When all you have is a hammer...

[HeroHog]

Clueless father tries to “dispose” bullet found in yard, accidentally shoots himself with a hammer!

While mowing the lawn in front of his newly purchased mobile home, George Fath of Pleasant Lake, Indiana found a .22 caliber bullet in his yard. Concerned for the safety of his young sons, George proceed to do something incredibly stupid.

“My hammer was outside so I took the bullet and put it on a rock and smacked it with the hammer,” Fath told reporters with Channel 15 News. “It went off and went into my belly and knocked me on my butt.”

[K Frame]

Some years ago neighbor came up to me all worried and concerned. He found a single .45 ACP round in our common parking lot between my car and his (I had dropped it on a range trip a day or so before).

He was literally terrified that had he run over it with his car it would have exploded like a land mine and killed everyone in the general vicinity.

At least he was smart enough not to clap it with a hammer.

[230RN]

Ten, 11, 12, something like that, we used to stuff cap pistol caps into .22 cases and pound them between rocks for a very loud report. 

We'd also take two biggish bolts (3/8 X 20?) and thread them into a nut with a bunch of caps or strike-anywhere match heads between the bolts.

Tossing them high up so they tumbled end over end, about sixty percent of the time they'd hit the pavement more or less on one of the bolt heads and make a loud report.

I'm pretty sure you can't buy strike-anywhere matches any more.

I remember in high school when I started to smoke, it was a "thing" to light your cigs by striking those matches on the upper back thigh of your dungarees (jeans, nowadays).  The term "cool" had not been used yet.

My mother noticed the strike marks and pressed me about it.  I never realized that was making marks back there until my mother showed them to me, but quick-thinking little liar me told her I had taken a fall on my bicycle and  landed in gravel.

I don't think my mother-lawyer-prosecutor-judge-jury bought it, but it shifted her concern to whether I was hurt and I said no I'm OK and found another place to be.

So I bought a Zippo like about half my friends and that's why I quit using strike-anywhere matches.

Sorry for the diversion.  And no, I'm not a re-incarnation of Jean Shepherd, who was also a ham radio operator.

Terry, 230RN

[Fly320s]

I'm pretty sure you can't buy strike-anywhere matches any more.

Yes, you can buy them almost anywhere.

[HankB]

Ten, 11, 12, something like that, we used to stuff cap pistol caps into .22 cases and pound them between rocks for a very loud report. 

We'd also take two biggish bolts (3/8 X 20?) and thread them into a nut with a bunch of caps or strike-anywhere match heads between the bolts.

Tossing them high up so they tumbled end over end, about sixty percent of the time they'd hit the pavement more or less on one of the bolt heads and make a loud report . . .

Yeah, we did the trick with nuts and bolts and match heads too. Don't remember trying it with caps.

I recall leafing through a copy of The Anarchist's Cookbook which gave instructions for making grenades - essentially, cutting a slit in a tennis ball and filling up the void with the heads of a LOT of strike-anywhere matches. When thrown at a surface, it would supposedly explode.

Wonder how many hippies found it would explode if stuffed into a jeans pocket. 

My theory is that "recipes" found in TAC are the reason so many hippie bomb factories blew up back in the '60s.

[Hawkmoon]

I'm pretty sure you can't buy strike-anywhere matches any more.

I found some a couple of years ago, but it wasn't easy ... and the quality wasn't great.

https://www.diamonddoesitbetter.com/products/greenlight-strike-anywhere-kitchen-matches/

https://bestsurvival.org/best-strike-anywhere-matches/

[Ben]

Yes, you can buy them almost anywhere.

I'm going from memory, so as per usual I might be wrong, but I think the formula might have changed a few decades ago. At least for the ones you can get at a regular store. I think matches like the hurricane matches are a different thing from kitchen matches.

When I was a kid, we too played with the match heads. We would get a couple hundred of them and wrap them in aluminum foil with a big nut or similar for weight, then toss them on a hard surface to make smoke bombs.

