exploding petrol tank

[PeteH]

To set the scene, The factory was set up in the early 1900`s in what had been an old Mill. As a result the Toilets where to say the least "Agricultural", consisting of 5 Stalls set along a wall above a trough which was periodically "flushed" by a a large volume of water from one end swilling the detritus into the sewer at the other end. Monday Morning, and after a normal weekend there would be a full house prior to start at 7.30am. Set alight a ball of paper just as the "flush" went and place into the trough. Then RUN LIKE BUGGERY!!.

The perpetrator had to be either extremely fast, extremely "Hard", or have a "bolt hole" to hide in until leaving time!. One of the "milder" forms of revenge was being hung from a crane having had the "Crown Jewels" liberally covered in Black grease.

Pete

[Pete Lewis]

the machine shop loo's were next to the enamel plant and often quantities of thinners went down the loo

followed by explosions as fag ash got dropped in the pan some ended up in the surgery to remove porcelain shrapnel

it did blow the bogs to bits and if unlucky  a chain reaction 

argh   the good old days 

Pete

[Peter Truman]

I've heard of the contact explosive wish I'd known about that 60 years ago what a HOOT!

After one indiscretion at school think it was after we had a massive force pump water fight in the Physics lab, hauled up in front of the head again he just looked at us and yelled out, "Peter I know rules were made to be broken BUT not with the (bloody) frequency you break them!" My mate and I spent the school hols cleaning up the lab and repainting it, you can't say we were slow in learning how to implement what we learnt at school! In all my misadventures that was the only time I heard him swear, he was very much the gentleman. When I returned to England in 62 he kept in contact interested in how and what I was doing, when I returned to Aus in 74 I called in to see him at school and it was like the prodigal son returning!

[Pete Lewis]

we connected a bank of the old glass  2v  battery accumulators in series and with some thick wire and tin plate burnt name tags 

with the gasses from charge to those of discharge making a nice mix some sparks ignited one cell and it stuck glass and terminals  into the ceiling tiles 

i was saved by the wide metal carry strap or i would have been riddle with glass

the acid took the colour from the floor for years  big white patch in the red finish

ive not been back to see what its like now .

with all these bangs and whooshes you do eventually learn 

Pete

[68vitesse]

19 hours ago, Unkel Kunkel said:

Well we obviously like explosions !
It  is remarkable  we lot of hooligans reached adulthood with the full complement of eyes ears fingers etc.!

Some of us experimented with nitrogen triiodide  N13

 Easily made  (best skip that  bit)  and left in tiny wet patches here and there on a school corridor. 

As it dries it becomes   explosive - a very sensitive contact explosive  -so much so that even dust settling on it will cause an a very  loud, sharp CRACK! (but not very powerful)  explosion and a tiny purple puff  of iodine.

 

 

 

Sound like the stuff my brothers and I used to make with ammonia etc. used to let it dry in paper twists, like crisps salt used to be in. Then there was the glass bottle bombs with carbide and water and setting of shotgun cartridges by using a nail to make a hole in the side for a fuse.

Happy days the sun always shined and it never rained in the summer.

Regards

Paul

[Pete Lewis]

we its seems as kids things went Bang!  

as teenagers we went out for a Bang!!

as retired   nothing goes Bang   

pete

[johny]

hmmm it wasnt all good times. I knew someone who got a bit carried away and advanced on to fertiliser bombs only to lose a hand screwing the lid on a cylinder full of the stuff... 

[Qu1ckn1ck]

18 minutes ago, johny said:

hmmm it wasnt all good times. I knew someone who got a bit carried away and advanced on to fertiliser bombs only to lose a hand screwing the lid on a cylinder full of the stuff... 

Sodium chlorate and sugar made a simple but deadly explosive for us teenagers.

[Unkel Kunkel]

I’m not an Elf and S disciple and didn’t  start the topic  to be like Fraser in Dad’s Army with a gloomy sort of “ We’ ee re ...Doomed! ..DOOMED ,I Tell ye  ! “

Perhaps a bit more  the elderly cop in Hill Street Blues,

  “And...Hey...  let’s be careful out there”,    sort of thing,

I was hoping  I might be able prevent someone’s  untimely ,but dramatic exit in a loud bang and a puff of smoke.

