A Scary Prospect -- What to do?

"George Patterson" wrote in message
...


Jay Honeck wrote:

Imagine -- letting a 16 year old play with dynamite! It boggles the
mind.

He wasn't *playing* with dynamite. He was *working* with dynamite. Big
difference.

George Patterson
I prefer Heaven for climate but Hell for company.


Once it starts sweating nitro I wouldn't do either :-)

"John E. Carty" wrote:

Once it starts sweating nitro I wouldn't do either :-)

I agree. My first thought when I read that was that I would be covering that
stuff with sawdust or some other stabilizer before doing anything else. I've not
had any first-hand experience with it, though.

George Patterson
I prefer Heaven for climate but Hell for company.

"Roger" wrote

I remember cleaning up an old site one time and finding about a half
dozen sticks in the bottom of a box. I don't know how many years it
had been there, or how many times it had frozen and thawed, BUT it was
laying in a pool of oil. (anyone over 40 knows what the oil was).

At least you were not likely to die of a heart attack, at that point in
time!
--
Jim in NC

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 00:26:18 -0500, "Morgans"
wrote:

It didn't work that way with a Corvair. I charged up to a crossover
triangle on wet pavement, slammed on the brakes, turned the wheel and kept
going straight. Oops!. Blew a tire and bent the rim on the curb.

I managed to convince my dad that the tire went flat, and that's why I hit
the curb.

Moral of the story? On the rear engine cars, the front will break loose
before the rear end. Lesson learned!

Don't think the placement of the engine had anything to do with it,
it's more the type of brakes (drum or disc) and the amount of bias
they are given by the brake system. Typically, drums tend to lock up
more easily than discs and also are subject to fade, something most
disc brakes are relatively immune to. Since most of the braking
occurs at the front end due to weight transfer, the front brakes are
normally bigger and more capable of handling braking loads.

Normally the designers of the braking systems want the fronts to
lockup before the rears, because that is a more stable situation than
having the rears lockup first.

Corky Scott

"George Patterson" wrote in message
...


Jay Honeck wrote:

Imagine -- letting a 16 year old play with dynamite! It boggles the
mind.

He wasn't *playing* with dynamite. He was *working* with dynamite. Big
difference.

A lot of 17 year olds "played" with explosives....in the military. They (the
military) call them "hand grenades".

I had a similar experience when I was 18. I had driven a busload of
(slightly younger) teenagers up to an old abandoned mine site in Colorado,
and was waiting with a couple of other drivers to take them back. We
noticed a small shed set into a hillside a long way from the mine entrance.
Curious, we walked over and noticed that the door was locked. We
immediately figured that this was a blasing magazine, so (being immortal
teenagers) we looked for a way in.

After a few minutes, I realized that by standing on the hillside, I could
lift up the whole roof. Of course I did, moved it to one side, and jumped
down into the shed. I found at lease 15 cases of dynamite (but no caps, for
obvious reasons) in various states of decay. The bottom row had rotted and
there was a lot of that funny "oil" running around. I'm probably very lucky
that I didn't land on any of the "oil" when I jumped in. At any rate, I
very carefully climbed back out, put the roof back on, and we tiptoed away.

When we got back to the camp I was working in, we called the sheriff and
told him what we'd found (of course the roof had already been pulled to one
side in our story). I understand that he sent someone up there and blew the
whole load up. Unfortunately we didn't get to watch. :-)

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


"Roger" wrote in message
...

I remember cleaning up an old site one time and finding about a half
dozen sticks in the bottom of a box. I don't know how many years it
had been there, or how many times it had frozen and thawed, BUT it was
laying in a pool of oil. (anyone over 40 knows what the oil was).

("Bob Chilcoat" wrote)
snip
I had a similar experience when I was 18. I had driven a busload of
(slightly younger) teenagers up to an old abandoned mine site in Colorado,
and was waiting with a couple of other drivers to take them back. We
noticed a small shed set into a hillside a long way from the mine
entrance.
Curious, we walked over and noticed that the door was locked. We
immediately figured that this was a blasing magazine, so (being immortal
teenagers) we looked for a way in.


Your story reads like a Hardy Boys book. :-)

http://hardyboys.bobfinnan.com/hbart.htm
(Hardy Boys book cover art)


Montblack

("Roger" wrote)
good stuff snipped
When I was 16 I was doing the dynamiting for a number of the local
farmers. I used to go up to the hardware store and purchase dynamyte
and caps by the case along with a big coil of fuse. Now days I doubt
I'd even qualify for a license even though I do still own the farm.


1990 was the last time I got to play with the fun stuff. Only it was the
(modern) tube of pink caulk looking stuff. I was delivering bulk farm
fertilizer at the time.

Fertilizer raw indgredients were piled up15 ft high in big three sided (20'
x 40') concrete bins. The fertilizer would get hard after sitting a few
weeks. We'd climb the piles, drill four or five holes, slip in the charges
and blast. Then the monster loader would scoop up the chunks and deliver
them to the mixing station. Pretty safe - except breathing the air!

We had a "super safe" OSHA rated box for storing the pink "boom" "boom"
stuff. I've forgotten the trade name for the explosive tube packs we used.

Again, pretty tame experience on my end - not like I was tooling around with
blasting caps strapped to my waist g.


Montblack
"It blow'd up. It blow'd up real good"

Blasing piles of fertilizer can be dangerous! Look up the explosion in
Oppau, Germany in 1921.

"About 7:30 a.m. on September 21, 1921, two powerful explosions occurred at
the
BASF plant in Oppau, Germany. The explosions destroyed the plant and
approximately 700 nearby houses, and killed 430 persons.

The explosions occurred as blasting powder was being used to break up
storage
piles of a 50/50 mixture of ammonium sulphate and ammonium nitrate. This
procedure had previously been used 16,000 times without mishap. About 4,500
tons of the mixture were involved in the explosion, which created a crater
250
feet in diameter and 50 feet deep."

--
Bob (Chief Pilot, White Knuckle Airways)


"Montblack" wrote in message
...
("Roger" wrote)
good stuff snipped
When I was 16 I was doing the dynamiting for a number of the local
farmers. I used to go up to the hardware store and purchase dynamyte
and caps by the case along with a big coil of fuse. Now days I doubt
I'd even qualify for a license even though I do still own the farm.


1990 was the last time I got to play with the fun stuff. Only it was the
(modern) tube of pink caulk looking stuff. I was delivering bulk farm
fertilizer at the time.

Fertilizer raw indgredients were piled up15 ft high in big three sided
(20'
x 40') concrete bins. The fertilizer would get hard after sitting a few
weeks. We'd climb the piles, drill four or five holes, slip in the charges
and blast. Then the monster loader would scoop up the chunks and deliver
them to the mixing station. Pretty safe - except breathing the air!

We had a "super safe" OSHA rated box for storing the pink "boom" "boom"
stuff. I've forgotten the trade name for the explosive tube packs we used.

Again, pretty tame experience on my end - not like I was tooling around
with
blasting caps strapped to my waist g.


Montblack
"It blow'd up. It blow'd up real good"

On Sun, 6 Mar 2005, Newps wrote:

No way the average kid should be driving at 15.

These days, you're right. But back when the law was made, the "average
kid" was a lot more mature and responsible than they are now. Makes one
give some thought to what's changed, and how one might influence kids to
be more like they would've been in the old days, in those respects.

-Dan