Tell us about your most memorable.

I just synthed an absurdly small amount of AP, but because it was my first time I still got this rush when I was filtering and washing, and all of the sudden I looked at it and got an image of the AP detting, flying glass through the air and into my stomach. Although not at all rational, still scary for a split second. I can't wait until it's dry so that I can actually get a feel for how much power it has proportionate to mass.

Anyway, I'm sure that some runaway reactions, fountains/rockets/shells gone wrong, acid burns and the like would be good reading material.

Crackling EGDN runaway. Or filling my house with HCl.

It would be the time my NG started spraying out of the dropper bobble it was stored in. Some of it had decomposed in the bottle, forming a pressurized gas. A pinhole in the rubber dropper bulb provided an outlet, forcing all the NG up the dropper and spraying out the bulb.

It freaked me out, and not just because of the acidic yellow cloud forming around it...

APNC salute in the driveway after a little commercial black cat. It ended up being about 2x louded than i expected.

Retarded friend lighting dry grass on fire and everyone rushing to stomp it out.

Acetone FAE with too little too weak lift. All the acetone, on fire, went to the side into a bunch of dry grass. Me, my dad, and a friend that was there all ran toward it saying essentially "oh shit." We had enough fire extinguishers though, so it was all good.

212g slightly burried charge making a much bigger explosion than anyone anticipated. We were pretty close. Felt great.

Saturn missle batterys getting knocked over and shooting in the direction we were running on the 4th of july.

My dad shooting a PVC mortor in the middle of the street, straight up. It exploded and little plastic bits went everywhere... we weren't far enough away.

ALWAYS watch your parents, you never know when they are going to do something stupid like that. ^

Riding in my friends car when its wet... he took a turn a bit fast and we almost hit a propane tanker.

Being in a car that gets launched off a cliff and caught by a tree after doing a full mid-air barrel roll.

The commercial ones do that all the time. I got hit in the ass with by a purple star from a cake. Another one landed in a gross box of aerials. Best 4th ever.

The time i had a NG synth run away which proceeded to fill my bathroom with NO2. It was the largist NG synth i had attempted at 100mL Glycerol. The scarry side was that my mom was downstairs at the time, and i had to keep the red cloud contained in my bathroom.

http://i16.tinypic.com/2gxlgfd.jpg


And:

http://i19.tinypic.com/40dgp6a.jpg

http://i16.tinypic.com/47l0d1v.jpg

http://i12.tinypic.com/2rr5j0k.jpg

http://i17.tinypic.com/33l2qe1.jpg

http://i10.tinypic.com/29g29mg.jpg

http://i18.tinypic.com/2duk1za.jpg

When the cops came knocking.

Similar thing happened to me, only it was MEKP. I had a dropper bottle in a cupboard, the pressurized and corrosive fumes swelled the rubber 'pumper' of the dropper untill it burst spraying Red MEKP up the walls of my cupboard. Walked into a very smelly lab that day.

But you weren't even home

i filled up a balloon with hairspray and set light to it...in a confined area

ok, i'm not quite into all the chemicals, but damn, that shit stuck to my shirt and burnt

my favorite mistake was making MEKP using H2SO4 the problem is when you make MEKP it rises to the top so when you drip H2SO4 on to MEKP it dehydrates really really quick and it deflagged a small amount making a flare i almost shit myself

When the black crown vic pulled up in my drive way...

I wasn't posting when this happened, somebody inform me please.

Metal shrapnel in my palm from AP.

When the cops knocked on my door during a joint smoking, asking me if I helped some douche bag I used to know blow up a safe he stole. They then asked if they could search my house.

Oh shit indeed.

I told the bastards I didn't know shit and to get a fucking warrant. Never heard from them again.

Gasoline + old fertilizer drum =

Once I was dicking around with KNO3/Al, and a gram or so ignited. This was on a piece of glass (on my lab table), so I thought, oh well, ill clean it up after it cools down.

So i sit down at the computer, and I hear a noise of some sort. I turned my head to look at the table and then the entire sheet of glass on it exploded. Scared the fucking shit out of me too.
Apparently it was some sort of safety glass, so it just shattered into little cubes (like 1 cm by 1 cm). But this was a big sheet of glass, like 4feet by 2 feet. Maybe slightly longer. I imagine that it would not have been pretty if I was standing in front of it.

