Thread: Ever want to build your own fireworks?

Video - TinyPic - Free Image Hosting, Photo Sharing & Video Hosting

Holy moly! That's all I can say.

Single guy. Would any of your wives let you even try something like that at the kitchen table? I know mine wouldn't.

Chris L

You know, I saw it coming, and it was still awesome.

I did something similar when I was a kid.

I got hold of some rim-fire cartridges, and used pliers to pull the bullets out, then used a needle to pick the propellant out of each one so i had a little pile on the desk.

You can probably already see where I'm going with this. One cartridge I picked a little too hard and the resulting explosion set the pile off. The bang was huge, fortunately my parents were out and didn't hear it - or see me stumbling around half blinded with a blackened face, and blackened and throbbing hands. The cartridge I'd been holding looked like a half peeled banana, and everything on my desk had been blown across the room in all driections.

Thankfully I was more stunned than hurt, and managed to clean everything up so nobody found out!

I don't do anything like that these days, though in recent years I confess I may have inserted large fireworks into large pumpkins to vaporize them.

I've now heard that this is a fake video. Still made me laugh...

Yeah, I thought it might be faked when the explosion appears to put the main lights back on. Blowing the lights out, sure. But blowing them on after they'd been switched off?

Still raised a chuckle though, thanks!

Originally Posted by Steelforge

I did something similar when I was a kid.

I got hold of some rim-fire cartridges, and used pliers to pull the bullets out, then used a needle to pick the propellant out of each one so i had a little pile on the desk.

You can probably already see where I'm going with this. One cartridge I picked a little too hard and the resulting explosion set the pile off. The bang was huge, fortunately my parents were out and didn't hear it - or see me stumbling around half blinded with a blackened face, and blackened and throbbing hands. The cartridge I'd been holding looked like a half peeled banana, and everything on my desk had been blown across the room in all driections.

Thankfully I was more stunned than hurt, and managed to clean everything up so nobody found out!

I don't do anything like that these days, though in recent years I confess I may have inserted large fireworks into large pumpkins to vaporize them.

Ha, since we're into fireworks confessions, I took a roadtrip with my best friend and his parents to South Dakota. We were able to buy some "real" fireworks there rather than what's legal in Minnesota. We bought firecrackers, bottle rockets, etc. I also bought a large rocket about 16" tall and about 1/2" wide with a large fuse at the bottom. I lit it in the driveway when I got home and the stupid fuse fizzled as it reached the rocket and did nothing. That angered me and I was determined to get some bang out of that thing. I sawed the nose off and dumped out the silvery powder inside in a pile. I threw matches in the pile from a "safe" distance. Nothing. I got some on my fingers and noticed that some of the powder from my fingers sparked when I lit a match. I put a few lit matches on the top of the powder pile, grabbed a big pinch of the powder and sprinkled that over the flame. FLASH!! I had the fortune not to be leaning over the pile. A large ball of white hot light. Whew!!!!!

The only problem was the entire palm of my right hand literally became a burn blister within a few minutes; the entire palm.

My pyrotechnic days were over.

Chris L

Ooo, fireworks confessions...soudns fun.
In my younger, dumber days, a friend and I got our hands on a big tub of black powder. We decided to make our own fireworkds (I guess more accurately, they were tiny little bombs...but we had no bad intent, and wanted nothing more than some harmless (to others) fun.

We made "firecrackers" our of magic marker caps, black powder, and cannon fuse, some of the more fun ones included a napkin, fuse, rubber bands, and a coffee can. I can still hear the ringing-ears giggling from both of us after that beast went off. The air was full of smoke, the can was torn apart, and we were both, by nothing but the sheer grace of God, any worse off, save for the temporary hearing loss.

Ahhh...mispent youth. That same friend, about 10 years later, and I sent a little raft out onto a lake, filled with white gas (camping stove gas) and large report firecrackers (the new crappy "m-60" type), and proceeded to launch roman candles at it (we used to be very stupid, apparently). Well, it hit, lit, then quickly expldoed, shooting flaming white gass all over the beach, where it burnt out quite quickly, and spilled the amjority of it onthothe waves, where it burned for a minute or so...a quite lovely effect...