Smoke grenades, any advice?
Discussion
When we were young and daft we would mix sodium chlorate and sugar in a 1/2 mixture.
A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
Buster73 said:
When we were young and daft we would mix sodium chlorate and sugar in a 1/2 mixture.
A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
Aha! I had forgotten what the mix was. But it sure was effective at blowing holes in the cliffs where I lived and one metal drainpipe at school didn't survive.A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
OpulentBob said:
Where might one acquire this stuff, for training purposes? Is it commonly known by another name?
Weed killer... Boots used to sell 7lb tins years ago. Then then put a fire retardant in it, then prohibited sale of it as a weed killer.It is possible to make it, I think. Not sure though.
Buster73 said:
When we were young and daft we would mix sodium chlorate and sugar in a 1/2 mixture.
A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
When I was a kid my dad offered to show me how dangerous weed killer and sugar was in the hope that it would stop me blowing my fingers off or worse.A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
I politely declined his offer and went back to throwing full aerosol cans of lighter fluid onto bonfires so I could shoot them with my air rifle
paul.deitch said:
Buster73 said:
When we were young and daft we would mix sodium chlorate and sugar in a 1/2 mixture.
A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
Aha! I had forgotten what the mix was. But it sure was effective at blowing holes in the cliffs where I lived and one metal drainpipe at school didn't survive.A small pile of the mixture placed on the ground before dropping a match on it ended up in a bright flame with plenty of smoke , a great bit of fun as a youngster , one night by putting a line of the mixture across the road , the next car to come around the corner and we would drop a match on it to scare the driver , except the next car was a police car ....
I think you can guess the rest.
It progressed to 3/4" copper pipe, and a seriously big hole in the ground.
It finished with us all chipping-in to buy everything the shop had left (late 60's, endless summer holidays) and then heading home to steal all the sugar within our respective parents' homes.
...and taking turns to sledgehammer closed both ends of a 12' length of scaffolding tube which we subsequently laid up against a ruined castle wall. (To us, well in the countryside, in reality about a mile away from large town centre and humungous population)
This time we knew it would be a biggie.
It would be fair to say that we underestimated our newly acquired skills.
Never felt the need to progress further.....
tumble dryer said:
It started with 1/2" copper pipe, bashed-in at both ends to 'hold' the pressure and then sat upon a pile of the stuff, with a trail fuse to give us a safe distance. (Easily 10 mtrs) Fuse takes, runs up to pile, pile takes really well, copper tube glows red and ignites weedkiller and sugar inside. (I know this because I actually watched the pipe balloon out before blowing up, from the safety of behind a big tree!) Impressive boom gotta be said. And hole in the ground.
It progressed to 3/4" copper pipe, and a seriously big hole in the ground.
It finished with us all chipping-in to buy everything the shop had left (late 60's, endless summer holidays) and then heading home to steal all the sugar within our respective parents' homes.
...and taking turns to sledgehammer closed both ends of a 12' length of scaffolding tube which we subsequently laid up against a ruined castle wall. (To us, well in the countryside, in reality about a mile away from large town centre and humungous population)
This time we knew it would be a biggie.
It would be fair to say that we underestimated our newly acquired skills.
Never felt the need to progress further.....
Try a 15kg gas canister. More of a small crater than a hole...It progressed to 3/4" copper pipe, and a seriously big hole in the ground.
It finished with us all chipping-in to buy everything the shop had left (late 60's, endless summer holidays) and then heading home to steal all the sugar within our respective parents' homes.
...and taking turns to sledgehammer closed both ends of a 12' length of scaffolding tube which we subsequently laid up against a ruined castle wall. (To us, well in the countryside, in reality about a mile away from large town centre and humungous population)
This time we knew it would be a biggie.
It would be fair to say that we underestimated our newly acquired skills.
Never felt the need to progress further.....
?lost in espace said:
It turns out we have the English ladies 5k champion, and the parkrun 5k record holder coming for our first birthday. I hope I don't blow everyone up.
A little tip for you seeing as you have the wire pull smokes. Pull the wire at 90 degrees from the smoke, don't pull it upwards or it may not light. If they fail to light you can normally start them with a lighter or matches. tumble dryer said:
It started with 1/2" copper pipe, bashed-in at both ends to 'hold' the pressure and then sat upon a pile of the stuff, with a trail fuse to give us a safe distance. (Easily 10 mtrs) Fuse takes, runs up to pile, pile takes really well, copper tube glows red and ignites weedkiller and sugar inside. (I know this because I actually watched the pipe balloon out before blowing up, from the safety of behind a big tree!) Impressive boom gotta be said. And hole in the ground.
It progressed to 3/4" copper pipe, and a seriously big hole in the ground.
It finished with us all chipping-in to buy everything the shop had left (late 60's, endless summer holidays) and then heading home to steal all the sugar within our respective parents' homes.
...and taking turns to sledgehammer closed both ends of a 12' length of scaffolding tube which we subsequently laid up against a ruined castle wall. (To us, well in the countryside, in reality about a mile away from large town centre and humungous population)
This time we knew it would be a biggie.
It would be fair to say that we underestimated our newly acquired skills.
Never felt the need to progress further.....
Wow...this sounds very familiar!It progressed to 3/4" copper pipe, and a seriously big hole in the ground.
It finished with us all chipping-in to buy everything the shop had left (late 60's, endless summer holidays) and then heading home to steal all the sugar within our respective parents' homes.
