Youthful Indescretions

Post by **AntiM** » Wed May 10, 2006 7:12 am

There's a box of marine flares and a box of railroad torpedoes sitting in the garage, an indiscretion waiting to happen.

Cabanasprings · Post by **Cabanasprings** » Wed May 10, 2006 8:18 am

What's a railroad torpedo?

RingO'Fire · Post by **RingO'Fire** » Wed May 10, 2006 8:47 am

Cabanasprings wrote:What's a railroad torpedo?

This is exactly what I was thinking.

I have to admit too, my mischevious inner child thought, "Oooo...a 'railroad torpedo'...that sounds really interesting...and probably a lot of fun....hmmmm, I wonder what I could do with one of those?...let's see, the 'fun' shouldn't lead to incarceration though...hmmm..."

Post by **AntiM** » Wed May 10, 2006 8:56 am

They're small charges on clips which are placed on the rails so when a train comes through the loud bang! warns the work crews down the track to get their asses safely aside. Not entirely certain if they're still used, seems kinda primitive.

We've heard of guys clipping them to fenceposts and shooting them, blowing the top of the post to bits in the process. Neither larry nor I know exactly how dangerous smacking one with a hammer would be. We may well let ranger genius find out for us. hehehe.

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Wed May 10, 2006 9:24 am

AntiM wrote:There's a box of marine flares and a box of railroad torpedoes sitting in the garage, an indiscretion waiting to happen.

This sounds like... Fun!!

Oh, to answer - not too wise. Think of the fencepost, made of wood, like the hammer handle, how solid it is, and how solid your hand isn't, in comparison.

Probably take the hammer head off the handle, and hurt the shit outta your hand. Ouch!!

bb

Post by **AntiM** » Wed May 10, 2006 9:27 am

yeah, we may take them up to the ranch and shoot at them.

Lassen Forge · Post by **Lassen Forge** » Wed May 10, 2006 9:44 am

AntiM wrote:yeah, we may take them up to the ranch and shoot at them.

That's right, Em... make me jealous! >grins<

>rasssa frazzan darned blasted stupid california assholic weenie attitudes anti-gun moronics anti-gun legislating bumblefarts grumble grumble...<

bb

Rockdad · Post by **Rockdad** » Wed May 10, 2006 10:04 am

can't sit still wrote:I had 8 brothers and sisters so we were considered more or less,,,expendable. My father bought me some nitrates and perchclorates.
I was in pyromania heaven. I graduated up from match-head pipebombs
to shell casings filled with all kinds of powders. I punched the bullet and primer out of a 375 H&H magnum shell that I filched from Clark Gable's house.

I filled it with my own mix of rocket powder and put a Jet-X fuse through the primer hole. Then I put the original bullet back in the mouth of the casing. I attached it to a little car to make a rocket car.
I lit it on the asphalt but it wouldn't move because it was too rough. While it was burning, I picked it up to move it to cement. Naturally, it exploded. My sister thought it was hysterical. My brother caught the 375 Silvertip in the shoulder and didn't think it was one bit funny.

One more time...I had to explain why my siblings were bleeding and that it wasn' truly all my fault.
It wasn't me who put the pitchfork through his foot but I did get him to sit on acetyelene bombs.
Dan

Bomb's away! The things that I did as a young man would have me on a terrorist watch list, swat team out front etc, nowadays.
needless to say we emptied a lot of .45 cal bullets till my buddies dad got into reloading his own then we had five gallon kegs of different powders to play with!

We would build real pipe bombs to blow up our army men! The backyard at my house growing up looked like the army corp of enginners gone bad,
Ditchs and bridges and foxholes with the water hose running all the time,
Designed my own fusing sytem to set off pipe bombs by battery(steel wool) and my Mom and Dad straight laced old fashined type's would be like..

Mom - What are you boy's doing now!
Boy's- blowing up things! (saving the world)
Mom- do not wake the baby!
Boy's- ok we will bury the bomb's deeper

Dad- Where's my car battery?
Boy's- we needed it closer to the backyard for our bomb's
Dad- Ok I needed a new one anyhow
Boy's - Dad check out this Barbie doll it blew her head clean off
Dad- Your sisters are going to be mad so you better bury it!
Boy's- Ok we will burn it first...