The remainder of my day I was sweeping up little glass cubes and going holy shit what the fuck just happened.

Also, there might have been a little bit of water under the glass (from cleaning).

Another one was when I just started pyro, and thought that a fuse consisting of black powder wrapped around in a piece of paper would work. It was only a matchbox full of crushed rocket boosters, but it was scary and burned me pretty bad (keep in mind this was in the middle of a NYC street). Me and my friend sprinted like 4 blocks back to my apartment. lol.


OOOh, and this one time I mixed DBSP and magnesium in a little altoids container, and made the "slurpy" out of it with acetone. Igniting this on my air conditioner was not a good idea. It burned for the longest fucking time, then managed to fall down (from the 6th floor). I thought the cops would come visit me for sure, but nothing happened.
A similar experience was when i ignited a bunch of baking soda/magnesium mix on my air conditioner. Also burned for a long time and im almost certain some people walking on the street saw it.

And that time I ignited a kilogram of thermite in my friends yard, which made an ungodly amount of smoke. Doing stuff in the city is pretty risky heh

COB at the end of a smoke bomb that I made from a smoke bomb i took apart. The smoke mix stopped burnig half way. I waited a few mins. and proceeded to kick it a couple of times before picking it up. I picked it up and threw it onto some rocks. It started burning about mid air and went for about 2-3 seconds and blew up. That was as close as I ever came to no hand. Needless to say I never did that again.

Dropping a large wooden (don't ask) flash salute. I was out of the room before it hit the ground, and flash isn't wicked sensitive, but I still shat bricks.

Oh yeah, just remembered another one. Making det cord with APAN, and I guess the AP was still a bit wet. Well this was the same detcord I got hurt making, so I just threw it in a hole with a fuse on it, and thought that was that. It went off, was fairly weak, smoke etc, and so I go to reach my hand in after the smoke clears, and I'm like wait, I should give it a minute.

Then BAM, fucker exploded again. It slowly burned and popped and sizzled and shit for a good 10 minutes.

Finally I decided that getting the pieces from the det was a moot point now anyway, so just dump water and dirt on the shit, and come back and clean it up later.

I am obsessed with finding every last little fragment of a container from a det.

Oh, and another time I used a huge easter egg as a container for a flash salute. Filled it about half way, stuck my nice new visco in that shit, took it outside out back, lit it, and threw it on the ground, and the very moment it hit the ground, BOOM, 20g of KNO3/Mg flash right fucking next to me.

That event only made me even more hooked. Being that close. I want more.

e-det. left the wires connected to battery after testing the connection. was about to wire up the charge when my dad noticed, saving my hands and quite possibly the lives/hearing of my friend and I.

only about 4g of AP.

but still.

What kind of casing do you use for detcord?

I've been good about not blowing myself up for the most part. I did set off about a gram or two of NI3 with my hand once, but the bulk of it was a few inches away and was set off by a few tiny crystals in between it and where I put my hand. I didn't get hurt, but my hand turned purple and yellow and my hearing was messed up for a while. I've also given myself 3rd degree burns on my leg, but that was just lighter fluid + cardboard + reefer + Wild Turkey 101 + baggy pants.

It was some big thick bong hose. Just regular tubing you get at a hardware store.

A friend pushing my bag off a table when inside was 200g of APAN. That was a seriously bad scare, my heart was crazy for like half an hour. I caught my bag, luckily.

Oh yeahhhhh, another one. This was about 6 months ago. Made some MEKPAN with an AP cap. Not too big of a charge, maybe 100ml MEKP with enough ground AN to make a nice slurry. 5g cap. I say not big, but it's still enough to take a person the fuck out.

Well, I'm in the city, so I want to bury the device for noise reasons. Well, I invite a friend along, with whom I had been discussing chemistry. He was a chem major at the local college. Well, it's night time, and I forgot my flash light. So I'm digging this hole, place the charge, and then started to take the fuse, and pull it up for the dirt to be packed around. Well, I lost the fuse for a second, and was feeling for it, when this little bastard whips out a lighter, and lights it and sticks it in the fucking hole to search for the fuse.

I seriously fucking lost it. I never wanted to hit someone so badly in my life.

Now I thought this kid was smart man. He knew some chem, and I explained to him what was being used, and everything about it. And then he sticks a lit lighter in the fucking hole, while my hands are in there.

Needless to say, his ass was sitting down for the rest of the preparation. Way back with the rest of the crowd.

I saw that lighter spark the first time, and I thought I was going to die. It would have been like a shaped charge aimed at my face.

Ok I have a shrapnel wound on my stomach and 2 small wounds on my chest.

Also a few months ago I transported a 50g APAN charge in a backpack with the cap in it. The cap was HTMD I don’t know if its normal you guys to transport charges with the caps in (I keep everything very separate now) But looking back I realise what that could have done to me. It did some pretty serious damage to a boulder it was buried next too and I’m not made of stone!

Got hit in the back of the head by a very fast moving star from a commercial firework it hurt like fuck and burned. Thing is I had been talking to my (girlfriend at the time) and had I not been standing there shielding her she would have been hit in the face (it was at her eye level)

First time I did a nitration and I inhaled rather a lot of NO2 I still have a bad cough from that although it may be smokers cough too.

When I was younger some friends put a banger in both my back pockets and I promptly sat down in the lake with all my clothes on. They still exploded and I still have a red mark on each cheek.

Edit: I didn’t really want to post this because its sort of embarrasing. Regarding the shrapnel wounds on my chest. I dont know what happened but basically I made an AP cap 2 weeks ago. Lined a AAA battery case with wax, filled with about 1g of AP some tissue paper then sealed with a fuse and epoxy resin. Anyway im not 100% sure what went wrong but I took it out too the garden and was digging a small hole to test it in (for noise reasons) And suddenly it went off. Luckily most of it went into my hands (I was wearing thick gloves) and I was also luckily wearing goggles although none of it went near my face. Anyway I caught three pieces of metal in my chest. It could have been a hell of a lot worse had I not been wearing a lab coat, and three layers.

Oh the bang really hurt my ears too.

Anyway as I said I didn’t want to post this but it is a good example as to how unstable AP really is and a lesson learned to myself. This could have been a hell of a lot worse, what if the cap had been in a charge?! I would have probably been killed.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y117/whiteymoza/STA71083.jpg

Yes Im aware im a scrawny fucker and also it looks a lot worse than it is, at no time did it actually hurt but it is starting to itch like fuck now the scar tissue is forming.

Maybe this will be a lesson to those who dont treat explosives, especially those as unstable as your organic peroxides with respect.

Im just lucky, there are so many variables that could have lead me to have lost my life, my hearing, sight or limbs.

And without AP and proper ignition techniques, how many of these could have been avoided?

I can honestly say I don't have any scars from this. Close calls? A few, but not really either.

not that i understand chemicals in any way or controlled pyrotechnics
but i have had the few time were we play with fire an deodorant cans and tennis balls full of methylated spirit in the park you get a few "Oh Shit" moments
we had a fire going in the local woods so we threw a few cans of Lynx ( AXE in the us i think ) on to it but nothing happen so me and a friend went back to the fire and i started to feed it with dry grass an such and my friend started to spray it with more lynx and then all of a sudden both of the cans in the fire went of one after the other needless to say we shit are self but only to realize how lucky we were a few minutes later when we found the shrapnel lodged in several trees just behind and around us

Once a repairman had come over to repair the boiler that supplied the radiators throughout the house, and before extinguishing it set his tools upon and old drum of waste petroleum distillates that I had left over from various things. He left upstairs to his van to retrieve more supplies. Mind you, at the time I thought I had disposed of that. The rusted drum began to ooze purportedly at the bottom from the added pressure on the top of the barrel. When he returned a thin oily film had covered the concrete floor. This film pooled directly underneath the burner for the boiler. He started yelling to evacuate and I, hearing him, jumped from the second story balcony right in front of him to see what in the hell was going on! Right at that moment old fire bells in the house began to ring as a forceful blast of smoke erupted out of the cellar. I bolted down the stairs and saw my floor covered in a sea of fire and swore until I was sure I would also head to a very fiery place! Luckily, this cellar had fallen out of use and was barren, save for the few odd contraptions, so their was nothing to continue to fuel the fire as sprinklers helplessly battled the blaze. Quickly enough we evacuated the celllar and awaited the firefighters arrival. After shutting the door, cutting off the oxygen supply, we let the flames die out knowing the concrete and stone walls and ceiling could take the heat. The fire fighters arrived and we informed them of the situation... they foolishly opened the door and the fire sprung to life only to be struck down by the fire retardant foam. Luckily the only thing that needed repair was the boiler and the sprinkler system [the lead joints melted]

That is my most memorable "OH SHIT!!!" moment...

Ah ye olde oil boilers! These days oil boilers are reasonably expensive and impractical have to have the tank sited outside the house in double bunded tanks to avoid leaks.

I’m not sure on the regs over in the us but I’m sure they aren’t as strict as in the UK.

I think the boilers we fit these days are very safe. There are so many fail safes on them its a bitch to fix them if something goes wrong. Also with these modern condensing boilers which are something like 90% efficient they cant really be sited in a cellar because of the fact that they give off a condensate that must run under gravity to the nearest drain.

Of course I wont go in depth with this because it isn’t the place but out of interest outside of the UK are your boilers mostly gas, oil or other?

Yeah I ramble on about plumbing and heating, I’m always complaining about other people plumbing and heating systems iv got quite a name for It now!

Beaver dams.

Fucking beavers.

Motherfucking beavers.

Actually, it really wasn't the beaver's fault...in any regard.
It involved copious amounts of explosives, an overkill attitude, a very moderately sized beaver damn, a bridge made for human traffic, and one wrecked Volvo containing one irate, injured and angry man.

/shame.

Sounds interesting! Elaboration?

I've had my fair share.

Recently i was making about 500-600g of smoke mix on low heat just as i always had done safetly. I am watching the caramel as i am stirring, and i spot a random black bubble thinking "Well isn't this stra....." and massive pink flames were in my face. Luckily i had wetted my hair, was wearing thick leather gloves and a leather apron, facesheild and it was outside. Could've very easily turned me into quasimodo Was very strange, electric plate too.

Another time, when i first stumbled upon totse's text files, i decided with no real previous pyro experience i would make 20g of Magnesium flash. So there i go, grinding and mixing into a film can it goes. I get outside with my ghetto kno3/sucrose fuse "hey dad come watch this!" i really didnt expect it to do anything more then maybe a big fireball or quick snap. So i light the fuse and as if by fate it goes out right at the fuse hole. My dad was bummed and it was like 11 at night, so i go to get my "failed" device of the lawn. I reach it to within about 2-3 feet and examine the fuse and i see a small kno3 pearl skit across the surface of the film can and smile thinking "Hey thats what it does when it burns" then i think "Fuck! thats what it does when it burns!" I got enough time to turn my body and take 1-2 steps away and then came the heat, light and thunder. I fell completley blind, deaf and shaking on my front lawn and my dad dragged me into the house. Nothing makes you respect your body and life then that kind of shit. Probably wouldnt have killed me if i picked it up but i would have lost hands/arms and wouldve been severely burned. The biggest i have done since that is like 10-15g which is plenty loud in big tubes.

HAHAHA I very rarely laugh reading BB but that practically made me burst into tears!

Fortunately they were not life-threatening, but I had a few minor close calls:

If there is one thing I have learned about pyro it is always the small stuff that gets you. Which takes me to my fist close call was with a dismantled firework. I was extracting flash powder from an airbomb and I was left with a scrap fuse that was attacked to a clump of blackpowder. I took it outside to burn it off (since the fuse was way too short to use for anything, and the bugger flys around me at incredible speed and then hits me straight between the eyes, burning away some of my eybrows. A little lower and my eye would be screwed.

Another time I was trying to make up a new "Cheap Ass Thrill" involving a throw-type banger made from 6-cap shot powder (Armstrongs mix). Not only did it become ULTRA tedious taking itty-bitty amounts out of the caps, when I had the powder in a pile, I reached in to grab a piece of plastic that fell in. I must have scraped my fingernail because this is what happened:
http://krimzonpyro.com.ve.carpathiahost.net/dropbox/armstrongs.jpg
Don't look like much but it stings like a bitch.

