Balloon pop distances ??

[jeffwilson34]

[quote author=flogged link=1184679835/0#9 date=1184731065][quote author=yew.sir-name link=1184679835/0#7 date=1184716432]i've never encountered a cherry bomb

They were my favorite. Gives you an idea how old I am. I was thirteen in the early 80's.. cherry bombs and m-80s were banned in the US sometime in the 60's I believe.. so those explosives were already old by the 1980's when I plundered them.

Cherry bomb was an actual little bomb. Had one of those thick green waterproof fuses on it, spherical red bomb body. Great BOOOM, you felt it. Wrecking toilets (flush is down) and mailboxes were the kind of delinquent things often done with them. First one I detonated cost me... I didn't realize to respect them and treated it like a smoke bomb  or a firecracker. Lit the fuse and tossed it about a yard in front of me ... BOOOM. Permanently knocked my hearing down a notch or two but I still loved it. Left a little crater, complete with a miniature mushroom cloud.

The M-80's were insane - the real ones at least. My Dad didn't let me have those   They were equivalent to 1/4 .. 1/8 stick of dynamite.

That was a different era in the US. To think kids used to be able to run around with those things. Now you'd likely be charged as a terrorist... lol
[/quote]

cherry bombs are obsolete in the us? oh how american shows and cartoons have lied to me. i've always wanted to flush a cherry bomb, closest i've got was a banger (weak ass firecraker type thing) tossed into a lake. bangers are banned here, since the late 90s i think. but there are certain fireworks if stripped down... BOOM! can take out a washing machine and such. not that i condone washing machine destruction. but it sure is fun[/quote]

They are still around but you have to know someone that knows somebody.

 

[Xenodius]

They were my favorite. Gives you an idea how old I am. I was thirteen in the early 80's.. cherry bombs and m-80s were banned in the US sometime in the 60's I believe.. so those explosives were already old by the 1980's when I plundered them.

Cherry bomb was an actual little bomb. Had one of those thick green waterproof fuses on it, spherical red bomb body. Great BOOOM, you felt it. Wrecking toilets (flush is down) and mailboxes were the kind of delinquent things often done with them. First one I detonated cost me... I didn't realize to respect them and treated it like a smoke bomb or a firecracker. Lit the fuse and tossed it about a yard in front of me ... BOOOM. Permanently knocked my hearing down a notch or two but I still loved it. Left a little crater, complete with a miniature mushroom cloud.

The M-80's were insane - the real ones at least. My Dad didn't let me have those They were equivalent to 1/4 .. 1/8 stick of dynamite.

That was a different era in the US. To think kids used to be able to run around with those things. Now you'd likely be charged as a terrorist... lol

I love experimenting with flash. I know it is dangerous and sensitive, but with proper care and minute amounts, it is essentially harmless. M80's used 3g of flash... I started out retarded and my first salute was 20g... Needless to say it was WAY FREAKIN LOUD!

Cherry bombs were about 1g. Thats ~1.85 cents of flash powder. The problem is the casing. You can buy cannonfuse (the green, cotton wrapped BP core fuse you mentioned before, now called visco) on ebay, as well as blackhead aluminum, and KCLO4 from Skylighter or Firefox. I was lucky and bought 5lb's before the injuction.

I don't condone illegal devices, however, it is completely legal to own all the precursors to them. Oh, and its not legal to store it, period. Or to use flash powder in any device intended to produce a report in any state where its illegal to use flashlight crackers, like BlackCats... Buts its 100% legal if you make it and then immediately use it.