Another thing different from today was we would go plinking up in the hills with our .22 rifles so a group of five or so young boy's all armed with rifles would go marching right up and across town and nobody would say a word in fact we always stopped at the hardware store and charged a couple boxes of Ammo to our dad's account...
oh and of course a few pipe nipples, caps and some speaker wire

But we knew better than to ever shoot a farmers animal or hurt anybody.

And the one grump was old farmer at the top of Mission Peak would shoot at anybody on his property with an old blunderbuster full of rock salt and we would go up there just to get shot at!

Also had the electric fence we would make long chains of kids and then one kid would grab it and we would see how long we could take it...

The good ole' day's!

Post by **AntiM** » Wed May 10, 2006 10:09 am

That's right, Em... make me jealous! >grins<

Ah well, it isn't MY ranch. I wish ....

can't sit still · Post by **can't sit still** » Wed May 10, 2006 9:26 pm

AntiM, the torpedoes are a bit much to hit with a hammer. The blast and spray will get you. Now, if you set up something like the "moustrap", that would work nicely.
If you run out of torpedoes, you can always mix up potassium chlorate and sulphur. It's a decent contact explosive.
If you want to prove that you're insane, you could mix up nitrogen triiodide [ammonia and iodine] http://www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTab ... index.html

The cheapest explosive is acetyelene and oxygen in a bag. I can tell you from experience that if you're filling trash can liner bags,,,,the static electricity generated by spreading the bag is adequate to detonate the gas mixture.
Don't mess with red phosphorous/antimony sulphide. The phosphorous burns don't heal.

If you want to make a good bang for the kids without danger, here's the recipe.
Crush some dry ice until it will fit through the neck of a 2 liter bottle. Put a couple of ounces in the bottom. Hold the bottle horizontal and squeeze the bottom/middle a bit. Add a few ounces of water to the forward[top] of the bottle. Twist on the cap and toss it.

If your dog thinks it's a game of "fetch", he'll be in for a real surprise.
Dan

Ugly Dougly · Post by **Ugly Dougly** » Thu May 11, 2006 8:23 am

In the words of Gomez Addams: "Acquitted!"

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:46 pm

graidawg · Post by **graidawg** » Wed May 18, 2011 9:55 pm

I KNEW deep in my heart i wasn't the only idiot kid who's dad had explosives!

thanks for bumping this yggi!

ygmir · Post by **ygmir** » Thu May 19, 2011 7:46 am

Rockdad wrote:
can't sit still wrote:I had 8 brothers and sisters so we were considered more or less,,,expendable. My father bought me some nitrates and perchclorates.
I was in pyromania heaven. I graduated up from match-head pipebombs
to shell casings filled with all kinds of powders. I punched the bullet and primer out of a 375 H&H magnum shell that I filched from Clark Gable's house.

I filled it with my own mix of rocket powder and put a Jet-X fuse through the primer hole. Then I put the original bullet back in the mouth of the casing. I attached it to a little car to make a rocket car.
I lit it on the asphalt but it wouldn't move because it was too rough. While it was burning, I picked it up to move it to cement. Naturally, it exploded. My sister thought it was hysterical. My brother caught the 375 Silvertip in the shoulder and didn't think it was one bit funny.

One more time...I had to explain why my siblings were bleeding and that it wasn' truly all my fault.
It wasn't me who put the pitchfork through his foot but I did get him to sit on acetyelene bombs.
Dan
Bomb's away! The things that I did as a young man would have me on a terrorist watch list, swat team out front etc, nowadays.
needless to say we emptied a lot of .45 cal bullets till my buddies dad got into reloading his own then we had five gallon kegs of different powders to play with!

We would build real pipe bombs to blow up our army men! The backyard at my house growing up looked like the army corp of enginners gone bad,
Ditchs and bridges and foxholes with the water hose running all the time,
Designed my own fusing sytem to set off pipe bombs by battery(steel wool) and my Mom and Dad straight laced old fashined type's would be like..

