The Foolish Things I've Seen And Done

[Southern Son]

OK, how dumb were my mates and I? We "aquired" some smokeless powder and some magnesium tape. We had been punching holes in the side of 6mm Rem cartriges after removing the bullet, toppin them up with more smokeless, crushing and folding over the necks and then sticking the magnesium tape in the hole in the side for a fuse. We were performing "experiments" by putting these small pipe bombs in and old ammo tin we had found with various items like plastic soldiers, match box cars, etc. The ammo tin was strong enough to contain the explosion and we could check out what the boom did to the toys. We then found an old section of bicycle seat pole. We were smart enough to know that if the little ones were good, then the bicycles seat pole would be GREAT. We were not smart enough to know that the pipe bomb would be just a little too much for the ammo tin. We filled it with smokeless powder and some BB to fill up the remaining air space. The moment it went BOOOOOM!!!!!!!!!!! I knew it was too much (we were in an urban back yard, not out in the bush). I started running for the shed. As I was running to the shed, I saw the lid of the ammo tin falling out of the sky, trailing smoke. My mates that I had been with had seen it go up and they thought it went about 100 feet up. As I sat in the shed, shaking with fear, the next door neighbour put his head in the window of the shed and said something like "Well that was smart, wasn't it." I looked at him with my most innocent face and said "What?" I am fairly well convinced that the neighbour thought I was retarded, that was the look on his face, anyway. Anyway, I thought things couldn't get worse, untill I looked up the driveway and saw my mum walking down towards me. My house was about 4 doors away and apparently the BOOOOOOM was big enough that it rattled the windows in our house. Now just to recap, the explosion was heard about 1 km away (my dad was at the club having a few drinks and he heard it over the juke box), the back yard was full of smoke and fragmented ammo can, the next door neighbour had seen what we did and all the other neighbours in the area were out in the street saying that they had heard stuff falling on their roof, and I thought that I might still be able to get out of this by playing innocent and denying everthing. Damn I was stupid.

[Harter66]

Just east of Fallon Nv is a sand dune about 900 ft high . A 60' Buik hood and a little bit of snow ,2" was about all we ever got. 2 friends and I dragged that hood about 150 yd up the down wind side . That was a rush right up untill we saw the snow ending and the sand starting,we were still going 20mph when it dug in. The only smart thing we did was limp home . We went off the high side , the hood cartwheeled 50-60ft past where we stopped.

Id forgotten all about that 1 .

[nicholst55]

A few years later I learned rubbing alcohol really got a fire going. So one day as I was getting the grill ready for dad to cook up some burgers and was getting it good and ready with some alcohol when the flame shot up into the bottle and shot off like a rocket. I stood there for a minute scared to look at my now numb hand fearing it had been blown off.

Lord knows how I survived myself

Amateur! Try that with acetone sometime! Gasoline (and alcohol) is flammable; acetone is (very) highly flammable! AMHIK.

[mebe007]

whos never enjoyed a good ol roman candle war on the night of july 4th. i mean who needs eyebrows

[selmerfan]

Hmm, let's see, fireworks...6 gross of bottle rockets fits into the mouth of a wide-mouth 1 qt. mason jar. With the central fuse from a 2000 pack of Black Cats and 2" of gasoline in the bottom of the quart jar you can ignite 6 gross of bottle rockets almost simultaneously. Sparklers are also a lovely source of entertainment, take about 4 packs of them, leaving ONE, ONLY ONE, up the center for a fuse. Wrap as tightly as humanly possible with black electrical tape. Light the central fuse and stand back. It's a heck of a bang. If one fuse is good, two is better, right? NO. With two sparklers as a fuse the heat overcomes the retardant and the two burn each other out in less that half a second and the whole thing goes off right next to your leg. Ask me how I know.

[imashooter2]

My brother and I would put an arrow on Mom's clothes line and both hang off it. Then we'd let it go and that arrow would really fly. It all came to an end one breezy day when we stuck the broad head in one of the neighbor's roof. Dad was less than pleased and provided a life lesson that is vividly remembered to this day.

