Bombs!

After reading Alan's practical joke section I thought I should post this about my yoof! Not exactly a practical joke but.....
Being located at Birchfield Road did have it’s advantages. It was not too far to hike down on the mudflats and Mangroves and carry out bomb tests. Yeah, I know, it sounds dramatic doesn’t  it? We had discovered how easy it was to make impressive noises with ordinary stuff that you find in the garage and at the time atom bomb tests were all the rage so we had to follow their lead with one let off up in a tree, one on flat ground and one down a hole. Denis Browne and I had perfected the quart paint tin inside a gallon paint tin with cement in the cavity leading up to a piece of 3/4” water pipe. The pipe was capped with a screw blank that we drilled a small hole in and after the charge was placed inside the can and filled right up to the top of the pipe, the cap was screwed back on and a piece of ‘Jetex’ fuse inserted. ‘Jetex was the fuse used to start the model airplane rockets popular at the time. About a foot of fuse gave us time to rush for cover unless, of course, it was up in a tree, when we needed two feet of fuse!
On a quiet morning in the school holidays, we set everything up for a ground test. The bomb was placed, suitable cover in the form of a muddy bank and the fuse was set and lit. We sprinted to the bank and waited . Ten seconds must be longer than you think when you’re running for cover  as we peered at the bomb thinking that the fuse must have gone out. As Denis rose up to check, a huge cloud of white smoke leapt up and was followed by a huge explosion. We never anticipated the very visible white cloud about a 100 feet high and the resounding boom! This was going to be noticed and we sprinted for home , about 300 yards away, forgetting that running on mudflats is not easy and progress was slow. About 20 seconds into our sprint, something splatted into the mud ahead of us. A piece of 3/4” water pipe, no longer attached to the paint tins.
By the time the police siren arrived Denis was a speck in the distance on his bike and I was in the shower.
There was a spate of enthusiasm for making bombs around the school generally and one of our parallel experimentors got a little foolish and intended to show off to his friends in a local milk bar called “The Tumble Inn”. His intention was to put a teaspoon of mixture in the ashtray and light it.  This he did but a spark from ashtry jumped into his pocket where he had the bulk stock in a jam jar. There a muffled explosion, he lost two fingers, and the front window of the milk bar flew into the street!
The milk bar was renamed by the locals “The Tumble Out”.

I can see how you became a winemaker now!! - oh the days of fun and experiments and lost fingers!

The nearest I can get to compete with that is when we were kids - come November 5th bonfire night - you could legally buy quite powerful bangers. My favourite was called the thunderflash.

My mates dad worked at a bearing manufacturer and he used to bring home faulty steel ball bearings for us to use as marbles.

At the time there was a housing estate being built in are area and there were lots of steel conduit and gas pipe offcuts to be had.

We used to bury a length of pipe at an angle in the earth, light a thunderflash and drop it in the pipe, followed by a ball bearing. This crude mortar had a range of more than 100 metres.

We used to nick the bird scarers which in those days were industrial bangers filled with black powder.