Unexpectedly, though it seems to have resurrected  something - an enthusiastic, rather  subversive,  naughty  adolescent trait in many of us.

Which (unless we blow ourselves up) can only do us some good in these times.

[Pete Lewis]

on a safer note we decided to make a helicopter with a motor bike engine and rotors made of wood copied formed from model plane wings about 4ft long 

some scaffold tubes and a seat the engine flung the rotor about one turn and a blade flew off over the fence and smashed next doors greenhouse 

boys   used  to  be boys  these days i dont know what they are , there is a permanent bored ,you dont do any thing for me attitude

my grandkids are awfully dull    i just tell them go look in the mirror you will see the problem  !!!

we all had to learn there was no alternative at 12 i could mend a puncture fix the brakes and fit a chain , these days they chuck it away and expect a replacement to land at their feet 

sorry its the jab it brings out fond memories    ha   probably why we are all on here    more Ha !

Pete

 

[68vitesse]

8 hours ago, Unkel Kunkel said:

I’m not an Elf and S disciple and didn’t  start the topic  to be like Fraser in Dad’s Army with a gloomy sort of “ We’ ee re ...Doomed! ..DOOMED ,I Tell ye  ! “

Perhaps a bit more  the elderly cop in Hill Street Blues,

  “And...Hey...  let’s be careful out there”,    sort of thing,

I was hoping  I might be able prevent someone’s  untimely ,but dramatic exit in a loud bang and a puff of smoke.

Unexpectedly, though it seems to have resurrected  something - an enthusiastic, rather  subversive,  naughty  adolescent trait in many of us.

Which (unless we blow ourselves up) can only do us some good in these times.

All you can say is, we must be the survivors.

Regards

Paul

[Nick Jones]

40 minutes ago, 68vitesse said:

All you can say is, we must be the survivors.

Nothing wrong with being lucky.......🤪

[poppyman]

I was telling mrs P about what me and my mates got up to as kids, and up to her reading this thread..... She never believed me   She say's we should all be in prison or hospital   What was it that made us do it years ago.....

Tony.

[Peter Truman]

My brother who is 8 yrs older than me years ago was telling my son what I got up to as a kid and my misadventures at school, I simply told my son if he got into a quarter of the trouble I did I’d kill him. It worked until he was 18 and finished school then he made up for it!!!! But he’s turned out OK.

[Pete Lewis]

1 hour ago, poppyman said:

  What was it that made us do it years ago.....

how about inspiration or...............stupidity    Ha 

Pete

[poppyman]

10 minutes ago, Pete Lewis said:

how about inspiration or...............stupidity    Ha 

Pete

How about other mischief like "knock and run" having first tied the milk bottles to the door knocker  

Tony.

[Colin Lindsay]

My Uncle told me - my father never did, before he passed away - that my father would sneak down to the local Demense where the American soldiers were training for D-Day, and shoot at them with a catapult. If he got the aim right a stone off their steel helmets would make a very satisfactory noise.

[ludwig113]

8 hours ago, Pete Lewis said:

we all had to learn there was no alternative at 12 i could mend a puncture fix the brakes and fit a chain , these days they chuck it away and expect a replacement to land at their feet 

 

Pete

 

it's things like this that really wind me up these days, even if you show them how to do it, there still not interested.

[JohnD]

4 hours ago, Colin Lindsay said:

My Uncle told me - my father never did, before he passed away - that my father would sneak down to the local Demense where the American soldiers were training for D-Day, and shoot at them with a catapult. If he got the aim right a stone off their steel helmets would make a very satisfactory noise.

Clearly, your father survived long enough to bring you onto Earth, Colin, but catapulting an armed American, rehearsing for war in a foreign country?   That is a bit like standing on a hilltop in a thunderstorm, dressed in wet copper armour and shouting, "All gods are bastards!" (Acknowledgements to Terry Pratchett!)

[JohnD]

Not all kids are thick as porridge.

I was discussing hedgehogs with Grandson No.1, 6 years old.  He informed me, gravely, that they are nocturnal animals, "and not diurnal, Grandpa"!     He will go far!

