Shooting the Anvil

[llowry61]

My grandfather and his grandfather inadvertently did a similar number with a huge tree stump back in the 30s. The younger man had been summoned by the elder one to provide the physical labor, digging out a small chamber under the stump and chopping away at the major roots anchoring the stump, while his grandfather, who had handled explosives in the nearby coal mines, prepared the dynamite charge. After they were all set up, the older gentleman twice decided to add just a little more to the charge - just to be sure, mind you. By the time they were ready, they had attracted quite a crowd of neighbors surrounding the old man's big back yard. They lit the fuse and waited, making sure everyone stayed well back. When it blew, it really blew, sending the stump hundreds of feet, over the old man's house, across the street, over my grandfather's house, and down to the bottom on his terraced back yard. My grandfather's main concern afterwards had been how close the stump had landed to the new stone barbeque he had just finished, dreading my grandmother's probable reaction. The incident became a favorite story often told by my mom, my uncle, and my very numerous older cousins. The two gentlemen involved achieved a certain amount of undesired notoriety for their achievement.

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[steelslaver]

Rocket? Welding job on Akutan AK apiece of 8" pipe, a oxygen bottle and a sledge hammer to knock off the valve and away she goes. Get a nutral flame going with a cutting torch, place the tip flat on a piece of steel and smother the flame, fill bread sacks, rubber gloves etc,. I have heard a big garbage bag will take out a lot of windows. 2 weather balloons would be fun, one to fill with O2 and acetylene or propane and the other with helium to float the first balloon. A simple delay device. I bet that would get some interesting results. Did I mention a good alibi and a better lawyer?

 

[Squarebutt]

The all-time winner happened 50 years ago in Oregon. Never fails to amuse: [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6CLumsir34[/ame]

 

[llowry61]

Rocket? Welding job on Akutan AK apiece of 8" pipe, a oxygen bottle and a sledge hammer to knock off the valve and away she goes. Get a nutral flame going with a cutting torch, place the tip flat on a piece of steel and smother the flame, fill bread sacks, rubber gloves etc,. I have heard a big garbage bag will take out a lot of windows. 2 weather balloons would be fun, one to fill with O2 and acetylene or propane and the other with helium to float the first balloon. A simple delay device. I bet that would get some interesting results. Did I mention a good alibi and a better lawyer?

Guys in shop class messed around with the Acetylene in small amounts. I remember Rudy Hitsman was the teacher and he would pop a cork when someone did that, caught them smoking in the arc welding station or turning the forge furnace on and letting the gas run for a minute then throwing a lit paper towel in to hear it whoosh and blast a 4-foot flame out of it.

Looking back on it I can't believe they let us have access to all of the things they did without anyone getting killed.

When he caught us, everyone had to put all the tools away and spend the rest of the period at their desks in the classroom. A fate worse than death. We all loved shop class.

He was the drivers ed teacher as well and relished playing signal 30 to attempt to scare us all out of the things we immediately went and did as soon as we got our licenses.

Years later I ran into his son at a HS reunion. He was a couple of years behind us at the school. He told me his dad would come home and tell them at dinner what we had done and laugh about how onery we all were. Gave me a bit of insight into him as a person not the authoritarian teacher we saw.

 

[Jaco1234]

Gallon paint can with nail hole in bottom. Spit in can. Drop in a lump of carbide. Put the lid on. Light hole. Ears ring for a week.
http://https://www.bigbangcannons.com/

 

[Kinman]

Rocket? Welding job on Akutan AK apiece of 8" pipe, a oxygen bottle and a sledge hammer to knock off the valve and away she goes. Get a nutral flame going with a cutting torch, place the tip flat on a piece of steel and smother the flame, fill bread sacks, rubber gloves etc,. I have heard a big garbage bag will take out a lot of windows. 2 weather balloons would be fun, one to fill with O2 and acetylene or propane and the other with helium to float the first balloon. A simple delay device. I bet that would get some interesting results. Did I mention a good alibi and a better lawyer?

A buddy of mine took a standard water heater tank and cut the top off, fitted a spark plug into the drain bung. He would haul it out to the middle of his semi rural street, unscrew the spark plug and insert his cutting torch pour a good quantity of acetylene into the tank, screw in the spark plug, drop a basketball down into the tank, hook up a coil and battery and set that sucker off from a relatively safe distance. I swear it nearly sent the basketball out of sight, the boom was very satisfying. The bet was whether or not the ball would pop when it came down, it didn't and landed in the street fairly close to the tank and again bounced to nearly a telephone pole and and a half.
Crazy...
I watched welders at the pier I worked at in Nam do something similar with military garbage cans, those buggers flew. The plastic garbage bag thing was standard fooling around for those guys, they had one of those mini fridges and sold ice cold beer for a buck, they did a booming business.....

 

[arjay]

We used to launch lit cherry bombs (the real ones, not modern baby food propellant fired) with heavy, homemade slingshots until cousin Carroll lost a finger.

I got to be the fuse lighter when I was 12.My neighbor Phil was 15 and the launcher (they were his cherry bombs) We sent them high into the sky in the field behind his house,the horses went nuts and Phil’s mom raised holy hell with us!
(He also taught me to smoke)Helluva guy lol

 

[steelslaver]

I got to be the fuse lighter when I was 12.My neighbor Phil was 15 and the launcher (they were his cherry bombs) We sent them high into the sky in the field behind his house,the horses went nuts and Phil’s mom raised holy hell with us!
(He also taught me to smoke)Helluva guy lol

In my neighborhood it was 2 brothers named Chuck and Sam who lead the rest of us astray. My one brother was with Sam when Sam whirled a piece of chain and then let it go to spin up and over the powerlines. He said it was quite a sight, briefly lighting up the evening sky. Took out the big transformer for the neighbor hood. The power company and my step dad were not pleased. I was with his brother Chuck when he started up a self propelled mower he had aimed at someones garden on the way home from school. My parents did not approve of them or their family which only made them more interesting at the time.

Sam died in a car wreck at about 22, Chuck was famous for being arrested on one of him many DUIs and using his phone call to order a pizza. He went on to graduate from the state pen and then die of alcoholism. Their cousin who had a small ranch south of town made his claim to fame by rustling an elephant from the circus. Alcohol was believed to be involved.

PS. My Driver's Ed teacher was also the HS shop teacher and a really nice guy. Believe it or not I took shop all 4 years of HS. It and gym were my only thing that ruined my D average. Him and his wife were killed by a drunk driver while I was in the Marine Corps.