[JTHunter]

Terry - when I was much younger, we had a small metal toy that looked like a tiny bomb.  The dome had a twist lock that would let us put one of the old paper strip caps in it and then we would toss them up.  When they landed on a hard surface, they would (usually) go off like an old cap gun.
Of course, back then, we also had "lawn darts" (called "Jarts") that we threw in the air too but they had a 1/4" by 2" metal spike. 

[MechAg94]

Terry - when I was much younger, we had a small metal toy that looked like a tiny bomb.  The dome had a twist lock that would let us put one of the old paper strip caps in it and then we would toss them up.  When they landed on a hard surface, they would (usually) go off like an old cap gun.
Of course, back then, we also had "lawn darts" (called "Jarts") that we threw in the air too but they had a 1/4" by 2" metal spike. 

I think I remember those bombs or something like it. 

We had a couple lawn darts.  I don't remember ever actually playing a game with them.  You could throw them pretty far. 

[MechAg94]

The guy missed a learning opportunity.  You can pull the bullet right out of the case with pliers and see how it all works.  I guess this stuff is just a big scary unknown to some people. 

[K Frame]

"We had a couple lawn darts.  I don't remember ever actually playing a game with them.  You could throw them pretty far."

Kid I knew growing up decided to see if he could throw a lawn dart over his house.

Things didn't end well.

For the roof or his ass. 

[French G.]

As an adult(allegedly) I did trial reloading a berdan primer with the white portion of strike anywhere match heads. Satisfactory I think, reinserted into a case it made appropriate primer noises. Never tried it under a full load.

[Perd Hapley]

The guy who hit the cartridge with a hammer - he got Congressional material written all over 'im.

The cop telling us to call law enforcement if we find a cartridge in our yard - he'd be more at home in Britain.

[MechAg94]

"We had a couple lawn darts.  I don't remember ever actually playing a game with them.  You could throw them pretty far."

Kid I knew growing up decided to see if he could throw a lawn dart over his house.

Things didn't end well.

For the roof or his ass. 

I don't think I ever tried to throw it over the house.  That has bad consequences written all over it. 

We would throw them overhand since we would throw the baseball and football around.  I couldn't do underhand very well. 

[Bogie]

I had a target bow... Probably 30-40 pound pull recurve. And target arrows. When you shoot them way up in the air, on a windy day, and they start coming back toward you... Run at 90 degrees...

[230RN]

As an adult(allegedly) I did trial reloading a berdan primer with the white portion of strike anywhere match heads. Satisfactory I think, reinserted into a case it made appropriate primer noises. Never tried it under a full load.

I suspect they're pretty corrosive, but if conditions are such that they are needed, who cares?

I had a Remmie 1858 repro for a while that I was thinking of reforming used caps for and stuffing them with "white tips."

But I learned long ago from some borrowed BP long guns that I absolutely hated cleaning BP firearms, so I never fired that gun with BP, only with .45 Colts with the conversion cylinder.

I gave that gun, along with all the accouterments  --balls, caps, patches, powder, measure, cylinder, box of .45 Cowboy loads, everything, ready to go --to a relative.

Sure wuz one purty gun:



(^ Not mine, but identical, pic credit in properties.)

( I only said "Remmie" for its irksomeness.)

Terry, 230RN

[Doggy Daddy]

( I only said "Remmie" for its irksomeness.)

Terry, 230RN

You don't have to work that hard.   

[230RN]

^ 

Thank you.

[AJ Dual]

We'd also take two biggish bolts (3/8 X 20?) and thread them into a nut with a bunch of caps or strike-anywhere match heads between the bolts.

Tossing them high up so they tumbled end over end, about sixty percent of the time they'd hit the pavement more or less on one of the bolt heads and make a loud report.

Bolt bombs! I remember those from my misspent youth as well.  We used flash powder from broken down firecrackers and a paper cap. It's a wonder we survived. Definitely not how I'd do it now.