[Peter Truman]

The kids and wife are always having a shot at me for fixing things, the son rang me up to say his Dremmel look alike (Ozito) he couldn’t lock it to undo the chuck when the paw/button was pressed in.
So brought it home after leaving my Dremmel with him with explicit instructions to be careful as I’d had it 30yrs. Pulled the Ozito apart the paw doesn’t push into a hole like the Dremmel but it’s only an radiused indent and he’d obviously pushed the paw in whilst it was rotating, there was no way of fixing the paw/button so I removed it and drilled a 2mm hole thro the paw button and shaft so a small bar can be inserted to lock the shaft, I even provided the bar with fitting so it could be attached to the wire and wouldn’t be lost, he wasn’t impressed with the fix, so bugger it I brought him a new. Dremmel today, to the kids today it’s a throw away world, now the daughter being a engineer would have been happy with the fix, but she can be so bloody stubborn in other ways.

Fixed the blue ray CD player wouldn’t power up, it was a faulty rectifier diode I was called a Scrooge by the wife and kids as a new one was only $100, well I felt better!

[Colin Lindsay]

56 minutes ago, JohnD said:

Not all kids are thick as porridge.

I was discussing hedgehogs with Grandson No.1, 6 years old.  He informed me, gravely, that they are nocturnal animals, "and not diurnal, Grandpa"!     He will go far!

Diurnal? Doesn't that mean getting up twice in the night to pee?

My father also used to go to the local town square in Wintertime, bounce a snowball off the back of the head of the local Head Constable, run down that street fifty yards or so, cut across the back alleys and come out on the other side in time to watch the Peeler  fruitlessly trying to identify who had thrown it... in entirely the wrong direction. No wonder he never told me all that himself.

Now: my uncle Jack when he was a teenager used to torment his elderly neighbours by catching their cat and throwing it up onto the roof of their house, where of course it couldn't get down again, the house being two storey. Jack would go get a ladder, rescue the cat, get rewarded, then go straight back and throw it up there again.

[JohnD]

If we are discussing past sins, rather than present grandsons, I was in Trafalgar Square as a student.   It may have been New Years Eve, and it was packed.      I happened to be armed, with a water pistol shaped like a Luger, and used it to squirt the back of the neck of the Officer jammed into the crowd a few people in  front of me.     

I fear that today, I might get shot!   In fact, as we worked our way out of the crowd, I was surrounded by four large officers, not the squirted one.  They grabbed me by the elbows, took me into their corner of the Square and 'extracted' the pistol from my pocket, threw it on the ground and instructed me to stamp on it - Harder!    "Now be on your way, sonny!"

Proper policing!

 

[Unkel Kunkel]

In retrospect, I was very fortunate in  my adolescent encounters with the Police.

I recall being quizzed by red faced sergeant  C.on his bike after...well, let’s skip the details ,  it’s a long time ago.

”Well, off go  you , then,” he sighed, adding ,” By the way, do say hello to your Mum and Dad  for me, won’t you .”

As he got astride his bike, he turned, and fixed me in his  his gaze and pointed , “ Now don’t you  forget, mind “

We both knew what that meant.

For on hearing that sergeant C had, ”Sent   his regards”, there would be a look of surprise  followed by the inevitable questioning  from my mother about what were the circumstances that had led to a conversation with sergeant C .The questioning by my mother would then be followed something even more forensic by my father.

They were capable of a more detailed, thorough  and quite unrelenting  interrogation than anything the local constabulary could ever hope  provide.

- Sergeant C  was well aware of that.

 

 

 

 

 

[Anglefire]

Not explosions or anything of that nature, but when I was about 9 or 10 our house backed on to a large field. (Now a housing estate - another story)

 In said field was an oil drum which me and my mate spent a happy day standing on and rolling it around the field. 
Got in that night and my dad says, don’t fall off it and you could cut yourself and that will mean a trip to the hospital.
Next day what did I do?  Yes. Fall off it and cut my leg. Trip to the hospital and ended up with a tetanus jab and butterfly stitches. Which turned out to be a waste of time as they broke and now I have an inch long scar about 1/4” wide just north of my knee.