But yeah, 60 bucks spent wisely will net you more m80's than you could reasonably use in 2 years...

yup i found out about the 1966 cpa while using the goog, i recon americans have the sencond best fireworks in the world, but the site said m80's are nothing like a quarter stick of dynamite, m80s have 3 grams of powder whereas the legal limit is 50mg and dynamite has 37 grams or something. i also found cherry bombs inside the us... but i doubt they are the same ones

Dynamite has ZERO RELATION TO FLASH POWDER. Sorry for the caps, but that correlation drives me freakin nuts! Flash powder is not an explosive. It is a powder (duh) that produces gas when it deflagrates, and deflagrates exponentially faster under the pressure created by its own deflagration. However, when not confined well, it doesn't deflagrate fast enough to produce what we term an explosion-- simply a poof. Flash powder, at best, when confined REALLY well, (steel) produces a Velocity of Detonation of about ~1200 m/s. Dynamite is surplus of ~6200! m/s! Dynamite is nitroglycerin mixed with diatomaceous earth or similar porous, powdered material. Usually its an 8:2 ratio. BTW, nitroglycerin is not as sensitive as most people make it seem. Acetone peroxide, hexamethelyne tetramine diamine, diazodinitrophenol, or any other primary. Those can actually detonate when you firmly tap them with a hammer. Oh, and the CPSC banned purchase of blackhead aluminum, mainly used for flash powder, while still letting people buy hexamine and diatomaceous earth, the two important things required to make and detonate military grade high explosives. Though hexamine mixed with wax is used as fuel tablets in camping, buying a whole pound of powdered hexamine for $5.50 is far cheaper.

Nitroglycerin can be made from air, water, vegetable oil, baking soda and industrial drain cleaner, which is the only component that can be recycled. (as in, once you have it, you don't need to buy more, unless you spill :) That is, provided you have tons of varied paraphernalia, including a plasma torch and tons of glassware and PVC tubing. And I am not making that up... you can simply buy glycerin, (I have some) or make it by reverse saponification of most any oil. The plasma torch is fired, then stuck underwater, which produces trace amounts of NOx, primarily NO2. NO2 then condenses with water to form HNO3, or nitric acid. A proper mix of nitric acid and sulfuric acid (Industrial drain cleaner) is then used to nitrate the glycerin... carefully.

But, in all honesty, I wouldn't make any explosive except ammonal, which is ~95% purity prilled ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed 19:1 with blackhead aluminum... which you can buy on eBay. Safe, legal (when used properly), cheap and powerful... more powerful than dynamite by a few hundred m/s.

Sorry, bit of a thread hijack/rant... ;D ;D

 

[styropyro]

I love experimenting with flash.  I know it is dangerous and sensitive, but with proper care and minute amounts, it is essentially harmless.  M80's used 3g of flash... I started out retarded and my first salute was 20g... Needless to say it was WAY FREAKIN LOUD!  

HAHA! Sounds like my first experiment with flash. I was used to filling toilet paper rolls with KNO3/S/Al not powerful flash for a small boom. When I first got the chemicals in the mail for flash I made 15 grams and threw it all in a tube thinking it wasn't going to be big. I was wrong. That was the loudest thing on the ground that I ever heard. And it also didn't help that I was in a neighborhood full of idiots.

 

[flogged]

Dynamite has ZERO RELATION TO FLASH POWDER. Sorry for the caps, but that correlation drives me freakin nuts! Flash powder is not an explosive. It is a powder (duh) that produces gas when it deflagrates, and deflagrates exponentially faster under the pressure created by its own deflagration. However, when not confined well, it doesn't deflagrate fast enough to produce what we term an explosion-- simply a poof. Flash powder, at best, when confined REALLY well, (steel) produces a Velocity of Detonation of about ~1200 m/s. Dynamite is surplus of ~6200! m/s! Dynamite is nitroglycerin mixed with diatomaceous earth or similar porous, powdered material. Usually its an 8:2 ratio. BTW, nitroglycerin is not as sensitive as most people make it seem. Acetone peroxide, hexamethelyne tetramine diamine, diazodinitrophenol, or any other primary. Those can actually detonate when you firmly tap them with a hammer. Oh, and the CPSC banned purchase of blackhead aluminum, mainly used for flash powder, while still letting people buy hexamine and diatomaceous earth, the two important things required to make and detonate military grade high explosives. Though hexamine mixed with wax is used as fuel tablets in camping, buying a whole pound of powdered hexamine for $5.50 is far cheaper.