...and taking turns to sledgehammer closed both ends of a 12' length of scaffolding tube which we subsequently laid up against a ruined castle wall. (To us, well in the countryside, in reality about a mile away from large town centre and humungous population)
This time we knew it would be a biggie.
It would be fair to say that we underestimated our newly acquired skills.
Never felt the need to progress further.....
My father (a pharmacist) made the mistake of telling his impressionable 12 year old all about sodium nitrate fertilizer and it's mixture with sugar and, basically, how it was used by the IRA amongst others to blow things up. He then explained that most modern fertilizers had flame retardant in them so 'don't even think about it'.
The good news, for me, was that his 5 story pharmacy had many rooms of old stock that he hadn't got round to clearing from the previous owner of 40 years. Deep in the bowels I struck gold and found some 'Tandar' sodium nitrate fertiliser which was old enough not to have any flame retardant.
Using the midsize paper bags your perscription comes in I then began squirreling home about a coke can worth every saturday when I used to help out in the shop. This was stored until the summer scout camp and then a small group of the others were tasked with bringing as much sugar as possible (3 sugar to 1 weedkiller I believe the ratio is?). Then, a lad from school, provided the shotgun cartridges from his dad's farm which gave us the source of gunpowder to detonate it (previous attempts at just lighting it failed...)
I remember my 'Vango' rucksack was quite heavy as I was dropped off on this camp due to the bottom being filled with about 5kg of sugar and weedkiller.
If I recall we tried just loose powder with a pipe stuck in it with the gunpowder (didn't work) but then we found this weird shed in the middle of nowhere next to the campsite (this is rural Powys in Wales). An old paint tin was found and we used this to house the mixture with a thin pipe poked down the center filled with gunpowder. We only had a small quantity of fuse wire so we put about 1ft of this to the ground and then made a longer fuse by crumbling up firelighters into a trail.
We too hid behind a tree about a reasonable distance away and waited for what we were expecting would be a fireball type explosion that you see on the telly. There was no fireball....there was, however, a very loud boom and a hole in the ground...and 5 or so scouts promptly sh*tting themselves. Likewise, we stopped at this point and the rest of the supplies were chucked in the river.
Other highlights of scout camp included;
1 - Every single can of deodorant ending up on the camp fire. Natrel ones were excellent as they had a little rubber bung on the underside which would go first meaning it went up like a rocket. The others that went when the seam at the side split were still quite spectacular though
2 - With the success of the above, one of the smaller camping gas bottles was put onto a bbq. There was no BBQ after that and scout leader was very annoyed (and perplexed) as to why one of his tents now had a 1ft gash on both sides...
3 - Having run out of deodorant cans we switched to tinned goods. Baked bean cans, tinned veg...anything. Someone bizarrely had a tin of pedigree chum and when it exploded the owner swore he saw the entire contents shoot off into the sky in a jelly block like you saw it portrayed on the adverts.
4 - Someone managed to get some distress flares so they were generally chucked into peoples tents (madness...). We set one off in a tree near scout leaders tent before he was up and whilst we were all being blinded staring at it he shouted out 'are you boys playing with matches again???'
5 - There was ALWAYS some scout leader from another group who was rumored to have been in the SAS. This time it was 'John'. I just remember him struggling to get the main camp fire going properly and just before he was about to tip a jerry can of petrol on it, our scout leader hurtling towards him shouting 'No John, No!!!'. We figured at this point that he probably wasn't ex-SAS.
6 - Trying to make a rope swing we tied the rope to an axe to then chuck up in the air to get over the branch....luckily none of us managed to catch it with our heads on the way down.
Sorry...completely digressed from the original post there but other stories of such experimentation bought back some happy memories
Ben
lost in espace said:
The parkrun that I am involved in is coming up for it's first birthday, and I have been tasked with providing a bit of entertainment at the start and thought about getting a few smoke grenades to put about the start as the runners set off.
I have seen some called Enola Gaye, any pointers on using these?
Also if this is a crazy idea someone please let me know!!
Is this a public park? In these paranoid days, I would expect armed response within 7 minutes ...I have seen some called Enola Gaye, any pointers on using these?
Also if this is a crazy idea someone please let me know!!
@turboslippers PIRA didn't use Sodium Nitrite, it was Ammonium Nitrite, such was the use that the Govt changed the amount in fertilizer so that the original ANFO mix they were knocking up would not work, so the bhoys developed ANS as a result which worked well with the new lower concentration levels of Nitrite.
In fact worked event better, sadly for many.
Also I do not know of a close friend, now working in NY for the UN in munitions clearance, who once made Nitroglycerin in a walk in freezer....
I'd also suggest that the fuse length of flashbangs should not be relied upon to be accurate and letting go is always a good idea....
OP, what about crow bangers, they're quite fun?
In fact worked event better, sadly for many.
Also I do not know of a close friend, now working in NY for the UN in munitions clearance, who once made Nitroglycerin in a walk in freezer....
I'd also suggest that the fuse length of flashbangs should not be relied upon to be accurate and letting go is always a good idea....
OP, what about crow bangers, they're quite fun?
The other organisers are a bit worried about them being a bit smokey at the start.
I don't know what they are worried about, as my earlier test shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lQQuI1sOIQ
I don't know what they are worried about, as my earlier test shows.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lQQuI1sOIQ
Gassing Station | The Lounge | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff