ajm

Nitrogen tri-iodide, one of my favourite childhood explosives!

Just reading a website got me reminiscing...

Also included in my product line were:-

- Gun powder
- Potassium Permanganate, glycerin and magnesium
- Thermite
- Calcium hypochlorite and brakefluid

Ones that I aspired to but never successfuly made (due to the prudish local chemist's refusal to supply the prerequisite concentrated acids ):-

- Nitroglycerin
- Picric Acid

A few other worthy mentions - I also experimented with extraction of digitalis from foxgloves (not sure if it was successful due to the lack of willing heart attack volunteers) and had a failed attempt to produce phosgene (world war one poison gas) amongst other fairly disasterous failures both in the school and my home laboratory.

Did anyone else share the same "interests"?

Scot123

No, not exactly but was on a mission in second year to produce Nitrous Oxide.

Culminated in causing a massive explosion in friends attic when heating Ammonium Nitrate.

Yes, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing....

ajm

LOL!

Did you know that Nitrous Oxide is often used as a propellant in those cans of "spray cream" you can get at the supermarket?

IWatkins

Fuel-air bombs was my thing.

Empty oil barrel, chop off top. In the bottom place a couple of bricks and then a metal door mat (you know, trellis stuff for scrapping muddy boots on).

Next, get as many exploding fireworks as possible (bangers, airbombs etc.) and make a "mega banger". Still had to be encased in rolls and rolls of cardboard to get a decent confinment for maximum "bang". Use all the fuses to give you maximum time to get to minimum safe distance.

In the side of the oil barrel, right at the bottom, you make a hole just big enough to get your mega banger through.

Next, you get three bin liners and put them inside each other to form a three skinned bag. Fill with as much petrol as you can get your hands on. Keep as much air in there as possible and tie the bags up properly. Carefully put this lot into the barrel on top of the grating making sure it spreads out to cover the inside of the barrel.

Light the mega banger, shove through hole in the side of the barrel and run like fugg.

Get to cover then wait for the best mushroom cloud you have ever seen.

(Disclaimer - very dangerous thing to do, but what can I say, I was 13)

ajm

Nice!

I can't really blame this on youth because I was about 22 at the time but.... if you are into mushroom clouds (and have a very large field) light a small camp fire and then stand a calor gas tank about 5 foot away from the fire. Retire at least 200 yards and shoot the calor gas tank with an .243 rifle!!!

I was laughing so much I could hardly take the shot but by God was it worth it!!!

A smaller scale version works quite well with blowtorch butane cans and an air rifle!

Scot123

Yes, I've ended up with a face full of cream trying to extract it. The ironic thing is I now have a FULL 10lb bottle in the car and haven't went near it.

Watkins you must have been a menace to society at 13

ajm

It is quite cool, although you should be wary of taking a direct neat hit from a bottle without mixing in enough air or you can end up with hypoxia. Last time I experienced nitrous oxide was whilst accompanying a friend to casualty (drinking related injury) and noticed they had O2 and N20 plumbed into the wall of the cubicle. There was a mask hung up in the room plugged into the the O2 so I moved it to the nitrous supply and had a good old toke!

what would scooby do

I used to have access to a lot of Toluene

ajm

Often marketed as boat "fender cleaner" at chandlers stores.

If you can get hold of a decent quantity of conc. nitric acid without raising eyebrows then the options are pleanty!

You can even make the high explosive ingredient of C-1 with nitric acid and military surplus "hexy burner" fuel blocks (hexamine) plus a few other easy to come by ingredients!

Leslie

We used to misbehave with "Mighty Atom" bangers and using them to shoot Golden Syrup tins off the back of a spade onto the corrugated iron roof of a local garage. It used to drive then crackers at the sound of the tin rolling down the roof. Surprising how far you could get one of those tins to go.

Used to play around with Calcium Carbide a lot too, good fun but more than a little dangerous!

Les

King RA

Tied to make 'astrolite' (think thats it) and ended up almost setting my entire kitchen on fire heating pure alcohol on a gas cooker !!!!!

ajm

LOL!

I'm curious why you were heating alcohol though?

King RA

hmmm I might be getting confused between trying to make a bomb or some sort of drug paraphenalia...

ajm

Interestingly Hydrazine (one of the 2 major consituents in astrolite) is also used to make LSD!

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

How many of you still have eyebrows ?

ajm

Never lost my eyebrows luckily. I have had a bald spot on my head though! A couple of years ago I thought I was going to have some fruity scarring on my fingers from saving my mate's house from burning down after a petrol stunt went wrong. My fingers looked like sausages with all the skin blistered and split and the flesh a nice white "cooked pork" colour!

It took about 6-7 weeks to heal and got away with no visible scarring luckily!

