Crushed Matchheads
As with quite a few of these stories, mine also starts with the Anarchist cookbook. There was a section in there about crushing matchheads to make some kind of tennis ball bomb which I found quite interesting at the age of 11.

After crushing 3 huge boxes of safety matches with pliers into a mound of match powder, I could only obtain non-safety matches. Of course as I crushed one of them with the pliers it sparked, I panicked and dropped the lit match into my pot of dust.

The flames reached the ceiling and I had a hard time explaining to my mum where my eyebrows went.

DONT USE NON SAFETY MATCHES!
(Jimmy Large Is huffing Jenkem on, Tue 29 Jul 2008, 23:05, 4 replies)

But
you have to use nonsafety matches or this sort of thing won't work
(Freddles, Wed 30 Jul 2008, 0:02, closed)

'The flames reached the ceiling'
If the flames reached the ceiling, wouldn't you have a harder time explaining to your mum about why there's a massive burn mark up there?
(oneinthepink is at your cervix m'lady, Wed 30 Jul 2008, 9:18, closed)

Already mentioned but.....
Freddles comment for the win. Unless you embed - in the core of the safety match pile - a small nitro-glyceryn charge. Or a banger or something.
(NoveltyCondomHead Clanks Wams., Wed 30 Jul 2008, 10:55, closed)

UM
You seem to have missed the section of the book which tells you how to make a fuse to light the thing. Fuse burns inside the ball and then sets the match powder on fire, it's not that hard really.

And yes the mark on the ceiling was quite bad but as the flame only lasted a second the black skanky stuff was quite easily removed.
(Jimmy Large Is huffing Jenkem on, Thu 31 Jul 2008, 12:07, closed)