Story: Incendiary Event Observer

Never hafta embellish a story - much less make one up. Life is just too damned strange as it is.

In honor of makin' the grade:

'Dammit, Chuck - Don't you EVER toss a spray can in the burnin' barrell!'

Pop had fabbed up one of them 55 gallon drum heaters for the barn when I was a kid...the kind with the little steel door and a flue stack off the back. When he scrounged an oil heater, the drum was used to burn garbage. Yeah - we burned our trash. That's whatcha did back then - ya burnt stuff ya didn't need.

Anyway, Pop's warning was just too good to p*** up. Whenever an adult sez don't EVER do something, it's either a LOT of fun - or they're bein' selfish on account of they want it all for themselves (Don't you EVER open up that liquor cabinet!).

Bein' a kid and all, I hadda find out. Grabbed a three-quarters empty can of Ford Blue engine paint, and snuck it into the evening trash *just* B4 Pop stuck it in the barrel. I figured the thing was gonna go bang...didn't want to be implicated, so's I put as much distance as I could between me and that barrel.

Now - all ya'll pyros know that a contained combustion = explosion; the more containment the higher the pressures, and the bigger the bang. A three-quarters empty can of flammable liquid aerosol further contained by an enclosed metal drum makes for quite a combination.

I'd made it around to the front of the house when...

Ka-WHAAM!

The concussion could be felt in my chest. A split second later:

'WHATTHEHELLWASTHAT?' Pop thundered.

Had to carefully measure my return to the scene-of-the-crime speed...too fast, and I was anxious to see my dirty deed - too slow and I was guilty as hell. Pop had lotsa experience in gauging this; I was always breakin' something.

Musta got the speed right. Pop stood there, slack-jawed. The door of the barrel was blown clear off, and there was a gash in the side of the barn where it had hit B4 falling to the ground. This was about 20' off the barrel. Trash everywhere, smoldering.

'wow. Musta thrown away a can by accident,' he said quietly. He then turned to me. 'THAT's why you NEVER throw spray cans in the fire!'

I nodded appreciatively. Internally, I was doin' backflips. Hot damn! I got away with it!

Even though we searched far and wide, we never found the flue stack. In my minds eye, I still see it launching at supersonic speed - a little metal rocket thrust into the stratosphere by a can of engine paint.

grenade inspector, indeed.

 

Did that on a campout with a can of hairspray one of the chicks brought. It was at a camground full of people, 6am. All my freinds were sacked out around the firepit in their bags when I dropped on the hot coals. Took about 5 minutes

 

Y'ever put a battery (not car battery) in fire.....wow.
Great story. Made me smile on a ****py day at work.

 

HAHAHA... good times.

I have a story about a big square wooden mallet and my grandpa's windshield in his 50's pickup when I was about 4.

I didn't get away with it. I can still hear dad "DAMMIT BOY!!"

 

Thanks.

I'd thought about not posting it, but the can of paint was indeed Ford Engine blue and this was the mid 60's - so there's HAMB content, right?

 

Saved by a loophole! hahaha, I love it. Great story.

 

Excellent story.

 

We used to throw live ammunition into fires and let them explode at keggers. Not as exciting as a full bottle of beer, those send shards of gl*** every where.

Geno

 

I used to have this little Elvis Spit curl on the front of my Do...

Lost it after a 'friend' of mine threw a half-empty can of lighter fluid on a fire and I tried to kick it out before we were pulling shrapnel out of our sacks.

When I kicked it, a gyser of fluid/fire shot up and instantaneously fried my spit curl.

I took it as God's way of telling me spit curls are gay.

 

That happened to me one time... only with an unopened can of beer. We were all camping up at Ice House in the Sierras and 17 out of 18 of us were beyond buzzed (including myself).We had this outrageous bonfire going... like 6' poles stacked up like a teepee with flames going 15 feet high (Can you say... Forest Fire fast five times?!). So the whole time people were chuckin' their empty beer cans into the fire and watching them melt etc. Me and a buddy were sitting about 10-12 feet away and next thing you know... BLAMMO. Some ****head threw the unopened can into the fire for ****s and giggles. Luckily nobody got hurt and that 6' tall bonfire didn't get knocked over. I was covered in beer and dirt and it was ****ing disgusting. Pissed off that night but next morning was able to laugh it off.

Nowadays I don't sit so close to bonfires...

Travis

 

Don't mix saltpeter, sugar and matches in a 2lb. ****er tub and put in the microwave.

I'm saying it so your dad doesn't have to think of it.