Mom - What are you boy's doing now!
Boy's- blowing up things! (saving the world)
Mom- do not wake the baby!
Boy's- ok we will bury the bomb's deeper

Dad- Where's my car battery?
Boy's- we needed it closer to the backyard for our bomb's
Dad- Ok I needed a new one anyhow
Boy's - Dad check out this Barbie doll it blew her head clean off
Dad- Your sisters are going to be mad so you better bury it!
Boy's- Ok we will burn it first...

Another thing different from today was we would go plinking up in the hills with our .22 rifles so a group of five or so young boy's all armed with rifles would go marching right up and across town and nobody would say a word in fact we always stopped at the hardware store and charged a couple boxes of Ammo to our dad's account...
oh and of course a few pipe nipples, caps and some speaker wire

But we knew better than to ever shoot a farmers animal or hurt anybody.

And the one grump was old farmer at the top of Mission Peak would shoot at anybody on his property with an old blunderbuster full of rock salt and we would go up there just to get shot at!

Also had the electric fence we would make long chains of kids and then one kid would grab it and we would see how long we could take it...

The good ole' day's!

This one, I love.......brings back memories.......

Solito · Post by **Solito** » Thu May 19, 2011 4:48 pm

SO there was mention of potato cannons pages back - and I just have to add to it. Clearly there are much more appalling indescretionary activities I've done, but that's a big can (maybe a 6-pack) of worms I don't have time to go into...

SO - I grew up in St Louis MO, which as you may know, is a river town. Three major rivers, in fact. The Missouri, the Meramec, and the ole Mississippi all converge right here. We have LOTS of water. With lots of water come lots of boat traffic. Incidentally, we have LOTS of barges, sometimes stacked 4 or 5 longwise, being pushed by tugs.

As an avid boy scout - I was lucky enough to be in a very well-resourced, well attended, and well led troop. One of the leaders had 2000 acres of private land next to the Mississippi river and we had several private camp-outs there per year. I could make more than several posts on our antics performed on this land alone, but will stick to the potato cannon.

SO - said leader had leased out a massive chunk of his land to be quarried for limestone. This meant that the leasing/mining company had a pier made to land aforementioned barges for transporting limestone on the river. It also meant that an operational quarry was being operated on land that was often visited by a bunch of aggressive chest-thumping, face-painted, camouflage wearing, drugged out teenagers who felt it necessary to live for weekends at a time in their underwear on idle quarry land, and retreat into the woods at night for [I've forcibly forgotten].

oh yea, the cannon - so one year the parts to a cannon were cobbled together from items stolen from the quarry company - PVC and pipe glue miostly - we also made a MASSIVE bong we called "The Hammer". Anyway - the cannon was big, and built pre-internet when the facts of a powerful ignition and propellant system were difficult to obtain. We had guidelines and research, however - and we did OK, but not well. We mounted her on top of a massive mountain of already quarried and crushed limestone, with an impressive view of the Mississippi river. She was crewed by 5 people, with many others watching - in fact they were Forward Observing - which is what you call the military skill of monitoring a target for artillery that is set behind cover.

Barges make HUGE, slow moving targets, and the river channel brought them JUST into our range as they passed the pier. After missing many, we began to hear the WHUMP of a potato on metal hit. We were ecstatic.

The next time out we modified her with a different ignition system and moved to the deck of a piered barge. This gave us a lower vantage, but brought us much closer to our targets' known course, and eliminated the range issue. Cover, however, was scarce, and so was our propellant - which consisted of cans of Right Guard and lighter fluid. The exploding cans were our charge.

With the exception of technical difficulties - we actual made some impressive shots - some missed and went sailing completely over the target. Others skipped off the river surface and made waterline impacts (a sink!). Others smashed into her hull and caused the tug to flip on the spotlight, forcing us into a hasty retreat before the light could find us. We got so good at landing them hullside we figured we'd try a shot at the Tug herself. This was the moment of indescretion.

We laoded up and hoping the best in avoiding another flame-out, barrel break, or misfire - we awaited another tug to come through our fire lane. FO downriver advised we had a set of 2 barges being pushed by a slow tug entering our channel...

...engine sounds in the distance turned into deck lights

we lined her up for a hull shot, lit the pilot fire, and waited for our shot...

...right about when the tug was 45 degrees from our firing position she slammed on the spotlight... FUCK! The good part was that the tug was scanning the quarry mountain, and not the piered barge where we were. We held our course, but we got chatty and a little nervous.