The worst is methanol. Never **** about with that when you are plastered! We managed to explode a bottle of it and it set my hair and my mates leg on fire! The worst bit is that you can't see the flame so we were running around slapping ourselves all over like muppets!

STI-NUTTER

shhhhhh

cia/fbi are prob listening in now

K

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Done the Nitrogen Tri-iodide thing at grammar school. Result was 4 strokes, but worth it:

Also gassed self and mate making chlorine in our garage:

Took out the kitchen window trying to light a jet of hydrogen from a glass flask the reactants were in:

Our specialities as kids were a flamethrower, from a metal bike pump and parafin, and bombs/"shotguns" from surplus bangers.

We got our backsides kicked by my mate's steelworker dad wearing his work steeltoecaps for using the flamethrower to incinerate polystyrene boxes on top of his toolbench, under which he had 20 gallons of petrol stored

The "shotguns" were made out of old oak table legs, and used to fire nails, screws and other assorted shrapnel, but that got stopped when my mate's mum caught us obliterating the 5th pot plantpot with one:

Probably the best escape was while melting old Dinky Toys on his open fire. We poured the resultant liquid metal into a Pond's Cold Cream jar to set, thinking it was pot, and it exploded

The living room was splattered with molten zinc, the carpet was burned and my mate's mum's knitting was burnt. Neither of us got a scratch or a burn, though and we were kneeling next to it when it exploded!

She took a doglead to us!!!!

We also experimented with "slug guns", which used a banger to fire a live slug (garden variety: ) at mates. The result if you hit someone, had to be seen to be believed:

Alcazar

ajm

LOL! All good stuff!

I knew out of a forum of petrol heads there had to be a few pyromaniacs about!

Anyone for mercury fulminate?

King RA

omg alcazar, how are you still with us?!?!?!?!?!

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Dunno, m8, my mate who took part in that lot is now a chemistry teacher

Someday I'll publish the story of the petrol bombs.:

Just to say: if I caught either of my teenagers doing stuff like that, I'd skin 'em:

Alcazar

Jamie_B

I used to have the terrorists cookbook for my zx spectrum, I once send my mum into boots for some iodine crystals, they weren't that keen on selling her any.

We used to take apart fireworks and make pipebombs, quite dangerous stuff really I'm suprised I didn't hurt my self.

Two schools friends filled balloons with oxyacetylene and then put as many as possible in a phone box. They then lit a piece of masking tape stuck on one of the balloons Seconds later the phone box was levelled, they got court appearances and heavy fines.

ajm

LOL!

Funnily enough I owe much of my interest in "destructive science" to my old man (PhD in chemistry). He was mostly supportive (apart from confiscation of chemistry set a few times) since he has admitted to making just about every explosive and noxious substance you can think of. He never told me how to specifically make anything, but gave me hints (this was before terrorists cookbook type files were doing the rounds). Now all the information you could ever need is available on the internet so kids have no excuse NOT to blow anything up!

Never stifle the desire to learn, its just as likely to produce a genius as it is a fatal explosion!

mart360

Phosgene gas can be created by heating nitromoors paint stripper!!!!

Apparantly its a common casualty injury amongst car restorers!!

i always fancied the iodine B**** but like you say had a chemist who must have known our intentions!!!!

used to do the old hydrocloric acid & magnesium ribbon bit at school

we dissolved a whole roll of ribbon and lit the results...

blew the testtube into smithereens, and a craftily left on gas tap went up too

we all got evacuated.........

and we all got away with it...


my favorite was pottasium in milk bottles , lobbed into the colleges ornamental pond!!!!!

i didnt change much when i left school,,,,

discovered catlyst & acelerator when learning the ropes as a laminator....

those were the days!!

Mart

Leslie

I think it was mercury fulminate that we used to scatter on the pavement outside the house so it would go off when passers by walked on it. Either that or a half crown left on the path with a bit of thread stuck to it so you could pull it away when someone bent down to pick it up!

Les

Faire D'Income

Supposing you could even get hold of a bulk tank in the first place, I can't see how a .243 would penetrate the tank?

ajm

LOL! Not a bulk tank, a small one:



A .243 pierces one with EASE!

A bulk tank would be good though!

Edit: p.s. I find your scepticism mildly insulting!

Audi-Boy

so what cool explosives can you make from houshold chems?

I can never get the deep satifying thud type bangs that set off car and house alarms, can you enlighten me?

ajm

I could enlighten you, but that would be tantamount to inciting someone to break the law! I suggest you dig out your chemistry books and get swatting up!

deano

I think that this thread will be on echalons closley monitored list

There are more than a couple of key words in this thread that should ring alarm bells at the pentagon