If it was back in the '70s or so:
http://www.vintageestesrockets.com/k-kit-registry/kits/k5-astron-apogee2.htm
Posted on 04/07/2018 9:13:36 AM PDT by Simon Green
A 14-year-old boy in rural Wyoming who was building a small cannon using instructions from YouTube videos died after the contraption exploded, a local newspaper reported on Friday.
The cannon misfired late on Thursday as Archie Pearce was assembling its components, in an abandoned lot in the northern Wyoming community of Recluse, the Gillette News Record reported.
A 12-year-old child who was with Pearce was later treated at a hospital for minor flash burns. They were building the device as an experiment, with no intent to cause harm, Campbell County Sheriff Scott Matheny told the newspaper.
"They were in over their heads, trying to do something they shouldn't have been doing," Matheny added.
The teenager packed gun or fireworks powder too tightly into a 2-inch (5 cm) steel pipe and a projectile inside became stuck, resulting in the fatal explosion, Sheriff's Office Lieutenant Kevin Theis told the News Record.
Representatives from the Campbell County Sheriff's Office could not be reached for comment.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Sad story. Darwin, again.
PVC potato air cannons are pretty common. Compressed air with schedule 80 pvc is pretty safe (but no BOOM). Targeting 100+ yard shots at a floating milk jug on an empty lake is fun (2” with reservoir, rated fast valve, 60-90 psi air).
Sad
As a boy but for Gods hand I could have died too many times
Falls
Accidental gun discharge
Water moccasin nest
Huge fat southeastern diamondbacks
After on of course comes fast cars or motorcycles or booze and drugs or that women that’ll stab ya
God bless that boy and his family
RIP
Now you look back and you’re old and go damn...poor kid
“My friend and I used ground up Estes rocket motors,“
I can’t remember the exact model of the Estes rocket but there was one that had a section for a small payload. If one were to drill a small hole in the bottom of that section, insert some cannon fuse, seal it with canning wax, fill the payload section with black powder, run the cannon fuse back to the motor, and launch it hilarity ensued.
We had to work on our math a bit to get things just right.
L
We filled C02 containers with black powder, glued lawn dart fins on the round end, and capped them with primers. They made great little grenades, but you had to throw them well to ensure you were out of the shrapnel zone. Stupid kid stuff—but at least we never tried to hurt anyone on purpose.
We used to make “carbide cannons,” using calcium carbide and water. Putting calcium carbide in water produced Acetylene. Nothing ever blew up on us.
My brothers and I survived our cannon. Nobody knows why.
We used to cover white-head matches with tin-foil and shoot them out of a BB-gun. They would explode when shot against a hard surface, and they would also cause a fire.
I still have CO2 cartridge bits and lead in my face. That really hurt, but didn’t slow us down that much. My mother often said, “God watches over children and fools”.
If it was back in the '70s or so:
http://www.vintageestesrockets.com/k-kit-registry/kits/k5-astron-apogee2.htm
Poked a hole in the side of a gallon milk jug then added Calcium Carbide and water. Lit a match close to the hole and squeeze the jug. Nice flame squirting out about 12” long.
The deign error was when the squeeze on the jug was released the flame got sucked into the hole and BOOM!
My ears rang for days.
Just another reason you tube is not for real information
Darwin awards are hard earned
Agreed. Most boys of my generation did things like this to one degree or another...at least the boys I knew.
I often think I was lucky to make it to adulthood. Many kids don’t have a chance to learn from their stupidity.
My brothers taught me how to do that. We would use a paper clip both to form the rocket nozzle and as the launch pad.
All true. So true.
I was climbing on the roof of an abandoned stable when I lived in Virginia and it was really hard for me to get up on the roof, but I couldn’t get back down.
So, I have my torso hanging from the roof overhang, and my brother tells me to just let go because the window is right under my feet.
I let go and plummeted about 15 feet into a pile of jagged scrap metal, and came out of it with a inch wide hole in my shin that just missed my shin bone and penetrated a few inches in.
I was lucky. Looking back there, could have had a rusty metal thing impale my neck, head, or torso, because it was just a big junk pile of that stuff.
I was afraid to tell my parents, so I let the thing heal on its own, and it took nearly a year before it completely healed over with purple skin.
I ripped it open about a year later climbing on a breakwater (where I shouldn’t have been) on a Navy base in Japan. The wound was very puzzling to the doctor who sewed it up. He couldn’t figure out how I got such an ugly wound skinning my shin on rocks.
I am sure I would have had lockjaw if I hadn’t already had so many tetanus shots!
Anyway, I feel bad for this kid and his family he was stupid and unlucky, where many of us who make it are stupid and lucky.
Instead of a canon they made a pipe bomb.
Good for about 10-20 yards.
Heh - my neighbor (two years my senior) had an afternoon paper route, and was circling in the street on that big old bicycle with the huge newspaper basket while I was playing with a tennis ball cannon. He laughed at the first few shots, which were disappointing. Continuing to taunt, he offered himself as a moving, live target. I shrugged and complied.
The next thing he knew, he and his bike were laying in the street - newspapers scattered... and there was a tennis ball-sized welt rising on the side of his neck. I quickly stepped through the side yard gate and snapped the padlock, before collapsing in laughter. Guess I finally got the fuel/air ratio correct. :-)
I always hated dealing with the goo from the melting duct tape, though.
We used tennis ball cans with a small hole we put near the bottom, plus lighter fluid as propellant. What fun.
The dumbest thing a friend and I did when we were 13 was to make our own hang glider with aluminum poles and thick plastic sheets. We didn’t manage to get very far off the ground, but if we’d had a better design or a big gust of wind, and had gotten 20 or 30 ft in the air, that might have been lethal. Ah, well, the Wright brothers had to start somewhere.
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