I used to make very exotic types of flash powder due to the fact that I didn't have any KCLO4, so id use the more dangerous KCLO3 and even made some KMnO4 based flash powders. One time I was making a beer widget cherry bomb with KMnO4 based flash powder and it started to heat up as I was holding it. I believe that the widget still had a little beer liquid inside it and it must have reacted badly. I was like OH FUCK! ran outside and quickly placed it in my plastic drum. Nothing happened, but still... from that point I stopped making my own flash powder.

The first time I was doing a "spontaneous fire" reaction it was with the KCLO3/sugar + Sulphuric mix. I just thought it would just burn when it touched, but when I poured the sulphuric on it, the sulphuric immediately boiled on contact spitting all over the place. A couple of the hot acid spatter got on my clothes, but fortunately none on my face or eyes. It caught fire a second later. I have a video of one of those reactions in my other thread. The next time I did it with a long pole with a small cup at the end.

Way back when I was still scouring KA-FUCKING-BOOM I would actually try some of the stuff. Some worked, some didn't. But the one thing that nearly got me was the HTH pool chlorine + brake fluid "chemical fire". I tried an amount in a film container and waited.... and waited.... and waited. Other chemical fire stuff at least does something, like KMnO4 + Glycine (smokes a little and then bubbles). But this did nothing. I didnt see a single sign of a reaction. I sighed and picked up the container to take it for disposal when suddenly a grey puff of smoke emerged with a growing "rrrrGGGHHSSST!" sound. I indistinctly flicked my wrist, tossing it aside and while in midair it flared up in a big red flame. If I hadn't done it it would have all gone in my face. Hot flaming HTH and Brake fluid would be very bad.

And lastly the only pyro thing that left a scar on me: I was messing around with propane balloons one day, and after they popped, there was a blob of burning rubber. I tried putting out the burning rubber by smothering it with a hit from a stick. Bad idea. The burning rubber splattered everywhere and one glob got on my right arm and was burning. I smacked it out, but it was on 2 spots on my arm. The worst part is how INCREDIBLY STICKY molten balloon rubber is. It adheres to skin like crazy and no water or anything can really take it off. I had to scrape it off my arm with a knife and dig it out of the burn wound on my arm leaving a scar when it healed. Shitty.

Well bout an hour ago I was making a 150g 2:1 KNO3 and Sugar mix intended for a rocket test, so I put about 50g in a ladle and kept stirring it with a stick, after it liquefied I put some in a container and added more powder to be molten, now if it wasn't for time constraints I would have used less powder in at a time. After this was molten, I put some more of it in my container. After this I added the last of the powder and waited whilst stirring. Now the mixture had just finished so I stopped stirring and as soon as I took the stick out it caught fire, now I'm thinking A. Remove the ladle so it does not catch fire. B throw away the stick. So I remove the ladle off the fire only to notice it had somehow caught fire so Im thinking "Oh Shit" and throw both the stick and the ladle as fast as I could just in time.

I don't under stand how the hell you people accidentally ignite smoke mix. Maybe I'm to cautious but from the moment i put the sucrose and kno3 in the pan my spatula doest stop moving until it is poured into its designated container.

Not everyone has a hotplate, which leads to uneven heating and eventually ignition.

Ive cooked the crap untill its turned into crusty crap. Never lit off. But my brother onteh other hand.....Was melting about 200g on my heating coil. Is like an old lab hot plate with actual coils of wire in a spiral, surrounded by ceramic. And he was using a shallow metal, teflon coated skillet, which he had used beofre. Well some of it got onto the side and he go this great idea to scrap it off with his sturring spoon. I was in my living room at the time and he was outside doing this in the window. Somehow a piece landed on teh coil and lit. He then picked up the skillet and tryed to hold it out of the way of the burning piece. It then jumped into the skillet and it all lit off there while me and my dad were watching tv. All I see is this big pillar of fire and smoke and the carport is flooded with smoke. From the second it lit I just laughed, it did make me wonder if he was ok, because it didnt look good but I just thought it was funny. My dad looked at me like I had something to do with it. He was ok, my coil survived, and the skillet was left uneffected after washing. If he wouldve left it on the coil then more than likely it wouldnt ahve lit. According to his discription of what happened.

My most recent "Oh Shit" moment was when my friend and I lit a fire at the local school, and an employee walks in on us...