Childhood Memories of Our First Home made Firecrackers

[CINDERS]

Ain't that the truth Mr E

[RASelkirk]

The things we did as kids back in the day would gobsmack most nowadays. Saltpetre and sugar smoke bombs, match head rockets , stuffing a .22 through your handlebars as you pedaled through the city to get to your favorite gopher patch. Used to be able to buy firecrackers at the corner store. That disappeared 40 years +ago. You used to be able to go to the gas station, buy a case of oil filters and get a Martini henry thrown in as a bonus. Ef'fen social engineering.

Growing up in NY, fireworks were limited to sparklers and snakes. We made snake bombs by stuffing the pellets in a matchbox with a short fuse, they would make funky smoke for 3 or 4 minutes. Taping sparklers into a bundle was pretty exciting too. Occasionally, an upperclassman with a DL would make the trip to CA and come back with M-80s, ashcans and quarter-sticks!

Russ

[mrclark303]

Back in 1980 at the age of 13, when my trusty BSA Meteor air rifle was chopped in for a BSA Airsporter, myself and my friends were obsessed by ever increasing power. leading to updated main springs, transfer port reaming etc, plus some gun powder extracted from my mates fathers shot gun cartridges, added to the pellet skirt and sealed with candle wax.

All this made was a "bang" when it hit a rabbits skull, probably did nothing....

Well, it goes without saying that this messing with explosives naturally led us to making rather dangerous home made devices that would on occasion go BOOM when we tested them out in the country...

This all came to a halt when we were stopped by the local Police Seargent on our way to another detonation.

He looked in my backpack, laughed, threw us in the back of his Police Mini Van and took us down to the Station ... We all got our ears clipped and lectured by the Seargent and got the inevitable walloping from our fathers for making our "fireworks"

It was all just country lads youthful highjinks back then, how different it would be viewed today...

An earlier generation was way worse, my father in law at the same age blew up a chicken coop among other things...

[mr.e moose]

We were a bunch of miscreants back then, but then again it was part of growing up. We never had any intent of doing harm and there was the concept of a fair fight, none of this business of a group of thugs ganging up on a lone individual.
Somehow I feel that things have not changed for the better

[mrclark303]

We were a bunch of miscreants back then, but then again it was part of growing up. We never had any intent of doing harm and there was the concept of a fair fight, none of this business of a group of thugs ganging up on a lone individual.
Somehow I feel that things have not changed for the better

Definitely not for the better ... We used to have great fun!

[bigduke6]

It was only last week when I was telling my daughter that I used to go treasure hunting, of course you have to stretch a story for a 5 year old but she was more than exited when we hit the beech armed with two shovels and my old Minelab sovereign metal detector...... to try and discover some pirate treasure.

It took me back to when I was a kid Living in Cumbria and not far away from a major training ground of WW2 in fact there were many areas of moorland used, one in particular was an endless supply of live .303 rounds and 2" mortar parachute flares that had never deployed......lots of other stuff too.

The .303 rounds were not always good condition so they were cracked open to get the valuable rocket fuel (strands of cordite)........ we only discovered the force it give off when stuffed in a tube and lit by mistake, so the rockets got bigger and bigger........ after pulling a parachute flare apart the pellet of fuel (the flare) had come out and a small chunk had come off, having the open coal fire I thought I'd see what it burned like.......... not only illuminating our house it must of lit up the whole street...........of course it wasn't long till our rockets were going to a reasonable height and illuminating the Cumbrian fells.

For obvious reasons we never touched the HE mortars that had failed to go off........ but had the honour of lighting the fuse when the Army bomb disposal came up and put them in a pile, fixed some plastic explosive, inserted detonator and the fuse and give me the special matches.........That was a bang hard to reproduce, I very much doubt that would happen anymore, letting a 13 year old kid blow up a pile of 2' HE mortars.

I even made the local press (page 3 of all pages) I remember the papers headlines as I was delivering them at the time and the front headline was about a mobile crane that had had a bit of an accident due to the driver having a few too many (he had actually swerved and hit a wall, behind the wall was a big drop and the crane went over) it was many years later after paying for my pint in the local I was telling the story about the crane, the barman had a bit of a smile on him when said he remembered it very well........... He was the driver of the crane.

[Flying10uk]

I remember as a child of about 10 someone gave me a primer cap from a shot gun cartridge that hadn't been used. Being inquisitive I wondered what would happen if you struck the end by using a 6" nail and hammer. After careful consideration I thought that the most appropriate location to try out this little experiment would be my bedroom with the door shut, to avoid any unwanted interruptions. I proceeded to strike the cap with the said nail and there was one hell of a loud bang, followed by stars in my eyes and ringing in my ears. You wouldn't believe how angry my mother was, she was shouting, she was hysterical and I think that she was expecting to find the back part of the house "blown out" because of the loud bang that she had heard.

CAUTION: I have since been told that the above is highly dangerous because the cap could "blow" back and cause serious body injury. You have been warned, so please don't try to replicate the above.

[2A-Jay]

Using my uncles Metal lathe recently we made a 33mm Thunder Mug (Signal cannon). He then gave me 10 pounds of old fashioned Saltpeter blend Cannon powder. I make 20 gram Charges wrapped in foil for the thunder mug, a 4 inch length of cannon fuse. Sounds like a 40mm M79 HE round when I fire it. Forth of July on the beach is going to be so much fun this year. (here in Washington you can legally buy Air Launch fireworks.)

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

I remember as a child of about 10 someone gave me a primer cap from a shot gun cartridge that hadn't been used. Being inquisitive I wondered what would happen if you struck the end by using a 6" nail and hammer. After careful consideration I thought that the most appropriate location to try out this little experiment would be my bedroom with the door shut, to avoid any unwanted interruptions. I proceeded to strike the cap with the said nail and there was one hell of a loud bang, followed by stars in my eyes and ringing in my ears. You wouldn't believe how angry my mother was, she was shouting, she was hysterical and I think that she was expecting to find the back part of the house "blown out" because of the loud bang that she had heard.

CAUTION: I have since been told that the above is highly dangerous because the cap could "blow" back and cause serious body injury. You have been warned, so please don't try to replicate the above.

Yeah, I was nine and thought it was a good idea to hit an emply shotgun shell with a nail. In the vice it went, a few minutes later off to the Dr I went for 5 stitches. My first shrapnel wound.

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

One fun thing was wooden match heads. I'd take the empty CO cartridge from my pellet pistol and saw off the end. Stuff it with match heads. Cut up my Dad's lawn chair, the tube was a perfect size. It launched out of sight, pretty cool. Until my Dad saw his chair. Warm bottom after that.