That patch was still on their roof when I got married and moved out of the house...

[BoolitSchuuter]

Assorted arrow stunts - check, Rocket motors used for anything other than their intended purpose - check, Assorted misuse of shotgun shells and 22's - check.
A buddy of mine and I got hold of his dad's 410 Mossberg and a couple of shells. We took the pellets out and substituted a de-fletched arrow. Hung a target on the side of his garage and backed off 20 or so yards. That arrow went thru a 2x4 and out the other side of the garage. We had no idea where that arrow went and no, we didn't hit the target.

[OBIII]

Let's see: BB gun wars--Check Bottle rocket wars--Check Fireworks (rockets, firecrackers, etc)--Check
Lye crystals, water, aluminum foil, large glass coke bottle, balloons & string. Drop lye crystals into water, swirl to mix. toss in a few chunks of aluminum foil, seat balloon over bottle mouth. When balloon is inflated, tie string around base, light bottom, let balloon go. Up, Up, POP with flame. Ain't hydrogen wonderful?
Another time, we were accosted by FAA agents. Seems we were flying our kites so high (in Arlington, Virginia), that we were actually into the landing path of pilots coming in to National Airport in Washington, DC..
Made a bunch of homemade black powder once, about 1/2 a large coffee can worth. On my way out one early Sunday morning to deliver papers, I decided to set it off outside the apartment building. I thought it would be a brief bright flash, boy was I wrong. Burned slowly, smoked ungodly, and I just knew that someone had seen me.
The things you learn when you are a kid.

[Longwood]

Bicycle spoke guns, home made brass cannon with home made black powder, steel cannon that fired one inch ball bearings using that orange surplus powder with 1946 written on the keg, C02 cartridge rockets and bombs, some using dynamite we found, shooting at dynamite with a 22, Molotov cocktails, flaming arrows, jumping into the river off of the railroad bridge, riding a home made go-cart, (with the old extremely flimsy wire spoke baby buggy wheels), down a long rough and curvy hill with no brakes, swinging out over a cliff (no water but plenty of altitude) on a piece of old and rotting fire hose tied up into a tree.
What can I say, we were wild and crazy country kids with great imaginations but no money.
Then there are the "really" stupid things (some accidental others not) I have done as an adult.

[Suo Gan]

How about working all summer with a rag tag tractor with a rag tag flail mower and an exposed PTO connection. I worked around that open PTO with an untucked shirt for the better part of the month when grandpa came over to supervise my farming enterprise and told me to be very careful around that PTO. The realization of how close I came to being wrapped around a PTO going about 200 RPM was very sobering to me, call me Einstein. Probably not my most stupid moment either 8). Lighting canvas on fire in the forest and then getting scared and going home, holding black cats to see how tough I was, getting into a fist fight with the biggest, meanest kid in school, trading rookie baseball cards that are priceless for a couple of dollars (Dad got pretty hot), fishing in my crazy, murderous neighbors 15 acre bass pond here he would shoot at me every time and almost got me a few times, catching a flock of wild turkeys and storing them in the garage, where they busted the windows out and escaped...mom will never know, just **** all over her car and everything in sight, catching a bobcat (which was the easy part) and putting it into a suitcase for a prank on the south side of town (which was the funniest thing I have ever seen, this can clear out a Buick full of young black men right now!! Twirling my daddys old Colt on my finger and having it go off into mommas new white carpet at my sisters feet, swimming across ice cold rivers in the middle of winter to get to the good fishing spots, and on and on.

[dudley2112]

Ya know I was never foolish enough to shoot an arrow straight up in the air in the day time, cant see em. So I waited until it got dark snuck down to the pond and tied an alcohol soaked rag to it so I could see it coming. I had a lot of explaining to do when my dad noticed little balls of fire shooting up from the pond.

When I was little every kid on the street had a bike as their primary means of transportation. So every year on the 4th we would turn our inocent bikes into assault vehicles by taping roman candles, satarn missles, bottle rockets and any other type of projectile to our bikes and have wars. We were smart enough to wear 2 pairs of pants and gloves to avoid being burnt by fuses.

