How stupid are you?

Seems to me that some cars don't have the plastic liner between the glass on the side windows. Its been a few years since I broke any car windows, but it seems to me the side glass usually just falls all over the place.

When I was about 17 I worked in a store that had some huge 9 x 4 foot by maybe a half inch thick plates of safety glass that were used in a clothing display. They were throwing them out and me and another guy carried them out and trew them in a big roll off dumpster. We stood one up and let it fall over like a tree against the steel floor of the dumpster.... It flopped over, bounced a bit and didn't break! The other guy was probably 250 pounds, and he got on top of it and jumped on it.... still would't shatter.... by this point we are laughing and think its pretty funny. I trew a cinder block on it and it finally shattered.

The next one I picked up, turned 180 degrees and gently set back down so we could get it tipped down and out of the door..... no idea if i set it on a pebble or what, but it just shattered. I guess I had it leaned back toward me because all I remember was getting hit with a bunch of glass. The little bits did scratch me, but after I shook out my clothes and washed up a but, I was able to work the rest of the day. I'm not sure i'd be alive to type this had it been regular plate glass.

I don't think the polymer layer is required by law, if it is older cars are probably grandfathered. Tempered glass is touchy stuff, strong as hell until you apply force at an angle it doesn't like. Better than plate glass though, then you get those nice impaling hazards.

Sceadwian said:

I don't think the polymer layer is required by law, if it is older cars are probably grandfathered.

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No, cars only have to comply to the standards from when they were made.

As also suggested, side windows don't normally have plastic inside, and shatter like windscreens used to

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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dknguyen said:

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

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The side and back windows are just safety glass, the front windshield has the film.

Whew. Where to start (embarrassing number of "stoopid stories" coming to mind)... Anybody remember "quarter sticks".. the nice big firecrackers that are really hard to get nowadays? Had several dozen of those one fine 4th of July season. Lit a few, big *BANG*! got bored with that. Turns out my buddy whose house we were at also happened to have a base plate for a tower (for ski lift) (from Alpine Valley). Picture a diamond shaped piece of 1/2 inch steel as the cap to a 1/2 wall steel cylinder about three feet across and maybe ten inches tall. Weighs about 100 pounds.

Anyway: we get the bright idea to find out if a quarter stick will pick one of those up off the ground, and just how far? First test-fire lofted the big piece of steel about eight inches straight up. Found all the bits of rocks and sand and gravel in the yard too, and shot those in all directions along the ground for about thirty feet.

Phase Two: someone (this would be me) gets the bright idea to hop onto the thing after the lit quarter-stick is tossed underneath. *PLAM*! Picked me and the piece of iron both straight up maybe three inches. My ankles were really really sore for a couple of days though.

Moral of the story: alcohol and explosives are sometimes not a good combination.

Sceadwian said:

Tempered glass is touchy stuff, strong as hell until you apply force at an angle it doesn't like. Better than plate glass though, then you get those nice impaling hazards.

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Very touchy stuff indeed. The glass on pinball machines is tempered. Made the mistake (once) of brushing the raw concrete floor of a basement that the machine that I was working on was in with the bottom corner of the playfield glass. I had just taken it off the machine and was placing it to lean against a wall so I could pick up the playfield and do some work on it. *TINK*. Next thing I know, I have a corner of the glass in each hand. The rest of it is in little chunks on the floor around my feet.

Video Warrior said:

Moral of the story: alcohol and explosives are sometimes not a good combination.

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I remember you and me tossing that quarter-stick under the washtub in Dave's back yard.

Hung out with some buddies yesterday and we blew up some tannerite.

Tannerite™ Exploding Targets from Tannerite™ Explosives Corporation - Manufacturer of High Explosives, Low Explosives and Fireworks


Never heard of it before but you mix the two ...umm.. containers then shoot it with a high power rifle. It's quite a bit of fun. Filled up an empty water bottle and jammed it into the hole of a 55 gallon oil drum. With just a little bit sticking out of the top, this guy hit it with a 30-30 and sent the oil drum about 30 feet in the air and split it in pieces.

Didn't know if anyone else has tried this stuff... well worth the cost of admission.

Now that is just too damn cool. Surprised that stuff is legal =) (assuming it is)

Well they had a box of it that came via UPS. Supposed to be inert until you mix it *shrug* sure did a heck of a job... we were back over 100 feet and still felt the concussion. There are several youtube videos of this stuff, somebody put 20 pounds of it in a junked out car. Nothing left.

I felt it appropriate to post on the "stupid" thread.

I'm surprised TCM hasn't used this stuff... or maybe his buddy with the browning 50 cal. hahaha.

