Well , OK , here goes :
My best friend from my school days had announced he was going to put on a fish fry . Invited a ton of folks from farms around his . Problem was , he was not catching fish from his own lake at near the rate needed for the fry .
I had just come back from a camping trip and had an empty propane lantern bottle , one of the old style tall , skinny screw-on types . I also had a fresh pound of a shotgun powder given to me that I had no use for .
Well , I hacksawed the top threads off , poured in the powder , still had a ton of room , so topped it off with 4F priming powder ( I'd never prime that many flintlocks in my life ) , stuck in a spark plug , sealed it with a tube of clear silicone , rigged a pair of electrical wires to it with a piece of bailing wire to hang it from , and went to his lake that night .
He had a little skiff and a wire fence was strung out across the middle of the lake . We rowed out and hung the cylinder from the fence , about 6 feet under , upside down . Rowed back to shore and touched the wire ends to his truck battery . Heard a muffled UMMPH an a shake in the ground . A pillar looking a lot like a hot water heater with out a skin ( and about a 40 gallon size ) rose out of the water , held for a second , then collapsed back down . Was not at all what I expected to see . He collected a skiff - o - fish in a few minutes .
Problem solved .
I guess it's true - no problem can't be solved with the proper application of some high explosives.
Chris