Practical Jokes

The video of the workmates prank I posted yesterday got me thinking about some of the daft pranks I got up too on my yoof.

One that really backfired was as follows.

When I was an apprentice I was prone to play tricks on people. I was 17 and doing workshop experience in the machine shop - working with a couple of guys who caught me with the "long weight" spoof. They sent me to the Stores for a long weight and I was stood at the store window waiting for about 10 minutes before I twigged.

I don't know if you can get them now but in those days you could buy a tiny rocket engine made from aluminium for powering small model aircraft. You inserted a solid fuel pellet in the power unit, topped it with a fuse wire rolled like a pancake, topped that with a small stainless steel mesh disk to ensure the fuse was in contact with the fuel pellet and fed the tail of the fuse wire out through the exhaust hole in the cap which was retained shut by a strong clip. You lit the fuse with a match and when the rocket started, launched your model plane in a mighty cloud of smoke.

So, still smarting from the long weight, the next day I went into work armed with a couple of rocket fuel pellets, some fuse wire, a box of matches, a sheet of sandpaper and some sticky tape. During the lunch break while everyone was in the works canteen I took the guard off the back of a milling machine and wrapped the sandpaper round the drive shaft. I used a small piece of wood to tape a row of matches to and fixed it to a local bracket so that the matches would rub on the sandpaper. I wrapped one end of the fuse wire around the matches and  the other end round two fuel pellets which I placed on the concrete floor inside the machine's housing, put the guard back on and scarpered.

One of the guys came back from lunch and switched his milling machine on - there was a few seconds of fizzing from the fuse followed by a huge cloud of smoke pouring from the back of the machine. One of the guys grabbed a foam extinguisher from the wall and let fly.  There was foam everywhere and quite a panic until the smoke subsided.  They took the back off the machine and the evidence was there for all to see.

One of the guys grabbed me by my coveralls (boiler suit) carried me across the machine shop and hung me on a clothes hook facing the capstan lathe section - which was women operators. There was nothing I could do - no matter how much I wriggled and pushed and pulled with my legs and arms there was no way of getting off the hook. It was bloody painful - the overall was cutting into my crutch. They left me there, being mocked, for about 10 minutes - It felt like 10 hours. I was then made to clean all the foam up.

That's a prank I never repeated.

Nice one Alan. The 'Jetex" power jets for model aircraft where banned years ago. Somewhere around the late 50's or early sixties comes to mind. They got classed as 'Public Hazard" and that was that. I used to build model aircraft at that time and was gutted when they banned the Jetex motor's.I had go back to the Prop engined Models.

Gandalph

I just did a bit of Googling and found this which blames ICI for pulling the plug on Jetex Fuel

http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/About-JETEX-and-JET-X-rocket-engine-propellants-/10000000002108639/g.html

AlanHo wrote:

The video of the workmates prank I posted yesterday got me thinking about some of the daft pranks I got up too on my yoof.

One that really backfired was as follows.

When I was an apprentice I was prone to play tricks on people. I was 17 and doing workshop experience in the machine shop - working with a couple of guys who caught me with the "long weight" spoof. They sent me to the Stores for a long weight and I was stood at the store window waiting for about 10 minutes before I twigged.

I don't know if you can get them now but in those days you could buy a tiny rocket engine made from aluminium for powering small model aircraft. You inserted a solid fuel pellet in the power unit, topped it with a fuse wire rolled like a pancake, topped that with a small stainless steel mesh disk to ensure the fuse was in contact with the fuel pellet and fed the tail of the fuse wire out through the exhaust hole in the cap which was retained shut by a strong clip. You lit the fuse with a match and when the rocket started, launched your model plane in a mighty cloud of smoke.

So, still smarting from the long weight, the next day I went into work armed with a couple of rocket fuel pellets, some fuse wire, a box of matches, a sheet of sandpaper and some sticky tape. During the lunch break while everyone was in the works canteen I took the guard off the back of a milling machine and wrapped the sandpaper round the drive shaft. I used a small piece of wood to tape a row of matches to and fixed it to a local bracket so that the matches would rub on the sandpaper. I wrapped one end of the fuse wire around the matches and  the other end round two fuel pellets which I placed on the concrete floor inside the machine's housing, put the guard back on and scarpered.

One of the guys came back from lunch and switched his milling machine on - there was a few seconds of fizzing from the fuse followed by a huge cloud of smoke pouring from the back of the machine. One of the guys grabbed a foam extinguisher from the wall and let fly.  There was foam everywhere and quite a panic until the smoke subsided.  They took the back off the machine and the evidence was there for all to see.

One of the guys grabbed me by my coveralls (boiler suit) carried me across the machine shop and hung me on a clothes hook facing the capstan lathe section - which was women operators. There was nothing I could do - no matter how much I wriggled and pushed and pulled with my legs and arms there was no way of getting off the hook. It was bloody painful - the overall was cutting into my crutch. They left me there, being mocked, for about 10 minutes - It felt like 10 hours. I was then made to clean all the foam up.

That's a prank I never repeated.

Serves you right. 

AlanHo wrote:

Gandalph

I just did a bit of Googling and found this which blames ICI for pulling the plug on Jetex Fuel

http://www.ebay.co.uk/gds/About-JETEX-and-JET-X-rocket-engine-propellants-/10000000002108639/g.html

Interesting find Alan. That explains everything. We didn't know why , in the early sixties, why they had been stopped. That article explains everything.