Once upon a time, stuff happened...
When I was but a wee lad of 12-ish, I had an idea.

You know model rocket engines, right? And "crater makers"*? Okay.

The idea was as follows: Attach fins to rocket engine, attach crater maker to front, put in tube, fire, boom, yay. It worked too: When the engine burned out, the parachute ejection charge would light the crater maker's fuse, and shortly thereafter, noise would happen.

Then I got a friend involved, and took it to the next level. He nicked some primers from his dad's reloading bench(small pistol magnum for you gun geeks), we glued them into the crater maker's opening, stuck the front part of a biro on there, and put a nail in. Now the missiles exploded when they struck hard objects. While the noise was the same, the hilarity was greatly magnified.

And then, on that fateful day... I loaded up, fired the thing, and... fell over screaming. We believe that one or more of the fins ripped off in the tube, causing the rocket to nose-dive into the ground about ten feet in front of me.

Result: Three shrapnel injuries (god knows what would have happened if it hadn't been thick-coat-season), a case of tinnitus still going strong after over 20 years, and the old "you are such an idiot, sometimes I wonder if your mom swam in a nuclear reactor while you were in progress" speech from the parents.**

Still got the scars :/


*An empty CO2 cartridge stuffed full of black powder
**And later, a surreptions "Nice engineering work, I'll help you do it right" from dad. Ace!
(GermanGuy invaded on, Fri 29 Nov 2013, 17:39, Reply)