 

What kinda matches? Ohio blue tips? Do I cut off the stix? How far away do I hafta be from the microwave?

Sounds like a neato huntin' cabin project.

 

Hey Travis, were you up there with a group of ******** 4 wheelers/rockcrawlers called the Pirates of the Rubicon?

I've wheeled with them, as well as the Tinbenders, down at the Hammers in the Mojave desert. The bonfires that they built were HUGE! They like to throw cans of baked beans, starter fluid, beers, you name it. But, the sitting circle is a lot further away from the fire. LOL!

 

At the last gas station I worked in, we'd take 20 oz. plastic soda bottles and put a valve stem in the cap. Add a couple ounces of water and pressurize it, then throw it way up in the air to land on the concrete drive. Sounded like a cherry bomb when it exploded.

 

Yeah--that post should be in Techmatic!

I bet that could be turned into a propulsion system if gas goes up any more!

 

by drilling a hole in the cap and wedging the stem in? How much pressure are we talking?

 

After I quit laughing, I had to let you know that after drilling the hole in the cap, put in a valve stem, and use a remote air hose of one sort or another, it will hold over 70 PSI of air pressure. How much farther can you pressurize it? I don't plan on finding out. That may also explain why it sounds like a cherry bomb!

 

Hahaha...that's a great one.

 

a bonfire on the beach in june after graduation, all the text books and home work I had saved in highschool, a couple of gallons of gas, 3 old christmas trees that we had found, lots of pallets and misc s****, ***orted fire crackers, M80's, M1000, and a can of Berryman's...never ever throw a can of Berryman's on the fire and stand there, just cause you threw everything else on the fire and it just burned or made a noise...

 

My friend's son tried to start the bonfire with a quart of toluene. For you non chemist types out there, toluene is the 2nd "T" in TNT Tri-Nitro-Toluene.

3rd degree burns on his face and arms. Not pretty at all. Be careful boys.

 

Yeah, fire is like cool and stuf... uuhhhuhhhuhuhhhuuuhhuuhhhu

 

Oh, I've got all sorts of pix of you two. Say, where's that hush money I was promised??

 

Neat stories, guys!

The Peebmonster is waay cool - when we re-did the back yard this year, she let me have a firepit. Only burned off the eyebrows once...

As far as blowin' **** up goes - the most bizarre OT thing we ever did was to have 'grenade' fights up north. 'Grenade' fights involved copious amounts of firecrackers and freshwater clams - you crack open the clam with a screwdriver and cram a couplea medium-sized firecrackers in there. Light 'em off and whip the clam directly at yer opponent. Clamshell contains and thereby amplifies the explosion; the shell disintegrates and becomes organic shrapnel.

After you run outta clams or firecrackers (whichever comes first) you spend the rest of the evening pickin' clam shards outta yer skin. Takes about a week for the clam gut smell to disappear, tho.
And yeah. Clamshell grenades were my idea. I rarely allowed life in the House of Speed and Chrome to get boring.

 

Holy ****!!! I have got to meet you!!! You are the brother I never had and my Mother was happy about it!!!

By the way, you got bail money??

 

If im not mistaken that is two awesome stories by chuckspeed in two days.

That story cracked my *** up...

 

you da man! you da man! I'll putcha up come next WDC man!

 

We had a stag party at one of my mates places in the country, big PVC pipe Spud cannon in action, and a large bonfire...... we ended up putting every single aerosol can in the house and garden on the fire that night along with running out of Potatoes for the cannon and laying down some big burnouts on his bike... (yup you guessed it the worlds ugliest strippers had appeared and dissapeared so everything else in the house got a good seeing to).
Others I have done over the years are plastic soda bottles with the lids on get them right and they explode on the fire, and I was waiting for the girl on survivor the other night to find out what happens with bamboo on the fire but it didn't happen......

 

Saltpeter = Pot***ium Nitrate
Matchheads = Sulfur
Sugar = Binder

or

subs***ute charcoal for sugar and it's gunpowder.

Mine was just a giagundous 2 lb. smoke bomb that almost ruined the hot dog I was cooking on top of the ****er tub.

 

At the place I used to work at, it was slow all the time (oil change place...). Well, if you take an empty oil bottle, or a larger 4 quart diesel oil bottle, or a much larger washer fluid concentrate jug.....poke a small hole in it......then take the air hose with the "air gun" attachment on the end of it, and stuck it in that hole....put it all in the pit, close the pit covers, hit the trigger with your foot and wait. Eventually the bottles blow with enough power to shake the building. That was a lot of fun...broke a couple air nozzles doing that too.