How stupid are you?

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.

Pommie said:

Oh, weren't our teenage years fun.

Mike.

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I find it amazing that most of us survived our teenage years.

Yes, now we have government to make sure we survive because, obviously, so many of us didn't. Lol.

Wouldn't it be nice if the global population halved. I think it would be beneficial to the planet - especially if I survived. Any one seen the 70s show Survivours? Truly an eye opener.

Mike.

Eeek. Sorry bryan but that's way up there on my stupid scale. Imagine if you'd hit a person =O Blowing yourself up on accident is one thing, blowing up someone else on accident is totally different. You got VERY lucky.

When common sense is not so common.

I did some pretty cool pyrotechnical stuff without incident let's just say "lot's of big bangs". But, have one that involves my brother "who is not the brightest of color" inside the crayon box.

My brother is thorowing a rock down smashing roles of caps each time I'm hearing the bang while watching Television. Suddenly he comes in and grabs some 22. cal bullets and goes outside ?

I decided to go out with him. He carfully set's up a round on top of a rock puts piece of wood in front of the bullet........ then he grabs another rock to hit it ?

I said that's stupid.

My only "older" brother the "genius" say's "no it's not stupid "

I said hold on a minute.

Just stop right there. So, as he held the rock I'm not back to the house "yet" once I made it to the house I open the door and said go ahead then walked inside.

Once inside I heard the bang just a few moments later he came inside holding his arm. I said what happened he said call mom I just shot myself through the arm.

Funny thing was there was no blood my brother tells me the Doctor pushed a rod through the hole out the other side to clean it ? I'm not sure if that's true. But I did see the entrance wound and the exit.

Now I ask everyone, when did they invent rock guns?

I'm not smart but don't guns shoot bullets?

kv

Edit: I couldn't resist throwing in a stupid brother moment.

I made a potato gun when I was 12 or 13 and had lots of fun shooting potatoes through the hurricane fence into the woods behind my house. They would just go through the fence like it was a salad shooter or something. Never took out any windshields though. Also did lots of dry ice bombs, those we great.

If he smashed the bullet against a rock the shell would have been braced and at close range it'd be just like if it was shot from a gun with horrible accuracy. Up close that doesn't matter so much. Lucky he didn't hit the bone in his arm and have it bounces around to create massive tissue damage.

I still do the hydrochloric acid and aluminum foil in a plastic pop bottle every once in a while. Shotgun like bang from a 22 oz bottle!

I learned that one from a small town deputy sheriff some years ago. You gotta love small town law enforcement!

My brother does amateur fireworks and he makes some stuff called whistle mix. I just cultivated under a garden with a few fair sized craters made from Dixie cups packed with that stuff and wrapped in shippng tape.

When I was little, we used to have rock fights on our streets. It's like a snowball fight except the rocks go a lot farther when thrown and hit a lot harder. A bunch of guys who could actually see rocks coming got some baseball mitts to catch rocks thrown at them to throw them back.

One car window was broken if I recall, but it just shattered into a million pieces. Car windows aren't supposed to just fall apart like that, I don't think.

I guess we weren't as tough as you... we used dirt clods. It's pretty impressive as it explodes when you hit somebody in the back of the head.

I think tempered auto safety glass is supposed to shatter into lots of little pieces but still stick to that "film"?

I was never this stupid.

Mike.

gabeNC said:

I think tempered auto safety glass is supposed to shatter into lots of little pieces but still stick to that "film"?

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THat's what I thought to. This window just disintegrated with all the pieces falling to the ground.

THat dude should have lost his leg.

Try breaking a car window at -35 F some of the cheaper window glass will in fact shatter into tiny pieces because the plastic liner is made brittle by the extreme cold.
Its a common phenomenon around here in the winter to have someone slam a car door on a very cold day and have their drivers side window pop into pieces.

Their are also the cheap ass's that wont buy a replacement automotive glass window and will just fit a standard house window that was cut to fit.

I have heard that story many times from the old timers relating to the days when vehicles had mostly flat glass.
Lots of people ended up with stitches from learning about how being a cheap ass gets you in the end!

tcmtech said:

Their are also the cheap ass's that wont buy a replacement automotive glass window and will just fit a standard house window that was cut to fit.

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This was probably the case. It was a hot summer's day, and the person seemed pretty pissed that their window was broken. THey were trying to hunt down the kids involved and get their parents to pay for a replacement (probably an actual car window).

That sounds very likely. The cheap ass's I know will cut corners every way they can and then pray that someone will break their handy work so that someone else will have to pay for their repair to be done right!

dknguyen said:

One car window was broken if I recall, but it just shattered into a million pieces. Car windows aren't supposed to just fall apart like that, I don't think.

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As others have said, it's designed to do EXACTLY that, it's toughened glass, and that's how it breaks. Modern windscreens though also have a plastic film between two layers of toughened glass, so while it may shatter in a million pieces, the pieces 'mostly' stay stuck to the film.

As anyone who's had a windscreen go whilst driving knows, it also showers you with very fine glass shards, almost like small hairs.

dknguyen said:

One car window was broken if I recall, but it just shattered into a million pieces. Car windows aren't supposed to just fall apart like that, I don't think.

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Its tempered safety glass, it shatters into small pieces so there are no big jagged edges to slice with.

Pommie that railroad clip was great. I wonder if he broke his foot cause the train actually caught the back of his shoe and pulled it off. You don't get closer than that =O

wow... i imagine he would've had to change his shorts too.

I've seen several videos like that. I think the 'Faces of Death' videos has a few of people just a little slower that that guy though!

Slower speed and slower brains, bad combination.

Pedestrian has the right away. My ass!
Bigger and faster always has the right away! Its simple physics.

Who were the retards that thought a pedestrian was going to win in a person to vehicle collision? Supermans family?