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Post by the light works on Mar 7, 2014 15:30:56 GMT
This is something I hear from time to time, but I doubt is true. Gunpowder Overdose. Now I think it has origins in Cartridge for 12bore, shotgun, but I dont know how far upscale you can get, and goes along the same lines as the suggested replacing of gunpowder for explosives from the almighty Adim above (Cyber) The suggestion is that the gunpowder in the cartridge is not taken out, but added to, they creating a BIGGER bang in the gun.... It can destroy the barrel?.... Now as the only 12bore/13guage I have ever had the opportunity to fire on a clay pigeon range are family heirloom, belonging to my Uncle, approx 70 to 80 yrs old, in fine working condition well maintained and absolutely fantastic to handle, I have no intention in firing anything else but what is supplied to be fired with..... I am not a vandal?.... And no, as the only ranges I have ever been on are either Military of Police, I have never ever even thought about testing this on anything else either. I dont even know if there is even room in say a .303 round to add extra gunpowder.... I was only ever there for proficiency, 10 rounds at the target in front of you in your own time commence firing.... my standard target load has a half inch of spacers in the shot column to fill the gap and keep the powder firmly in the base of the shotshell. I know some lighter rifle loads have enough space that you can hear the powder shake inside the cartridge. you can also buy different rates of powder. - the higher the rate of burn, the higher the chamber pressure. the website I used to buy parts for my L1A1 from - before I had all I wanted to buy - had video of a test-to-failure for the action. I believe they said they had put 3X the recommended chamber pressure worth of powder in the cartridge and fired into a fully obstructed test barrel to produce the failure.
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Post by the light works on Mar 7, 2014 15:36:25 GMT
Dry Cleaning. Perchloroetylene ... I think?... spelling may be off. When I left school one of my first jobs was in a dry cleaners... One day we had a spill, and the "perk" flooded the floor... so, like fools, we set too and cleaned it up with mop and bucket. We didnt know, but its supposedly highly explosive?.... Its also a hell of a "High"... we can also branch out into other cleaning solvents. and, for that matter, Acetylene. I understand that compressed acetylene gas becomes sufficiently unstable that its flash point drops below room temperature at a certain pressure.
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Post by WhutScreenName on Mar 7, 2014 15:51:09 GMT
How about the movie myth that has played out many times where someone comes up to a door and just before they open it up, the house explodes. The Shock wave blows the door off it's hinges, knocks the person back covering and protecting them from the explosion. The hero (or villain in some cases) walks away with nothing but ash all over them.
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Post by the light works on Mar 7, 2014 16:01:06 GMT
How about the movie myth that has played out many times where someone comes up to a door and just before they open it up, the house explodes. The Shock wave blows the door off it's hinges, knocks the person back covering and protecting them from the explosion. The hero (or villain in some cases) walks away with nothing but ash all over them. there is a variant myth that a person walks into a building and turns on the light, triggering a natural gas explosion; and is left essentially unharmed, while the structure is destroyed. (spoiler: I've seen a safety video produced with the help of a fire crew who survived such an explosion. In their case, it was the furnace that triggered the explosion)
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 8, 2014 8:50:39 GMT
Myth right there... can loose wiring arcing cause a gas explosion. I say plausible. But... getting the right gas to air ratio "Just so" when the arc goes off?....
The arcing may be the light switch, or the connection for a bulb, etc....
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Post by the light works on Mar 8, 2014 8:54:08 GMT
Myth right there... can loose wiring arcing cause a gas explosion. I say plausible. But... getting the right gas to air ratio "Just so" when the arc goes off?.... The arcing may be the light switch, or the connection for a bulb, etc.... spoiler: the gas company demonstrator (called the "boom box" uses 5 spark plugs as ignitors - and they are practiced enough to set their mixture just where they want it to demonstrate the burn characteristics they want to show.
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 8, 2014 8:59:17 GMT
Yews, but this is a scenario where someone in bed smells gas, suspects they may have a leak, and turns the lights on to investigate?... This is where the "Myth" comes from, "Accidents" at home....
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Post by the light works on Mar 8, 2014 9:04:18 GMT
Yews, but this is a scenario where someone in bed smells gas, suspects they may have a leak, and turns the lights on to investigate?... This is where the "Myth" comes from, "Accidents" at home.... well, usually, it is a pilot light, or electronic ignitor - but yes, a standard switch can draw an arc.