FIRE!

...broken glass! Not the WHUMP we were expecting. I imagine we shot her through one of the tug's topside windows. Yikes!

Already in full retreat we hear over a loudspeaker something to the effect of "You sons-a-bitches have the State Highway Patrol coming!"... and that was it.

We spent the rest of the night raising hell in the woods, and threw the cannon into the river.

ibdave · Post by **ibdave** » Thu May 19, 2011 5:24 pm

sweet...

Patsh · Post by **Patsh** » Mon Jul 18, 2011 7:32 pm

Here's a youthful indiscretion if I ever saw one!

http://tumblr.com/x2w3e2zeqi

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 8:25 pm

geospyder · Post by **geospyder** » Sat Sep 07, 2013 8:36 pm

AntiM wrote:Neither larry nor I know exactly how dangerous smacking one with a hammer would be.

You bumped it so I'll answer your question. As a teenager I hit a small piece of one with a hammer. Hammer stayed in one piece but flew backwards out of my hand. Luckily it didn't hit me in the head. We would take minute pieces and place them in a nut that had bolts threaded into it. We would then spin the bolts high into the air and run like hell. Most times we never found the bolts. Again luckily we never got hit with the flying pieces.

theCryptofishist · Post by **theCryptofishist** » Sun Sep 08, 2013 1:02 pm

RingO'Fire wrote:Alright, here's my true epic tale. I'll end it with this one, but it will take a few installments. This is my brother's favorite story. I call this story, "THE TIME I KIDNAPPED MY BROTHER."

The year was 1984. "Purple Rain" was on the airwaves and Ronnie and Nancy Ray Gun were telling us to "just say 'No!'" I was 22 and my brother was 19. My brother, Michael, had been dating this girl Angie (age 18) for about three years when they announced that they were getting married. Oh joy!

Neither I nor my family particularly cared for Angie, since she was as "dull as a doorknob", "a bump on a log", "a stick in the mud", etc. This girl didn't have much personality and had absolutely no drive or ambition. My brother, on the other hand, was very friendly, outgoing and gregarious (like me!). When I looked into my brother's future with Angie, I saw him working his ass off to support the two of them, while her lazy fat ass was (a) going to get pregnant right away, and (b) going to stay home and watch TV and eat all day and not do a damned thing while she continually got fatter and fatter.

We (my parents and I) all tried to talk them out of it, without really being blunt to my brother about how we really felt about Angie. "You're too young! Wait a little while!" Oh no! They wouldn't have it. I made up my mind though, "There is no way in hell I am just going to stand by and watch while my brother marries that lazy fat-ass bitch!"

At the time, I was living in a kind of "communal house" owned by a couple, Jim and Carmen. Jim, Carmen, and I had been planning for about three months to take an extended road trip out to the west coast. We had all been working extra jobs and saving our money for the trip.

I had begged and begged my brother to come with us, but he was trying to save money for the wedding and wouldn't hear of it. Hell, I even offered to pay his way if he would "just come with us!" I figured that if he ever got a glimpse of the "possibilities" (i.e., super cool west coast women) that were out there in the rest of the world, he would forget all about dumb ol' Angie. He said that he was tempted, but just couldn't afford to miss work and didn't want to leave Angie. Wah!

The night before we were going to leave, Jim and Carmen and I were sitting around our living room, taking shots of Jack Daniels and smoking green flower buds. The conversation went something like this,
Me: "Damn! Man, I wish my brother would come with us! Instead, he's going to stay here and marry that dumb bitch Angie!"
Jim [offhandedly]: "Hell man, we oughtta just kidnap him and bring him with us."
Me [light bulb over my head lighting up like a damned lighthouse searchlight]: "Hell YES! That's IT! Let's fuckin' kidnap his ass!"
Jim: "Are you serious?"
Me: "HELL YES I'm serious! Let's kidnap his ass and take him to California with us! Let's do it!"
Jim: "Alright, I'm game!"
Carmen: "Count me in!"
Me: "HELL YES! We're gonna kidnap my brother and take him to California with us!"

That's how the conspiracy first began....
Next installment.....the kidnapping!

Youthful Indescretions

Potato cannon story

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