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There was mention a few days ago of the cannons made from small bore copper pipe, powered by firework powder and using ball bearings as shot, I remember making these as well, I seem to recollect that a certain master Williams introduced me to the principals. The barrel must have been about 4" long flattened at the base with a small hole for priming the fuse, mounted on a wooden base with an appropriate wedge to raise the barrel. I remember using powder from bangers as the main charge with the fuse powder? as the ignition, the blue touch paper provided the wadding and something like a piece of knitting needle or wire for the ram. The target was Stothert's roof, (or windows), not me your honour, honestly.

Another experiment I tried was using weedkiller and sugar as an explosive, I was introduced to this combination by my cousin Norman, he wasn't a Bath lad, and unless your familiar with the interior of the Scrubs or Pentonville you're unlikely to have met him. However I digress, Norman showed me the principles and demonstrated by blowing small saplings out of the ground, (not terribly ecological, but great fun). At home I mixed up a batch of said chemicals and packed the result into a Coke can, used cotton wool doused in lighter fuel as a fuse, (fireworks only available in autumn then, this was midsummer). Took said can of trouble off to the woods in Lyncombe Vale to try out. Having lit the fuse and retired to safeish distance I waited for the bang, it never came, instead the can took off in the manner of a rocket.

Now a Coke can isn't quite as aerodynamic as your average rocket, so having attained a height of approx 6' it turned right, had it been sentient and possesing vocal chords it would have said "Daddy", cos it headed straight for me, discretion being the better part of valour I legged it, diving flat on my face would probably have been a better option, fortunately it decided to investigate the nearby woodland and disappeared off into the trees, I wisely decided it was probably tea time and went home. The conclusions I have drawn from this is that we would probably have been much more adept at Chemistry if we'd been taught how to make explosives and things like mustard gas, or perhaps a nuclear reactor in Physics, (I was useless at that as well, (I lived in constant fear of Dickie Harber).

 

Stu

Hi Stu

 

I've just come indoors to get a bit of relief from the heat of the sun and noticed a new thread. Time for a new one considering we have gone from Parrots to Mrs. Williams!

 

I did experiment with pieces of copper tube and expolsives managing one day to send a piece of copper through a roof, tiles and all. Time for a quick exit!!! I also remember saving some of my paper money weekly and in November purchasing something like 250 penny bangers. We would then stroll the streets on Nov. 5th with pockets full of said bangers seeing what havoc we could cause at family firework parties. What little bastards we were!! It is a miracle that we did not cause serious damage to ourselves in the cause of research and developement!

 

I am going to go back out and sit in the sunshine and maybe some more memories will come. By the way, I cannot remember choosing German. i thought it was thrust on me and I was bloody useless and hated the German masters ansd lessons. Five years of German and I still cannot stand them.

 

Cheers

 

Steve

YEAH!

 

copper pipe and ball bearings....blew a hole in a dustbin...the noise shook our estate.

 

Bangers 2d ones in a cowpat .....spectacular but you had to run

 

Bangers 1d or 2d made fantastic torpedoes on the surface of a pond...I always had a fantasy of sinking one of the posh kids yachts on the Victoria Park boating pond.

 

Attaching little capsules to big rockets. Our astronauts were woodlice who usually survived or spiders who usually didn't.

 

BUT best of all was a coffee can in which we had buried a dead blackbird  ( to get the skellington). We clearly didn't know much about putrefaction because as we prised off the lid after about 6 months there was a bang and the lid flew past my face and landed 20 feet away.....the smell was appalling and widespread and hung about for days...we never had the stomach to look in the can.

 

OOh what kids miss nowadays. What are we breeding!!!!!?

Aha, explosives .. my design for a lightweigh portable cannon was a piece of "BBC H" band 1 VHF aerial aluminium tubing about a foot long. Stapled to a piece of 2" x 2" wood. End flattemd out and screwed to said wood. About a 1/16th inch diameter hole for the little bit of blue touch paper. If you rolled off the blue fuse paper on a banger, you could get quite a lot of thin spills out of it.

 

The thin part of the banger held the fine powder for the touch hole. I used to put the spill in first, then some fine powder, followed by some charge from the main body of the banger. Then I used to chew a bit of the banger case and paste onto the back end of a "Milbro" (hollowed out) ".177 cat slug". Knitting needle ram-rod completed the packing process. Then returned the device to the left hand, point at target and light blue touch paper.

 

This was, and still is the only time I wear / wore glasses .. just in case .. never had a failure, had a few close shaves with ricochets and the neighbours` windows mind ! .. never grew out of the love of fire and explosions, never did get in the army either !! used to love the military "Tattoos" in Victoria Park though, scrabbling under the benches for unfired .303 blanks. Now they used to go with a bit of a bang didn`t they?

 

Regards. ( P.S. thanks for starting the new thread, got tiresome clicking on the (next) other one)  

Ah Chris, the exploding cowpat !! You beat me to it. There was no need to run away because we used to leave a trail of gunpowder from one banger to the said cowpat, light that and watch at your leisure miniature muck spreading. Great stuff. We also used to drop a banger or jumping jack down a drain. If you timed it right you got a wonderful noise.

 

Health and Safety......not fro me thank you !!!

 

Rich

Hi Guys.

While on the subject of spectacular happenings I feel the urge to recall one Saturday some thirty years ago. To get it into context, a very good friend of mine was a bloke called Eddy, now sadly passed on. He lived up the road from me up on the bank and he owned a considerable slice of woodland at the rear of his property.

About half a mile from us was a small scrap yard and Eddy had known the owner, man and boy. On Saturday mornings we often used to call in, have a cuppa and a bit of a forrage around. Anything good that was found was taken and goods to the same value dropped in the following week end. Money never ever changed hands.

This one Saturday we found a strangely shaped stainless tube with flaps like venician blinds on the larger open end. Eddy commented that it looked like a pulse jet engine. It had to be taken, and so it was. Further investigation at the back of Eddy's house revealed an injector nozzle and a high tension spark plug type igniter. It was an engine as he suspected.

Next thing I know he's rummaging in the shed and produces an boiler oil burner complete with fan and HT transformer. The whole lot was dragged into the woods, the 'engine' was lashed to a tree. The burner fan output faced directly towards the flaps, the fuel pump connected to a pop bottle containing paraffin with a short piece of plastic tube and the output from the pump was plumbed into the 'Motor' injector. Finally the HT was connected up and a very long extension lead connected to the old buner was run bck to the house. There was a plug and socket connection in this about ten or twelve feet from the 'engine' under test.

When all was set it was plugged in. There was a pause then a roar as about twelve feet of flame shot out from the rear of the thing. This rapidly shortened and changed to blue accompanied by a rasping roar. We stood there dumbfound, it actually worked! Then we noticed that the lashings on the tree weren't quite up to the strain and the whole thing was about to break free. Rapidly we both woke up and the plug was removed very cautiosly and the thing slowly sputtered out. Next Saturday it was back at the scrap yard. I think we both had visions of it chasing us through the woods a bit like Stu's pop can.

Didn't realise how much thrust these things developed or how much noise they made, but can see why they were so successful as a power unit for the V1 rocket (Buzz bombs). Much too dangerous as a toy though! 

Got to go now.

Nighty night.

Sticky.