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Post by OziRiS on Mar 10, 2014 13:22:00 GMT
Yews, but this is a scenario where someone in bed smells gas, suspects they may have a leak, and turns the lights on to investigate?... This is where the "Myth" comes from, "Accidents" at home.... You could very well end up with hundreds of tries where nothing happens because the fuel/air mix isn't right. But those times won't make the news or even notable chatter at the office the next day. It's the ones that go BOOM that catch people's attention. The myth isn't about whether gas leaks and electrical arcs can make houses explode, because there's plenty of evidence to prove that they can and have. The myth is the one made by Hollywood where the BOOM happens EVERY time, so maybe the only interesting thing to test here is what are the odds of it happening to you? I'm not even sure how interesting that would be to test, since they've done the whole fuel/air mix thing again and again with various myths (cell phone blows up gas station, bug bomb house explosion, methane build-up in the sewers and many more) over the years, so any person who's seen 10 or more episodes of MythBusters is likely to know that any amount of gas in any room of any size won't automatically explode, because the stoichiometry has to be just right. Heck, how many of us would even know the word 'stoichiometry' if it wasn't for Adam bringing it to our attention in one of those episodes?
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 11, 2014 7:45:11 GMT
I had to google that. Also, for some strange reason, my Spell checker, which gets nervous about the word "geek", didnt complain about stoichiometry?... Is some geek putting in all the difficult words first?...
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Post by OziRiS on Mar 11, 2014 7:48:57 GMT
I had to google that. Also, for some strange reason, my Spell checker, which gets nervous about the word "geek", didnt complain about stoichiometry?... Is some geek putting in all the difficult words first?... Here's the clip from the Bourne Myth episode where he first introduced it to us: Discovery/Mythbusters/Stoichiometry clip
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Post by Cybermortis on Mar 17, 2014 20:01:49 GMT
Any more explosion/explosive myths out there?
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Post by the light works on Mar 18, 2014 1:07:48 GMT
Any more explosion/explosive myths out there? there is the unstable/sweating dynamite mentioned in the A-team thread - but the same problem exists, in that if it truly is unstable, then it may be too unstable for the show.
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Post by Cybermortis on Mar 18, 2014 7:41:42 GMT
It is, after all 'real' dynamite is nitroglycerine soaked into something solid.
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Post by the light works on Mar 18, 2014 13:31:45 GMT
back in the days of manual labor, and less fancy explosives, blasting was done with "blasting powder" hand packed into bored holes. legend had it, mishandling could result in the rod used to pack it being fired like a ramrod from a gun. perhaps this might be looked into - at least whether it could be hit hard enough to set it off.
another wild west myth involves setting off nitroglycerine by shooting it with a rifle. again - it involves working with nitroglycerine, so it might not be testable with their resources.
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Post by Cybermortis on Mar 18, 2014 13:58:33 GMT
You might be thinking of Phineas Gage, who had a iron rod fired through his head when compacting powder during the construction of a railroad. If wilkipedia is correct the detonation was caused by omitting the layer of sand that should have been placed on top of the powder, which allowed a spark to hit the powder and ignite it.
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Post by the light works on Mar 18, 2014 14:09:24 GMT
You might be thinking of Phineas Gage, who had a iron rod fired through his head when compacting powder during the construction of a railroad. If wilkipedia is correct the detonation was caused by omitting the layer of sand that should have been placed on top of the powder, which allowed a spark to hit the powder and ignite it. he may have been the origin of the myth. this would make it even better subject matter.
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 19, 2014 8:04:33 GMT
Unstable Nitroglycerine.... or plastic explosive, if in doubt, C4.
I may be able to supply a "Bust" to some of the myths. I know the recipe.... by mistake.... My Dad wasnt suppose to tell me?... But I wont tell the whole truth here, just in case people think I want to spread recopies for C4 around the place, even if I did know how to mix the Nitroglycerine I wouldnt tell you?.. ok?... we dont do that here do we folks?...
Anyway, it goes like this, my Dad, who as you know used to be the UK equivalent of CSI, was called to a scene where they had tried to blast open a safe. As the went in the room, they were surprised to see small balls of what looked like plasticine, or play-dough, all over the floor?.... As they were looking for fingerprints, one of my Dads colleges called out that my Dad should back away slowly "In your own footprints" to the door.... he had realised why the safe blasting had gone wrong, they had got the recipe for the nitro wrong and it has blown out all over the floor, and that was what they were treading in..... It hadnt blown at all, the blasting cap they had used had just "Decorated" the whole room in unstable Nitro.
