/4 bed. they came flattened out in cardboard boxes. came time to get rid of the boxes, I rolled them into a bundle about 18" diameter with about a 6" hole up the middle and about eight feet long. next evening I had a fire going in the burn barrel out back and when it had burned down a bit, I stood one of these in the barrel. within miutes I had a column of fire must have been at least fifty feet in the night sky. Fortunately, no one put in a fire call. The next bundle got cut in half before burning! Gerry :-)} London, Canada

Reply to
Gerald Miller

red hot side of a burn

Reminds me of outhouse duty. RVN '68

Reply to
cavelamb

We had two galvanized 30-gallon garbage cans. The pickup guy had stacked the empties and they were stuck together. Ma told me to go outside and separate them.

I tried tugging, banging, prying, etc to no avail. I set them back upright in the driveway and drizzled an ounce or so of gasoline into the space between them, gave that a minute to creep down to the bottom and vaporize, and then tossed a match at the assembly.

The cans separated with a FWUMP! The inner can went high enough to land on the roof, but it rolled off. The bottom of the outer can was convex while the bottom of the inner one was concave but a bit of hammering with a rubber mallet fixed those minor aberrations.

Reply to
Don Foreman

Yep, classic chimney fire with an all combustible chimney. I did that once with a bunch of empty Sevin boxes (Dad was crop duster) stuffed one inside the other to about 10' or so. I cut an air flap in the bottom box. Gets rid of them quickly.

Reply to
Pete Keillor

Nice chain mail. Too bad it fails logically. A can of old style ether starting fluid would definitely "blow up" or atleast burn nearly explosively, but a pile of loose Pyrodex will only burn in a big whoosh. Maybe a faster whoosh if lit all at once by a cloud of expanding ether. The Pyrodex will make a nice mushroom cloud, especially two pounds of it, but getting it to blow up is pretty hard. Take that from somebody who has burned more than a few pounds of it. Some actually in guns. I was once sitting about 3 feet away from a one pound can that got a spark in it. I saw a beautiful fountain of fire as I did a back flip out of my chair. Now had the story been about black powder, (I've burned a few pounds of that too) it burns a whole lot more energetically. FFF pistol powder makes dandy firecrackers with water proof canon fuse all wrapped up in a paper football.

Sadly up until that point its all possible by observation if not exactly what happened, but unless that stump was made of dry rotten paper mache that conflagration still did not blow it out of the ground. Even if it was and it did disappear it would have burned up, not blown out. Ask my dad. Him and some buddies removed a stump from their swimming hole in French Creek when they were young enough to do dumb things. Back then some folks still owned dynamite. They might have use just a stick or 12 too many to remove that stump.

Anyway Pyrodex is pretty hard to get to go bang any place other than the chamber of a gun. It doesn't even make good firecrackers. Pyrodex footballs just burn and spin by jetting sparks out the fuse hole.

And even if it went bang, there was nothing to contain the concussion to direct damage to the stump, and even if there was the top of the stump is the wrong place for it. My grandfather used to remove trees and stumps on his farm with dynamite. A single stick burrowed up under the tree with a hand trowel or a shovel or pick would knock them over and pulverize the ground underneath nicely so he could easily pull the stump and roots away with his tractor. That's my mom's dad... so I come from a strong line of bang enthusiasts on both sides of the family.

On the other hand I bet it made one heck of an expanding fireball. As the oxygen was burned up at the heart of the fireball the expanding cloud of ether would have burned further and further out from the initial ignition point. Might have gotten a nice shock wave from the collapsing wave front as it collapsed back in on the vacuum. Probably burned so fast that most of the Pyrodex didn't even burn until the initial fireball collapsed.

I know. I know. I'm just no fun at all.

P.S. I always hated Pyrodex. I had more misfires with it, and it gummed up my guns faster than black powder. The only advantage it had was it was not as corrosive as black powder. Didn't matter to me as I cleaned my guns every time I used them anyway. With Pyrodex I had to clean them after every shot.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

That's why some of us are still alive I imagine.

Reply to
Bob La Londe

I prefer a 50 gal trashbag full of acetylene and oxygen.

Nuclear purple flash, a bang that'll echo for 10 seconds (at least in the hudson valley), surprisingly little destructive power, and no evidence except tiny bits of melted plastic.

Dave

Reply to
Dave__67

A friend of mine filled a 55 gallon trash bag with a mix of Oxy/ Acetylene, tied it off and then inserted two feet of cannon fuse. The trash bag was placed in between the walls of two steel building about two feet apart. When filled with the gas mix the bag expanded and was held in place by the expanded gases. When the lit fuse burned into the trash bag the noise was so loud everyone in town heard it. The explosion was powerful enough to bow the walls of both steel buildings. My friend joined the Army the next week to avoid the wrath of his father. He preferred facing the Viet Cong over his pissed off Dad. DL

Reply to
TwoGuns

I gather that "no evidence" doesn't include all the empty window frames for a couple blocks. 50 Gal of Acetylene/Oxygen makes a GOOD boom!

Some friends of mine did this with a dry cleaner's bag at the local high school, and it definitely took out all the windows for blocks. They transported the filled bag in a car, while some of the guys smoked! Sheesh! Talk about doing dumb stuff!

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

You mean like this one....

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Pete Keillor

Reply to
Pete Keillor

I had the advantage of some buffer space- no busted windows.

Dave

Reply to
Dave__67

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