OT Methane Hazard

Cribbed from a thread on this subject at alt.jokes.limericks and tweaked a bit my me:

To launch right is truely an art, Great thrust you must always impart, Just eat lots of beans, To give you the means, And rip off a really huge fart.

Jeff

Spin it like you want; an igit is an igit no matter what ideology they cling to. No reference to you - you may be biased 'towards' the right but you are not an igit. (BFG)

Ken.

Ah...fun.

Yes, I should have been dead several times over. I suspect that's true of more than a few people here.

-- Ed Huntress

Too true. One of my more interesting moments was entering my high school with a pocketfull of homemade (and nicely dried) guncotton. When challenged about the veracity of my bragaddo concerning my knowledge of chemistry I dragged out said pocketful and (with regard to *my* personal safety) lit it! My fellow students (and not a few teachers) gave me a lot of space after that demo. Amazingly, that incident did not land me in trouble (uinlike many others). I swear they had a tape recording in the office that said "Ken Davey - REPORT to the principle's office" - to save time.

Ken. PS: Ever drop a pea-sized chunk of sodium metal into a vial of concentrated hydrochloric acid? Hint: do it by remote control or 'don't try this at home'!

Uh...no. Nobody ever told me that I should.

My adventures were more like flying a kite using a wire-recorder wire for a string, and having it land on a high-tension line (fortunately, steel recorder wire is a pretty good resistor: I only flew ten feet or so). And then, learning to race a car on the local dirt roads (I recently visited a row of saplings I mowed down; new ones that replaced them are at least 30 feet tall).

I was very careful with gunpowder. I still have all my fingers and both eyes. I do have a small scar where a wad of burning saltpeter/sugar mixture sputtered up and stuck to my skin, but nothing serious.

-- Ed Huntress

Reminds me of the 4th of July when my brother and I had mixed up 1000 cc of fresh gunpowder and took a pinch out of the open beaker to "test" it by lighting it. Yep that damn spark jumped a few feet and ignited the whole thing, in the garage! I expected the old man would raise hell with us but actually thought it was pretty funny since nobody got injured.

Mark

I suppose you know that there is a critical mass of black powder that will explode without containment. I don't recall what that size is, but not knowing that fact used to cost kids some digits and other things.

You were lucky, pard'.

-- Ed Huntress

My memory of a stupid childhood pyrotechnic experiment was putting some powdered magnesium (I think it came from from a Gilbert chemistry set.) into a heavy glass ashtray, setting it on the kitchen floor and lighting it.

I stood back admiring it for a few seconds until the intense heat caused that ashtray to shatter and the burning magnesium raised hell with mom's kitchen floor.

Jeff

That must have been a tough one to explain to the insurance company. "And what was it you were smoking, Mrs. Wisnia?" d8-)

-- Ed Huntress

Okay, so I'm late and catching up, but Gunner wrote on Sat, 11 Nov 2006 16:29:06 GMT in rec.crafts.metalworking :

Or they see something done on TV/Movies and think they can do the same, not knowing of the preparations involved. Be it launch tubes holding the sphincter open, to ramps tipping the car just "so" for that cool stunt in the movies.

tschus pyotr

I gave up my experiments after a homemade M-80, tossed casually onto the back lawn, blew out a crater the size of a dinner plate.

After the ringing in my ears stopped, Jesus came to me and said,

"Son, if you intend to make it through life with most of your parts attached, I suggest you find another hobby.".

I took it to heart. Besides, after Ed Kamm set his basement on fire making rocket fuel, every kid in town had his chemistry set flushed down the toilet by his parents.

Paul K. Dickman

Yup, among many lessons prior to age 20 I learned to never tie two horses to the same rope. One of the horses spooked & took off. The rope wrapped around my legs and I was being dragged, skin abrading and head bouncing. If one of the halters had not broken I would have been dragged to death.

Another lesson -- just because you CAN leave a 1/8th mile snowmobile track showing just one runner doesn't mean you SHOULD.

-- Mark

...another one who beat the insurance actuaries.

Speaking of having ropes wrap around you, I forgot one that was so bad I repress it. I was learning to fly gliders in college, actually learning to run the Lincoln V8-powered winch, standing outside of the cage behind the operator (there was room for only one inside). The glider released the steel cable -- military surplus target-drone tow cable -- and the little parachute failed to open. Wanting to avoid a fouled cable, the operator gave the Lincoln full throttle and the cable came down like a crazed snake.

The sucker wrapped around behind the cage and ran across my legs; I screamed; the operator hit the brake just as I got yanked off my feet. I was maybe one second from dead that day.

-- Ed Huntress

Several years ago the shop where I worked generated a bunch of magnesium chips. I suggested burning some. We filled a 5 gallon bucket about 3/4 full with water and placed a fair sized box of chips on top. I told everyone that we would see some great fireworks when the burning chips hit the water. As we watched the stuff burn the shop pessimist was complaining about nothing happening and was turning to go back into the shop when the chips fell into the water. Everybody but him shielded their eyes. This intense white flame shot up out of that bucket about 30 feet high. The pessimist exclaimed: "MY EYES!, MY EYES!". His eyes were OK but he was sure impressed. After the huge flame and all the snowy ashes we decided not to burn any more mag chips. ERS

That articlle "forgot" to mention he was a soldier, who presumably should have known a little biut more about explosives.

Most soldiers dont know shit about explosives. They may know how to stick a cap in a demo charge, or prime a grenade..but thats about all they know.

Same with US cops, damned few know much about firearms.

Gunner

"A prudent man foresees the difficulties ahead and prepares for them; the simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences."

- Proverbs 22:3

There are subjective interpretations of what "explode" means. If you mean, "self-contain and detonate", then with black powder, the critical mass is around 600lb.

If you mean, explode with enough gas output, fire, and force to destroy an ordinary residential home -- about 25lb will do it.

LLoyd