When I was about ten I had a stroke of genius. I had a wrist rocket and a good sharp pocket knife. Great tools seperatley so combining them was a no brainer! I took my time to get the knife in the sling just right. Then pulled the thing back as far as I could....boy this was going to be cool. I still have the scar on the knuckle of my thumb where the knife lodged into bone.

When I first learned to read I noticed my dad's desposible lighter was out of fluid and I had found some lighter fluid. 1+1=2 right! So Im on the front pourch squirting lighter fluid all over this lighter and I think I got some in there! So flick flick and what do ya know I got a flame. Problem was it was my hand! Momma was not amused to see her baby boy running around the yard playing with fire.

A few years later I learned rubbing alcohol really got a fire going. So one day as I was getting the grill ready for dad to cook up some burgers and was getting it good and ready with some alcohol when the flame shot up into the bottle and shot off like a rocket. I stood there for a minute scared to look at my now numb hand fearing it had been blown off.

Lord knows how I survived myself

i did the same thing but with and pencil i had spent sharpening into the perfect projectile.. still have the lead imbedded in my hand

[Longwood]

i did the same thing but with and pencil i had spent sharpening into the perfect projectile.. still have the lead imbedded in my hand

Ahhh,,,. Another memory jog.
Pencil + tinfoil wrapped around it + match heads + lighter = rocket.
In 7th grade class, during school yet!

[dudley2112]

Ahhh,,,. Another memory jog.
Pencil + tinfoil wrapped around it + match heads + lighter = rocket.
In 7th grade class, during school yet!

haha i did the same thing but used a straw instead of a pencil

[kbstenberg]

This is the funniest thread yet.
I must have lead the most sheltered life ever.
S.S. I never laughed so hard.
Kevin

[Southern Son]

Kevin, we were so stupid, that even when we decided to "do the right thing", we ended up doing something stupid. After blowing up the ammo box (and having the whole neighbourhood start looking at us like were from the special education class, you know, the one where you were not trusted with pencils or scissors, you could only have crayons and non-toxic paste), we decided to get rid of the last of the smokeless powder.

The last of the powder had been stored in an old air rifle pellet tin, about one inch deep and 3 inches round. We took the tin and a cigarette lighter down the back yard. Now we were smart enough to know that if the powder was not contained when we lit it, then there would be no BOOM, so my mate took the top off the tin, put it on the ground and crouched down to light it. He started out leaning away from the tin while he held the cigarette lighter flame on the powder, but it took a while for the powder to ignite. During that time, he had leaned over, more towards the tin. Just when we thought that the powder was not going to ignite, it did.

As it burned, it sent a jet of flame and smoke straight up. My mate has seen it comming and started to leap to his feet but he ended up stumbling and falling backwards, landing on his butt. Obviously, this sudden and unexpected turn of events had shocked both of us. I was about to ask him if he was alright, but he beat me to it and blurted out "My face, is it burnt?" As he has said that, a heap of smoke has come out of his mouth (he must have inhailed it as he was trying to out run the jet of flame and smoke), like when a smoker takes a deep drag, and then starts talking. To me, this looked hilarious, and I started to laugh. My mate has then coughed and smoke has shot out of his nostrils and mouth and that was it, I fell to the ground laughing uncontrolablely. For some reason, my mate thought that I was being insensitive and got a little stroppy. So he starts yelling "Is my face burnt, what's happened to my face?" But all I could do was laugh, I was rolling around on the grass laughing so hard that I couldn't breath. Eventually I recovered enough of my senses to tell him that he still had eyebrows, but to this day, when ever we catch up and have a talk, if I bring the incident up, he gets stroppy with me. I think some people just have no sense of humour.

Even after nearly blowing up the back yard and nearly burning my mates face off, we still hadn't learned. A few weeks after this incident, we discovered the difference between the gas that comes out of the LPG bottle and the gas that comes out of the oxy acetalene tanks.

[HollowPoint]

I guess we never really grow up. We just get older; and hopefully wiser but, probably not.

