Childhood Memories of Our First Home made Firecrackers

[painter777]

Any of you make home made firecrackers when you were young?
I mean to young to be allowed to have them per mom and dad.
Do you believe it may have contributed to you building bigger and bigger home made explosive devices as you aged?
What is it about something that goes boom that we love to see, feel and hear?

A phone call last night with my brother got us to reminiscing about making our first fire crackers when we were younger.
Anyone remember the kids cap guns that used a roll of caps?
Well my brother and I think we stumbled on to how or why we started making them.

Well one hot muggy day, too hot to be running around capping each other, we were sitting under a shade tree popping off a cap at a time. Being young country boys more at home running up and down the river banks with our wrist rocket sling shots in hand and pockets full of nice hard not quite ripe crab apples, we always managed to find something we weren't suppose to be doing. One day after a major crab apple battle we'd seen the neighbor across the roads driveway was covered with them. Paid it no mind but later when he got home and had pulled in he'd crushed them thus stained his driveway . He was a particular one with perfect grass and manicured bushes. Well he threw such a fit even though we denied it was us....... until he pointed out we had the only crab apple tree on the street. Well, we found ourselves grounded to the yard once again.

So while sitting under that very tree I started to pull a roll of caps and without tearing them off the roll would fold one over the other until you had a stack of caps. We grabbed a sewing needle and would push the point from the center bottom up through the center of the caps until it popped up through the top of the stack. Now to bind it, we found using masking tape worked best to wrap it tight but leaving the top with the needles point open. We had it figured out, very proud of ourselves. Leaving the top open would allow us to stick the head of the match there for our fuse, but only after pulling out the needle. We learned the hard way at how slowly you'd have to pull that needle out..... too quick and boom, you'd have to start all over. The needle was how you pierced the center of the caps powder load and kept it lined up as you folding each cap zig zag style back and forth. Finally we caught on how to extract the needle without setting it off. Our first try, by placing a match head on the top and lighting the end was a success much bigger boom than we could have ever expected. Problem was you couldn't light and throw because it would blow out the match. Later after finding a rather large longer needle, I believe it was for leather work we were able to stack up to 3 cap rolls on. This blast nearly equaled the smaller cherry bombs we could buy when out of state on trips. We managed to blow up that neighbors mail box, but still got busted. We proudly served our time, while making bigger and better home made fire crackers.

Of course over the years after many birthdays we progressed to much larger ka-booms now having access to black powder..... etc. Information that maybe I shouldn't share.

Just a memory from long ago I thought I'd share.
Funny how many gun enthusiast have similar experiences.

Regards and Never Convicted
Charlie-Painter777

Information

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[browningautorifle]

Anyone remember the kids cap guns that used a roll of caps?

I do remember having those. I had a box of the roll up caps and wondered if the little gun that fired them was magic or did they just take a whack to detonate? I took a whole roll in the box out to the stable floor, which was concrete...set it down and hit it with the claw hammer. Immediately I had my answer...

[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........

[browningautorifle]

it certainly made one's ears ring

I have a couple BP stories too, could have been worse but no one got killed that day either.

[mr.e moose]

When I was a young lad I came across a box of Meteor track signals in our local railway yard. Smart fellow that I was at the time I took one and decided to hit it with a hammer to see how loud it would be.
Lucky for me I didn't lose a eye or put the hammer through my head. Young and stupid seldom get a second chance.

[browningautorifle]

Meteor track signals

Again, for those of us knowing what that was at the beginning of the post...one holds their breath. That would have been like hitting a bomb...

[CINDERS]

Used to set the track dets when we were working in Train order sections not train control (signals)work on the track points or if the signals were down while we were working on them they went at a set distance away from us think it was 500M for the first lot the spacing was 100M between the sets in this sequence which the locomotive will hit first;
1 det - to alert the driver there are workers ahead and to begin to slow down and alert us - space - 2 dets - again to warn us the train is getting closer the driver to bring the train further down 3 dets - space - the train must be under control at this point so it can stop quickly and us to be clear of the rails had 300M before they got our position.

We had the train schedule so work was carried out between units so we did not have to set the dets again get the job done between trains then pick up your dets & go home some noobs forgot a set one day and the rail depot manager tore them to pieces as the train driver did not know what to think had happened because it was night time.
Bright orange & about 2" in dia good enough to wreck your hand

[browningautorifle]

Bright orange & about 2" in dia

Sounds good, let's get some to hang out at 100M for range practice. Maybe for .22s? No doubt when you hit them?

[CINDERS]

Be nice Jim be like mini tannerite (which we cannot have) they are rigidly controlled as they are registered as an explosive.

[mr.e moose]

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.