[Islander7]

This could have been me as a kid. I was a lab assistant for a chemistry class and had access to all the chemicals. Of course, I liked to experiment.....

It's amazing I am still alive.

We are kindred spirits.

60% confectioners sugar, 40% salt peter. Blend well with Vaseline until sticky. A loosely filled Campbell's soup can with several 1/8" holes will make enough smoke to hide a battle ship.

But the principle knew it was me. ;-)

[mlocher]

But the principle knew it was me. ;-)

Those of us with a reputation!

I occasionally made what we called contact explosives that were similar to large caps. If I recall, we would put solid iodine in a filter paper and then pour amonia in it. The wet iodine on the filter paper would be torn up into small pieces and left to dry. The next day we would litter them in the halls at school. They went off each time someone stepped on them.

Earlier I said it was amazing I was still alive. No, I never came that close to killing myself with chemicals. However, the class bullies and football players did not always like my tricks.

[papertyger]

Where the hell can you get saltpeter these days?

Now that i think about it, a few smokes would be pretty handy to keep around. Does anyone know if civilians can own smoke grenades?

[Myrddin]

My German teacher was also a chemistry teacher. She was always incessantly pacing around the room. One day I spiced up the German class by sprinkling bits of wet contact explosive on the floor. As the class progressed, the little spots dried. Her pacing started making little pops. She caught on quickly and had the whole class walk to the front of the room to pick up some soon to be discarded German textbooks. The floor was crackling like a giant bowl of Rice Crispies. I made sure the "bits" were just enough to pop and not enough to cause any problems.

[philled]

My father had an industrial chemical supply business so we frequently had stuff in our garage that OSHA would have had a problem with. Combine that with a friend's reloading supplies and items we would lift from the high school chem lab and youthful exhuberance...

We had a wonderfully eroded bluff over a river on our property (far enough from the house to avoid parental observation) that we had horizontally driven two metal fence posts with a sheet of steel welded to as a shelf. We'd top rope down to it and place various baby food jars inside mayonaisse jars, cans, etc. We'd then go across the river and shoot the containers to mix the compounds. Fires, explosions, toxic clouds, and improved marksmanship were the result! A .22 would be good for most things but the day we blew the shelf free we were safety conscious. We had simply backed up further and increased our caliber!