Childhood Memories of Our First Home made Firecrackers

[CINDERS]

Sames as you painter we used a piece of 1/2 inch PVC @ 2-3' long with tuppenny rockets a 2 man bazooka team taking pot shots at various things including stray cats and bird (no animals were hit or injured) they were about as accurate as a handful of wheat chucked in a dust storm but it was fun watching the smoke trail heading in the targets general direction!
We had 4 penny crackers (Fourpnie Bangers we called them) which resembled a half a stick of dynamite they were the largest you could get they had a double fuse so you broke one end off near the cracker so you had double the length of fuse to run away, sneaking around on Guy Fox night armed with these lethal things saw a few mail boxes bent out of shape.
You could at a pinch push it most of the way into a 1 pint milk bottle then light the wick and push it all the way in was a tight fit but could be done you had two options throw it and hope it went off in the air or leave it sat there and scarper fragmented pretty well.
I progressed into making gun powder at home also thermite powder both packed into a 3/4" copper pipe flattened at one end I used a sodium nitrate mix to light the thing it worked well a fair few times the last one I packed the mix too tightly and had a detonation showering some of dads cars with shrapnel to say my ring was stinging was an understatment......
Yes if you listen to John Williamsons "Cracker Night" thats how it was for us kids in the 60's good clean fun and yes all our cats ended up under our beds with saucers for eyes lots of fond memories Charlie

Done that one as well Jim by heck it certainly made one's ears ring........