Nitroglycerin can be made from air, water, vegetable oil, baking soda and industrial drain cleaner, which is the only component that can be recycled. (as in, once you have it, you don't need to buy more, unless you spill :) That is, provided you have tons of varied paraphernalia, including a plasma torch and tons of glassware and PVC tubing. And I am not making that up... you can simply buy glycerin, (I have some) or make it by reverse saponification of most any oil. The plasma torch is fired, then stuck underwater, which produces trace amounts of NOx, primarily NO2. NO2 then condenses with water to form HNO3, or nitric acid. A proper mix of nitric acid and sulfuric acid (Industrial drain cleaner) is then used to nitrate the glycerin... carefully.

(...)

Sorry, bit of a thread hijack/rant... ;D ;D

Sounds like I'm not the only pyro. I know what you mean about the casing - that's the key to getting a good boom out of flash powder. Me and friend used to make our own gun powder. I still remember purchasing potassium/sodium nitrate, sulfur and charcoal and then grinding them up and mixing them in the correct proportions. That was back in the day, when hobby shops used to sell chemistry stuff - test tubes, beakers, little vials of chemicals. Hard to find that stuff retail any more. That stuff would go poof, but if you confined it properly (like in a pipe bomb) it would still go BOOM. Same friend's Dad was a cop, and he had equipment in the basement to make his own shotgun shells.. we used to loot the powder he used in those too. lol. Make toilet paper wad bombs.

I had another friend that used to do 'group buys' from a fireworks place (I think it was Blue Angels?). Still remember trying helping him carry these heavy packages to his room and get things sorted before his parents got home. Something like 50-100 pounds of fireworks.

I was going to make nitroglycerin. Had my heart set on it. Fortunately my Mom's boyfriend (parent divorced at the time), who was a chemist, talked me out of it. He understood how extremely dangerous making nitro was.. prolly saved my life. I've got another old friend (in his 60's) who DID make nitroglycerin as a kid. That was way back when chemistry was considered cool Anyway, he managed to make a tiny amount of the stuff, but was understandably terrified of it. He kept it in the freezer. Finally he decided he needed to get rid of it somehow. Apparently he very carefully lowered into a storm drain (using string!) along the street. It still ended blowing up and destroying part of the sewer system. The city fortunately blamed it on 'swamp gas' lol

Later I had another friend that went through a pipe bomb phase. We'd make pipe bombs and then blow old electronics up - TV's, computers.. whatever. Anyway I was with my friend one day when he was making a pipe bomb. As he was screwing on the end bit he mentioned something like 'u know you should really put vasoline on the threads to prevent them from sparking and causing the bomb to blow up in your hand'. That really freaked me out and I finally realized how dangerous fooling around with explosives was. I chilled after that.

 

[Xenodius]

Personally, I plan on progressing more towards rockets, both stick and spin stabilized BP rockets, as well as hummers and probably some saxons. But my dad LOVES booms! ;D

I plan on lighting LOTS of flash unconfined with my DIY laser when its all done.

About the NG in the sewers... LOL!

Personally, NG is awesome cause its powerful, cheap, easy, and you can stabilize it by adding various other chemicals. OFC, they weaken it too... but not much.

 

[Hemlock_Mike]

HINT:  Avoid KClO3 --  Strong stuff.  Flash is powerful.

Mike

 

[styropyro]

HINT: Avoid KClO3 -- Strong stuff. Flash is powerful.

Mike

But it is ALWAYS fun to mix up a tiny bit of KClO3 and Sulfur and smack it with a hammer! A pyrotechnicians's worst nightmare turned into cheap entertainment lol.