[TheForge] Why an acetylene leak is not desirable

[Andrew Vida]

On 12/8/2011 11:26 AM, CraigSchaefer wrote:
>
>
> "TW, i just saw a commercial for for an upcoming Orange Count
> Choppers episode where they filled a 55 gallon garbage bag with
> oxygen and acetylene... if a static spark had set off that mix, the
> series would have ended right then and there..."
>
>
>
> Is this one of those 'tree falls in the woods' things?   Would
> anybody miss them?

	Heh... good question.  Not I, that is for sure.
>
>
>
> When a bunch of us were greater miscreants than we are now, we used
> to fill plastic milk jugs with oxy/acet and set them off with a
> rifle.    They made a pretty good blast at that small size.

	It is good to know I was not the only one to engage in idiocy.  I had a 
friend at UC Davis - we will call him  Glen, mainly because that was his 
name.  He was a rather brilliant ChemE and, like me, was fascinated with 
things that go bang.  I don't know where he got it, but he had the most 
excellent book on a wide range of explosives including the precise 
procedures for manufacturing them.  One such compound is called 
"hexamine", a nickname for a much longer label.  We used to make it in 
small batches and blow shit up.  One day we got it in our peanut-buttery 
little heads to put a small quantity under a garbage can.  We lit that 
sucker off.  The bottom of the metallic can blew out, sending the can 
perhaps 75 feet straight up.  We had NO idea it would go that high. 
Luckily it came very straightly down on to the middle of the street, 
missing the neighbors' parked cars.  At that point the neighbors no 
longer thought it cute and we had to stop such antics.

	Today, of course, a black bag team would whisk us away to Gitmo for... 
"questioning".  Long term questioning.  Very long. :(

	It is actually funny when I think of it - the feds are all worried 
about the sale of fertilizer as possibly becoming an ANFO bomb.  The 
main ingredient in hexamine is a very commonly available substance.  And 
no I am not going to tell you what it is.  That is what Google is for. 
:^o  OBTW, manufacturing hexamine is EXTREMELY hazardous.  I never would 
have attempted doing it on my own.  Knowing what I now know, I would not 
have tried it even with Glen at the helm.