No one knew at that time, until it had been tested, how unstable it would be, and if it would go off merely by treading on it, or if it has "sweated" enough to spread the liquid over anything... The whole room was eventually cleaned enough to investigate, and it was fond that the plastic explosive they had used was a lot more plastic than it should have been. more.....
So partial busts.... Real Nitro, if you get it right, will not "Go off" by treading on it... in fact, you can hit it with a hammer, very hard, and it still wont go off. It wont go off either if you use the wrong blasting cap... It has to be a certain speed to set off the detonation. This is why its favoured by so many people, its totally inert until you get that speed of detonation right from the correct blasting cap...
My Dad reckoned you could probably shoot bullets through it...?... I wonder if that is a myth?.... is Nitro "Bullet proof"?...
However....
If you get the recipe wrong.
Some people , in the mix, seam to think if you put more nitro to plasticine, it will be "Stronger"...... is that a myth?... It just makes it unstable, the Nitro leaks out, and in liquid form, its unstable, as you know, and will self detonate at the slightest provocation, especially if it doesnt like your shirt.....
Some people think getting it more stable is a matter of putting less nitro to the plasticine.... Again, stupid. If you dont put enough in, it the plastic will just insulate it from the shock of the blasting cap, and it wont go off... as in my Dads case.... it will just "Decorate" the scenery....
So I know how much nitro to plasticine you got to use..... I am not going to reveal that, of course, and may have slipped a few mistakes in the above to prevent anyone getting the wrong ideas.
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Post by the light works on Mar 19, 2014 14:11:43 GMT
Unstable Nitroglycerine.... or plastic explosive, if in doubt, C4. I may be able to supply a "Bust" to some of the myths. I know the recipe.... by mistake.... My Dad wasnt suppose to tell me?... But I wont tell the whole truth here, just in case people think I want to spread recopies for C4 around the place, even if I did know how to mix the Nitroglycerine I wouldnt tell you?.. ok?... we dont do that here do we folks?... Anyway, it goes like this, my Dad, who as you know used to be the UK equivalent of CSI, was called to a scene where they had tried to blast open a safe. As the went in the room, they were surprised to see small balls of what looked like plasticine, or play-dough, all over the floor?.... As they were looking for fingerprints, one of my Dads colleges called out that my Dad should back away slowly "In your own footprints" to the door.... he had realised why the safe blasting had gone wrong, they had got the recipe for the nitro wrong and it has blown out all over the floor, and that was what they were treading in..... It hadnt blown at all, the blasting cap they had used had just "Decorated" the whole room in unstable Nitro. No one knew at that time, until it had been tested, how unstable it would be, and if it would go off merely by treading on it, or if it has "sweated" enough to spread the liquid over anything... The whole room was eventually cleaned enough to investigate, and it was fond that the plastic explosive they had used was a lot more plastic than it should have been. more..... So partial busts.... Real Nitro, if you get it right, will not "Go off" by treading on it... in fact, you can hit it with a hammer, very hard, and it still wont go off. It wont go off either if you use the wrong blasting cap... It has to be a certain speed to set off the detonation. This is why its favoured by so many people, its totally inert until you get that speed of detonation right from the correct blasting cap... My Dad reckoned you could probably shoot bullets through it...?... I wonder if that is a myth?.... is Nitro "Bullet proof"?... However.... If you get the recipe wrong. Some people , in the mix, seam to think if you put more nitro to plasticine, it will be "Stronger"...... is that a myth?... It just makes it unstable, the Nitro leaks out, and in liquid form, its unstable, as you know, and will self detonate at the slightest provocation, especially if it doesnt like your shirt..... Some people think getting it more stable is a matter of putting less nitro to the plasticine.... Again, stupid. If you dont put enough in, it the plastic will just insulate it from the shock of the blasting cap, and it wont go off... as in my Dads case.... it will just "Decorate" the scenery.... So I know how much nitro to plasticine you got to use..... I am not going to reveal that, of course, and may have slipped a few mistakes in the above to prevent anyone getting the wrong ideas. well, officially made plastic explosives are not made out of nitroglycerin and plasticene. the term "plastic explosive" refers to the physical properties rather than the ingredients. however, I did find recipes purporting to be plastic explosives made with nitroglygerine as the active ingredient.
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Post by silverdragon on Mar 21, 2014 7:13:13 GMT
I did say that, my previous post is intentionally factually incorrect, other than the nitroglycerine and my Dad, and all the rest of the post, to throw idiots off the trail...
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