As recently as three and a half years ago, just before the economy went south, I was still working at a local Cadillac dealership. (Hey, was over fifty years old at the time)

Our body shop was on the other side of a large partition/wall that separated it from our work area.

Periodically they'd bring in cars in need of body work and the techs would remove the existing AIR-BAG units and replace them with new ones in order to mitigate any further liability issues.

Those take-off AIR-BAG units would generally go in the trash; UNLESS we got hold of them; and WE got hold of them on several occasions.

Back behind our dealership was a stack of used tires that were put there awaiting disposal.

On one particular occasion, we took a couple of those AIR-BAG units and put them under a stack of junk tires then ran a length of wire to an old battery back far enough to where we thought it would be safe distance.

None of us really realized that those AIR-BAG units contained as much power as they did.

From ground-zero, it rained used tires to about 9 or 10 yard diameter; then those old tires would roll a ways further.

It would be an understatement to say that management was not pleased.

I think were were lucky to have kept our jobs. It was kind of hard to gauge just how displeased they actually were at the time. Some of them had looks on their faces that made us come to grips with our impending termination while a couple of the others were clearly fighting to keep from laughing out loud.

When they asked us "W T F" we thought we were trying to accomplish by this childish behavior all we could come up with on the spur-of-the-moment was some BS rationale like: "Well, these AIR-BAG are like live ordinance. We didn't want to take the chance of throwing them in the trash and having them somehow go off and hurt someone."

That was our story and we stuck to it. That line of Bull-Shi!! reasoning had just enough plausible logic to allow us to keep out jobs.

We found out later that management went back to their front offices and just laughed their asses off.

Learn from this children!!!

We never really grow up. We just get older. It's a wonder any of us are still alive.

HollowPoint

[man.electric]

HollowPoint, about ten years ago I picked up a box full of air bag units for a great price at a car show and we had similar fun. We took a sheet of plywood and put the air bag units underneath and took turns launching each other into the air and failing back down on the plywood.

[littlejack]

OK, here I go. Now don't laugh.
Make two, so you can shoot at each other with them.
Take four parts of 3/4" water pipe.
One 6" nipple. Barrell
One 90* elbow. Frame
One 3" nipple. Grip
One 3/4" pipe cap.
Make the L shape.
Drill a 1/8" hole in the cap.
Put a black cat OR equivelant fire cracker in the cap with the fuse sticking down in the hole.
An empty 12 guage shell will just slide in the end of the 6" nipple(muzzle) up to the rim.
Stand about 50 yards apart. Light the fuses. When your opponants shell comes at you,
STEP ASIDE.
And yes, you can see'em commin.
Jack

[littlejack]

I was a steel fabricator/welder for my career.
Early on, (about 18 or so years old) I made a cannon out of Shelby tubing.
It had a 1 1/4" bore, 5/8" walls, and about 2' long.
The projectiles were 1 3/16" shaft, cut 1 1/2" long, and patched.
We, my brother, myself and "another" well known demolition EXPERT, comensed to shoot.
We butted the back of the cannon against a concrete block, and elevated with firewood.
This was high "techknowledgy" at it's best.
We lived in the country on eleven acres, with the closest house being across the hiway
about a block.
Everything was going well with the black powder. Then we ran out.
We wasn't ready for that.
The demolition EXPERT I mentioned eariler, seen the can of Bullseye on the reloading bench.
Well, it was powder. RIGHT?
We measured it right out of the can into the bore.
That's about right, RIGHT? YEeeeeaaaaA, looks good to me.
We made a looooooooooong fuse. Thank you Lord. We lit it, and ran like hell.
We hid in a shed behind the grenade.
It blowed the tubing (what we could find) in strips about 1" wide and 4" long.
It blowed a hole in the hard clay groung, about 2' across and 8" deep.
That would have surly killed us all had we stood there. Don't every tell me there isn't a God.
He is my savior and keeper forever. Amen.
Jack

[waksupi]

Those air bag igniters are blasting caps. That is what the car bombers use to set off their explosives. Who knows, some day you may want to have some around to ignite other things?