I am staying quiet on this one. I know what we blow up around here draws a crowd of around 100+ people every year on the fourth of July!
(and a lot of local attention for the rest of the year too)

Lets just say the test firing of some stuff would knock you down at 100 ft!

Best example would be a 14 inch air burst shell that uses a high pressure oxygen tank with the top cut off as a launching tube. It also has to be buried 4 ft in the ground too!
Look up the formula for 'whistle mix'. Its what we use to push a 15 pound shell to around 800+ feet up!
Pretty sure we could shoot bowling balls a mile or so if we had a reason too!
Now thats some cool homemade sh!t!!!

Theres a reason our remote detonators have work reliably at over 1000 ft.

One of the first films I worked on called "Kidbnapping Of The President" called for a exploseive device to blow up an armoured car parked in front of Torontos cool looking city hall.
We made up a exterior for a panel Van out of Foamcore, painted it up, and went to a abandoned gravel yard. Inside was placed several sticks of dynamite, and then several green garbage bags filled with mixture of gasoline and liquid tar were placed over the dynamite.To assist with the matting of the scene into City hall a decision was made to place several hydro poles in a 30 meter semi-circle around the van to look like flagpoles, that gave a edge to the scene to facilitate matting.
When the explosives were set off, the Van disintegrated, and the poles all took off like ICBM rockets in every direction. Most poles were found several hundreds of meters away...luckily no one was killed, although a series of expensive lights were distroyed when a pole plowed through them.

Recently, a friend of a friend was making a horror film that called for aa lightning strike to hit a graveyard, exploding in front a tombstone. I had been out of the explosives biz for a few years, but I called up my distributor for what was called a ground Moroon. I expected what I as used to get a few years earlier, a rather large, heavy device, about 6 inches wide, and 8 inches tall, wound in twine...but instead I was handed a rather petite little device, about the same size as a 35mm plastic film cannister, called a LaMatre. I was assured that it delivered the same "punch" but I , and the crew didnt believe it.
The day of the shoot, we erected a phony Tombstone, dug a 1 foot hole, placed the puny explosive in the bottom of the hole, and filled it back up with lightweight fullers earth and pieces of cork, since I was certain that it couldnt actually move any real earth.
I went to the other side of the old fence surrounding the cemetary, and waited for the cue to fire. I heard the cue, pressed the button, and the ground seemed to drop way from my feet, followed by a earth-shattering explosion that deafened me. I looked up from behind the fence, and saw the cameraman and his assistant flat on his back, and a hole where the explosion had happened about 10 feet wide. A huge Oak tree that had branches over the area, had a conical area stripped out where its branches used to be all the way up the tree. Leaves, bits of tree and dirt were raining down upon the area.
A few hours later when we finished, we headed back to our cars, parked around 100 meters away, only to find them covered with fullers earth, and leaves.
Lotsa power indeed!

Is Fuller's Earth like kitty litter?

duffy said:

Is Fuller's Earth like kitty litter?

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HMMM, from what I remember, fullers earth ...aka vermeculite (SP) are a really light fluffy earthen looking material, a whole bag the size of a green garbage bag weighed only a bit more than the bag itself. Kitty litter is almost like sand (depending on the brand) and is rather heavy.
We would use fullers earth when ever we wanted a "dirty"explosion throwing around dirt, because getting hit by it was like getting hit by a fistful of cotton, very safe. Top it all off ith a few pieces of cork, that would look like rocks, and you have a pretty safe explosion.

bigkim100 said:

HMMM, from what I remember, fullers earth ...aka vermeculite (SP) are a really light fluffy earthen looking material, a whole bag the size of a green garbage bag weighed only a bit more than the bag itself. Kitty litter is almost like sand (depending on the brand) and is rather heavy.
We would use fullers earth when ever we wanted a "dirty"explosion throwing around dirt, because getting hit by it was like getting hit by a fistful of cotton, very safe. Top it all off ith a few pieces of cork, that would look like rocks, and you have a pretty safe explosion.

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You obviously don't have cats, there are all kinds of litter, including light fluffy ones.

Actually. I do have 2 cats, Im just not well versed in every type of litter there is.

Is there more dark meat or light in a cat... I don't remember been awhile since i've been to abroad.

Over here in the states, most kitty litter is clay-based. I know because I'm an aquarist, and a lot of planted aquarium folks use the cheap store brand kitty litters for gravel due to the high iron content of the clay.

speakerguy79 said:

Over here in the states, most kitty litter is clay-based. I know because I'm an aquarist, and a lot of planted aquarium folks use the cheap store brand kitty litters for gravel due to the high iron content of the clay.

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There are loads of different types in the UK, clay is one of them.