A mate of mine (Kieth) had a garage that we could hang out in and we got up to all sorts of mischief in there. We had Sodium Chlorate (weedkiller) as this was the only oxidiser we could get and we used it to make gun powder. We didn't know that Chlorate and sulphur should never be mixed. We routinely filled a piece of lead pipe with the concoction and made many small craters in various fields. We should have known something was not right when a pre mixed batch had spontaneously ignited overnight. The way we made these "bombs" was to take a 8" piece of lead pipe, bend one end over, fill with concoction, bend the other end over, use a center punch to make a hole in the center of it and place a paper straw with slower burning powder in said hole. This method all worked well until one day when I was punching the hole in the lead pipe. For some inexplicable reason it ignited. I had it held down to the floor with my foot and was hammering the center punch into it when it went off. My shoe ended up with a huge burn mark, my foot a huge (enormous) bruise. Luckily lead is not a very good container and so the blast wasn't as powerful as it would have been if it was a steel pipe.
We later went on to putting Lithium in Sulphuric acid and other equally stupid things.
Oh, weren't our teenage years fun.
Mike.
We later went on to putting Lithium in Sulphuric acid and other equally stupid things.
Oh, weren't our teenage years fun.
Mike.