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DIY Fireworks


BEC

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Years ago, I used to shoot Class B fireworks at my parents big July 4th. party. I had a crazy neighbor that insisted on helping. When he showed up, he had a homemade firework that he wanted to shoot off at the show.

He took a 5 gal. plastic pail and put 1 pound of black powder in the bottom of it, and laid a fuse on it and left it out of the bucket. Then he placed a piece of newspaper over the powder and procedeed to fill the 5 gal bucket with Cremora Coffee Creamer.

I refused to light the darn thing by hand, So I stretched 100 feet of wire and taped an electric match to the fuse, and lit it with a car battery.

I swear to all things holy, this thing looked like a miniture nuclear explosion, complete with mushroom cloud. Scared the spectators so bad that several got up and walked around to the front of the house. They complained about the heat from the explosion, and they were back at least 120 feet.

I will never even light a candle in that "friend's" presence.

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http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-lCA_OHOyoE0/acetylene_bombs_4th_of_july/

redneck fireworks. blowing up garbage bags full of acetylene and oxygen.

It take some fine tuning to get the mix right.

Yeah man , I've seen some of those when I used to hang out with the wrong crowd . The wrong crowd would be some of my older brothers friends . Once one of those was set off I'd be outta there , knowing that the police would not be far behind .
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redneck bottle rocket launcher w/8500 bottle rockets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3miqnTbae7g

actually, a fairly thoughtful and creative execution of an idea.

I like it ! The only thing I would change would be to trim about 4" off the stems to make it more interesting . Then again , bottlerockets are verboten around here so I would have to use skyrockets instead . Could be very interesting [:D].
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redneck bottle rocket launcher w/8500 bottle rockets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3miqnTbae7g

actually, a fairly thoughtful and creative execution of an idea.

My same neighbor does something similar every year, only he uses the previous year's Christmas tree. By July it's good and dry, he stands it up and tapes an enorumous amount of Cheap fireworks to it and lights it.
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http://www.metacafe.com/watch/yt-lCA_OHOyoE0/acetylene_bombs_4th_of_july/

redneck fireworks. blowing up garbage bags full of acetylene and oxygen.

It take some fine tuning to get the mix right.

Dee you would be surprised how easy it is, all you do is set a cutting torch as if you were ready to burn/cut metal and tap the tip of the torch on something flat and the flame goes....your ready, perfect mixture. [6] Many years ago I was a shipfitter in a shipyard.

Plastic ziplock or garbage bags are somewhat safe if static electricity don't set it off, balloons are really easy also, with a plastic nothing to fly thru the air and hit anyone..........just a guess......oh and it does not have to be acetylene, my torch at home is propane and oxygen, it only requires a different tip on the torch to burn propane and is much cheaper and last much longer.....just a guess. [:|]

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When I was very young, my two brothers would make carbide cannons from old exhaust pipes that fell off cars in our neighborhood.

Shortly after that, my cousins would make tennis ball cannons from taped together empty pop cans (they were steel back then) and lighter fluid. Usually sent one about 60-70 yards.

A lot later in life, when I used to work for a retail store, I would collect the thick cardboard cores from the cash register receipt rolls. They made GREAT M-100+'s!!

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My daughter's friends like to make sparkler bombs. They take a box, maybe two of sparklers and tape them up tightly with electrical tape I guess leaving one sticking out a bit for a fuse, light it and toss it.

I forget exactly what they do as it's been a couple of years when one scooted across the yard and hopped into the neighbor's spruce tree setting it on fire. Thankfully I had a hose at the ready. That was the same year one of her friends dropped a mortar into the launch tube upside down and lit the fuse anyway. Blew open the launch tube and blew a hole in the 1/2" plywood I had mounted it on (set up on paving blocks). Note to self never to use PVC for such launchings as I had thought about it as a comparable explosion in PVC would probably send shrapnel flying. Thankfully nobody was hurt but it was louder than all get out and they were much more careful after that. And the young man who did this? He's now in the military going into artillary, rocket launchers and the like.

Of course another year I came home late from work and the teenagers were chasing each other in front of our garage firing Roman Candles at one another.

She also fessed up this past weekend about the extension cord and ground fault box out by our above ground pool that caught on fire a few years ago ... one of her friends had shot a Roman Candle or other fireworks into it. I had thought rain had gotten blown into it.

Yeah in a moment of less than brilliance some dufus had put the ground fault box on the end of the extension cord outside rather than at the plug in the garage. Doh!

Saw a shingle getting blown into the power lines out by our transformer in a high wind thunderstorm a few years back... that created some serious looking but apparently "harmless" sparks in that the electricity still kept working but I'm sure sent some sort of gnarly power surge though our wiring. Maybe didn't toast anything directly, that we're aware of, but quite possibly contributed to later failures.

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