Naaahhh, it's actually hard right now to buy prilled AN, they blame "911" but I think it's just control. The poor farmers are taking it hard. The whole political angle is just sad.
We've been into pyrotechnics here for a long time, I've been fiddling with small fireworks and private fireworks displays for 30yrs and my #3 son really took to it. He's in the Marine Corp now, hoping to cross-train with UDT/SEAL demo teams, with plans to go on to New Mexico Tech for an engineering degree in demolition. I guess it's "the" college for demolition/explosives engineering...... the MIT of BOOM. He found out young that this is an expensive hobby and decided early that he's gonna' get PAID to blow stuff up.
It's been a fun ride with him, his teachers in High School have been behind him all along as he's a fine student, even got to do explosives oriented projects in school. Kinda' funny in this age of meth labs, I've got a 12X16 wellhouse that's been his laboratory for several years. They're developing a rock pit only a mile away from our home and they started sending in a technician to draw our well water every month. One day I realized that the poor lady's probably completely FREAKED by the hotplates and retorts constantly bubbling in our well house. My son had created his own little environment in there, rolls of wire and 100ct banks of switches....funny smells...Ball mills running, precipitates and oily yellow mixtures fuming and dripping into covered bowls, bent and holed steel plates all over.......goggles and suits and face shields hanging on the wall.
So one day I was home when I saw the tech drive up there and went up to meet the lady. We talked for a while and she says "BTW, who's the chemist?"
Ohh no, here it comes......
"My 16yr old son."
"Ohh that SO AWESOME to see kids USING THEIR MINDS!!!
He could be in playing Nintendo and he's out here getting a nitro headache instead... I'm sure you're proud if him!!!!"
Yeahh BAYBIE!!! I coulda' give 'er a hug right there. I shouldn't have been worried.
she knew what was going on the whole time. Weren't no meth lab.
I guess engineers run true to type even be they be they hydrological engineers!!
But yeahhh, these binaries. at 100yds a half pounder will tug at your shirt and make you step back. We've used them to get rid of bunch of buried boulders in the lawn, the AN/AL mix has greater shattering capability than ANFO or straight dynamite. It don't lift for beans but it sure crumbles rocks and produces a nice gut-wrenching boom. For lifts we use ANFO.
Mirage416, I'm sure you're right and #3 son would be right there with you. He doesn't even really share information anymore with us non-engineering types.... We still say "explosion" while he talks in terms of "reactance" and "yield" and "decomposition properties." Regarding the safety, we really are safety conscious and he more than us. I'd see him jamming tubes full of powders using a 20 ton arbor press that he'd built and I'd wince a little since my work has all been with BP stuff. He built gerbs and flowers ground pounders that put me to shame and never so much as got a burn. He won't even tell his friends (or us) about his mixes, especially detonating primaries. He'd mix up novelty stuff like nitrogen tri-iodide, show us how cool it was and then destroy it all. For the fireworks shows he'd cook up detonating mixes like styphnates and azides, ETN and PETN, and we'd have to use it all up. He never stored anything. I remember one time we were down on the range shooting and he came over with a paper plate of white powder, maybe a teaspoon (he talks only in metric weights
) and said "check this out." He slipped a little onto a hunk of cardboard, maybe half an aspirin tablet's worth, and told me to tap it with a hammer. We all had our safety glasses and ear plugs on....... it took chunks out of the concrete shop floor! I know safety procedure for the BP mixes, binary AN, even the "flash" perchlorate/AL mixes don't scare me but high order stuff is out of my league..... a man's gotta' know his limitations. Yeahh, "safety" takes on a whole new meaning when dealing with high order stuff. And "thunderous" is an accurate term. About a half pound is right where we want it. We've gone up to 3lb but the thunder is only slightly more than 1/2lb (The old inverse square issue.)
Yup, we're missing him, and the earthquakes he produced daily. Thanks for bringing it up.
For shooters looking for a cool reactive novelty target, just search Tannerite online to buy really loud targets for $2-4.00 a pop. For the casual NON-chemist types it's a spectacular value for the money. You can set up "bullseyes" at about 1/4lb per 100yds distance and folks will KNOW the score. DO NOT shoot these within 3 miles of a residential area or the cops WILL show up! These don't pop like firecrackers nor bang like M-80's, they ROAR.
sorry to derail the thread guys, I'm just reminiscing here. His lab is gone, it's a garden shed now. He'll have to improvise when he comes home.
LOL
al