It was always a fantasy of mine as a kid to make an entire box of them and dump them out over an empty parking lot or something from an airplane.

"We had a couple lawn darts.  I don't remember ever actually playing a game with them.  You could throw them pretty far."

Kid I knew growing up decided to see if he could throw a lawn dart over his house.

Things didn't end well.

For the roof or his ass. 

I fired an rake handle into a neighbor's roof as a kid.

My dad never threw anything away, scrap wood, pieces of pipe etc. And he had 1/2 of a replacement rake handle with a tapered pointy end. Because he'd needed a dowel to replace a broken tiller on a little sailboat we used on summer vacations, and that's all he could find in the small town hardware store when it broke. 

I had a surplus of Estes "D" engines, (My go-to source of BP for other stuff I won't disclose) and the rocket was destroyed, so I was launching naked engines out of a 6' length of gas pipe I found in the garage. Getting bored of watching them spin crazily in the sky, I had the bright idea of putting a D engine behind the rake handle in the pipe to make a "spear launcher". I figured the "spear" was way heavier than a paper and balsa rocket, so it would go maybe 40 yards and land in my lawn.

Nope.

It went about 250 yards in a perfect arc, over the tree line into the neighbor's yard, where I couldn't see it anymore. I quickly closed up shop and put everything away. Figuring the neighbor would scratch their head about where the pointy dowel came from in their lawn.

Nope.

Months pass, the leaves fall off the trees, and I can see the neighbor's house across the street. And there's something bright/light colored on their roof. "No way....", I think. I get my dad's binoculars, and sticking out of their roof at a jaunty angle is that damn stick.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/awkward-look-monkey-puppet

[230RN]

A religious tale of triumph in adversity.

I used to make rockets out of segments of those clothes hanger cardboard tubes.  I used my own powder.  You could buy KNO₃ at the butcher's, sulphur was easily obtained from the drug store (mice repellent and also some kind of illness palliative.)  Charcoal, well, heh.

That was before I learned that real powder was "corned," so my quality was pretty low.

Anyhow, one of the rockets went up, but then faltered, still burning, and fell into our neighbor's rain gutter which was undoubtedly full of dry leaves from our maple tree.  Oh, crap.  Smoke kept coming out of the rain gutter and I figured their house would burn down.

Our Father...

...heartily sorry...

... pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death...

It seemed like the smoke kept on forever. 

Our Father...

Hail Mary¹⁰

The smoke finally stopped. 

"Whew. Thanks, St. Anthony." My own personal patron Saint.

Next spring the owner hired me to clean out his rain gutters.  Pain in the butt.  Clean, clean, move ladder, clean, clean, but lo, there was my charred little rocket in the middle of about a three foot stretch of charred leaves.

Bless us, Lord, for we have sinned....

Do I hear an "Amen?"

Terry, 230RN

[French G.]

Gee, my dad forced me into model rockets and then proceeded to show me all the wrong stuff. D motors duct taped to old hunting arrows and launched in a piece of angle iron made dandy bottle rockets. The B motored ones even stayed on our property and could be re-used. Then there was empty motor taped to live motor, filled with black powder and launched from a fiberglass antenna pole. Don’t remember flying actual rockets.

[230RN]

Post withdrawn by the advice of my attorney.

[RocketMan]

I'm not posting anything about the crazy rocket stuff I did as a teenager until I check on the statute of limitations for a few things.

[HeroHog]

Used to LOVE building the Estes kits and flying them! I also built and flew .048 control line planes. Replace the strings with a + and a - THIN speaker wire and the control handle with a momentary contact switch and you could either mount JATO rockets to your plane OR, turn the tubes around, add fins and a nosecone to the motor(s), and have firing missiles! Even more fun to fill the nosecone with all the Black Cat firecrackers it will hold.

[HeroHog]

Note: The "missiles" were definitely NOT to bomb the little kids that gathered to watch us dog fight our planes with.