was thinking (time to run)

[firefly1957]

Some time ago I read a thread about tannerite and was surprised that it worked when the ingredients were not that volatile and wondered if smokeless powder would do the same? I am not going into all the details of tannerite but it is a reactive target that explodes when hit with a supersonic bullet. I just cleaned my 6mm Remington and needed to fire a fouling shot before setting it aside for vermin control and decided to drill a 7/8" hole in a piece of firewood (Lengthwise) well I drilled a 4" deep hole and decided that is a lot of powder so I filled it about 3/4 with black powder then some spilled mixed smokeless scrap powder. Covering the hole with 2 " masking tape I marked the center set it 80 yard out and fired. I was surprised by the extra noise the gun made then noticed the cloud of smoke at the target! I went down and started putting out little fires as black powder burns very hot the wood was hardly damaged but the tape had caught fire and the hole was charred. Well now I had to see what just smokeless would do? I drilled a new 7/8" hole across the grain this time and two inches deep filled it with mixed spilled scrap powder covered with masking tape and marked the center. Set it back out and fired I noticed it was a bit louder and the wood was split! I went down and there were no fires and wood was laying apart After taking picture I found three pieces 5 feet away too! I should have known that a super sonic bullet could detonate powder but have never thought of it before.

[LuvMy1911]

Thats pretty cool! I always suppected that under the right conditions smokeless powder was able to detonate. However, I've never had a desire to experiment with it much... here's why!

At least you had the good sense to get a little distance away!

When I was younger and foolisher, I "rebuilt" some fireworks that failed to go off. The first two went just fine, but the third I had run out of regular fuse. Thought I'd make a fuse out of a plastic sparkler. That sparkler fuse was WAY faster than I bargained for, plus the materials in the third "rebuilt" firework contained some bottle rockets that failed to ignite.

Yeah, you guessed it. Instead of emitting streams of sparks, the last one went airborne on me. It bounced off the top of my forehead, scorched off a little of my hair and both of my eyebrows. After that it passed about 3 foot over my aunt and uncle's heads striving for mach 1 or a low earth orbit. Who would have thought that something about the size of a very small candybar would be so lively!

I was told to never do that again!

But your experiment was rather interesting. I figured that the black powder was most certainly detonate. I wouldn't have thought the smokeless would be able to. Thanks for the pictures!

[no34570]

Wow,that is cool!

LuvMy1911 : That is not cool,you were lucky,I had a mate,when we were younger and we could have fireworks,playing around with crackers,well one went off in his hand,blew his little finger off and ripped open his hand,not long after that our government banned fireworks,not just for that incident,but there was alot over the years.

[firefly1957]

LuvMy1911 : At one time I had 72 very powerful M-80's about 7 of them did not go off I had a great idea on what to use them for and a safe place to do it but I did not expect what happened it was a good thing I chose a safe place. One of those M-80's would split a 4" steel well casing pipe or shred a steel garbage can. Dropped on the grass they left a 10 inch wide 2 inch deep crater! Today it would be a terrorism charge for setting one off!

[Echo]

M-80's are grenade simulators...

At Perry, the AF & Marine contingents were good-natured (sorta...) competitors. A chum caught the Marine team having a meeting in a Perry hootch, snuck up, threw a lit M-80 inside, and pulled the door too & fastened it. 16x16 WWII hut built by POW's. It held together, and my chum was long gone by the time they got the door open.

[Frank46]

Now I'm not alluding to this, but a M-80 was I have been told is equal to 1/4 stick of dynamite. Now having said that it will really do a job on a chemical toilet. Blue stuff and do do every where.
Frank

[firefly1957]

You really can not compare M-80's to dynamite while both do damage dynamite has much higher pressure wave.

[jonas302]

Get a few pounds of exploding target from Midway about the time your firewood hits the ground you will start to hear sirens in the distance.. Can't believe they send me that stuff in the mail (:

[firefly1957]

jonas302 I was reading on that stuff when I decided to try the spilled powder I had ready to burn. I think it would be a lot cheaper to just buy it as fertilizer while we still can.