Incendiary moments - reprise

[sabian92]

One of my friends, with a long garden, used to host an annual fireworks night. This consisted of heavy drinking and explosives - a combination that probably isn't the wisest in the first place. My friend and his brother are incredibly intelligent people (one with a phd the other runs his own business) until it comes to fireworks. Then it seems that they revert to the mind of a dim-witted teenager with behavioral issues.

One year they constructed two super fireworks from the large box of fireworks they had bought. They did this by scooping out the dangerous stuff from everything and putting half into the largest rocket and the other half into a ball type firework that was supposed to give a floor show.

The huge rocket went first - I was safely in the house looking out of the window at this point. Unfortunately the rocket - top heavy with vast quantities of gunpowder - fell over and pointed directly at my group of friends watching. It shot off at around groin level as my friends scattered. One jumped into the shed on the left of the garden for shelter. Unfortunately the rocket glanced off the ground at that point which sent it spinning through the shed window. My friend managed to do a spectacular commando style roll out of the door as behind him the rocket exploded blowing out the remaining shed windows with the ensuing fireball which cast an orange glow around the image of my friend. It was really rather spectacular and something worthy of a Hollywood stuntman.

Undeterred they decided to try out the ball firework. This, if anything, had even more gunpowder in it. It went off with an enormous force which gouged out a crater in the garden and send clods of earth some considerable distance into the sky. The house roof and windows got splattered with mud. The neighbours' houses got showered in mud and bits of plant. A large stone got flung through the neighbour's conversatory. Part of the fence fell down. Car alarms all over the neighbourhood were going off and neighbours ran out under the assumption that they were the victims of some act of terrorism. My friend's garden looked like the Somme. My friends were covered in mud, some had minor shrapnel wounds. My friend and his brother spend a rather large amount of money repairing the damage; it would appear that house insurance didn't cover acts of total stupidity.

I didn't go to the one the next year..

I've just pissed myself laughing at that - thank you for making me giggle like a small child!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Don't count on it working every time.....

Ah yes, the old singed carpet that just keeps burning, I know.

I've just ****ed myself laughing at that - thank you for making me giggle like a small child!

Well clean it up then!!

 

[Fnaar]

This page has just had me crying with laughter. Hilarious stuff!!!

 

[Mad Doug Biker]

Whatever you do, drink Whisky (and presumably other spirits), don't put them on a fire!

Whooomph!! Ones eyebrows nearly lost.....

Also, talking of Guy Fawkes Night, there was a boy at Primary School in a higher year from me who had somehow managed to burn himself badly after an accident (he ended up in hospital and seemingly needed ongoing treatment after that). If there was ever a better advert NOT to play silly buggers with fireworks and bonfires, I never found it!

I didn't know him, so I don't know what the circumstances were exactly, but it was certainly still enough to make me think, even at an early age!

 

[TheDoctor]

So 'e orders an Aristotle of the most ping-pong tiddly in the nuclear...

 

[Piemaster]

I once set my overalls on fire (was using a disc cutter) whilst stood on a two foot wide steel beam about a hundred feet above the deck of a container ship. Overalls were ruined, as were my underpants.

I've done that on a boat too (at deck level fortunately) as did a couple of other of the company engineers at the time. I still carry a small scar. We are now provided with flame resistant boilersuits.

On a similar note, an engineer I worked with told me how he was gas-axing something off a ships crane when he heard a cry from below "you're a tw@t".
Looking around he didn't see anything so carried on.
Again the cry came "You're a tw@t"
He looks around again and spots a shipmate standing nearby who informs him "You're standing on the bit you're burning off"

 

[summerdays]

My heart gives a little leap of joy when I see one of Vern's incendiary tales. Top stuff!!!

Me too - I'm still amazed anyone lets him near a match!

 

[machew]

At school we cleaned out the u-bend of one of the taps and filled it with a bit of sodium and then got the science teacher to turn on that tape. Nice scorch mark on the ceiling. We also swapped over the water and gas pipes and lit all the taps

 

[Piemaster]

Bit of welding on the bench at home. I hear a gentle 'poof'. Look around but can't see anything so carry on.
Starts to get a bit warm around the feet. I spot a plastic bottle of meths under the bench is now burning, set alight by a bit of slag or splatter from the welding. As the bottle melts it releases more meths, which melts the bottle more and.....I utter a stream of profanity I don't think I have ever equaled before or since as start blowing and stamping like no human has ever done before and manage to get it out.

Really shook me at the time. The garage is built into the house, what if I hadn't got it out? There's paints, aerosols, gas blowtorch, etc in there. Flammable stuff is now in a metal locker and a fire extinguisher hangs on the wall. Only takes a second to shift stuff out the way before welding or grinding anything.

 

[machew]

Ahh fun with meths, a crepe bandage on someones arm soaked in meths waved over a lit bunsen burner is sure to get the teacher in a panic (made more fun by emptying the fire extinguisher first)

 

[vernon]

Me too - I'm still amazed anyone lets him near a match!

What do you mean? I've been to quite a few games of rugby and no one's stopped me.

 

[Globalti]

My late Irish pal Liam used to hold a massive fireworks party every year when copious amounts of beer followed by whiskey would be consumed. I do remember his nephew Poric drunkenly wandering up with a mortar shell in his hand then lighting the fuse. Everybody scattered and a loud Belfast voice shouted "DROP IT PORIC... DROP IT!" which happily Poric understood and in fact in dropping it he managed to pull the fuse out.

The best memory though was of a fireworks night and BBQ when Liam and l shared a 3 storey house in Summerbridge near Pateley Bridge. All was going well down on the terrace so upstairs my brother and I conspired to dress me in Liam's leather motorcycle gear and a horse riding helmet. We tied my climbing rope to the newel post, which didn't inspire confidence as it creaked a bit. I climbed out of the window, waited with my feet on the sill until my bro got downstairs and put Verdi's terrifying Dies Irae on the stereo.... then took a mouthful of paraffin and abbed down the back of the house. I remember my Irish pal wimpering "Oh, my windows!" as I sprang past the kitchen window. Safely only a few feet above the terrace, which was packed with people now laughing hysterically, I locked off my descendeur, fished out a lighter, held it at arms length and let rip a gout of orange flame about 10 feet long, directed well away from my nylon climbing rope. That stunt earned me a permanent place in the annals of Liam's fireworks parties.

On another occasion my bro and I were trying to impress a girl called Liz who lived in a flat below the kitchen of the adjacent Chinese takeaway. We though we'd give her a demo of our fire-breathing act so out the back we went with paraffin and matches. At first floor level there was the window of the Chinese kitchen, the top of which was propped open and from which came the sound of happy Chinese chatter and sizzling woks. Both together we let rip a massive burst straight at the back wall of Liz's flat, but we hadn't reckoned for the combined effect of two mouthfuls of paraffin.... a huge ball or orange flame and black smoke rose up, went straight in the open window and rolled like a wave across the kitchen ceiling. There was a half-second of shocked silence then loud screams and the last thing I remember seeing as we sprinted up the back ginnel laughing hysterically was half a dozen shocked Chinese faces peering out of the kitchen window. We stayed away from Liz's place after that.

 

[Canrider]

A guilty miscreant anticipates a thousand smacks - the innocent just one.

Surely that's the other way around?! Great stories though!

 

[Fnaar]

On another occasion my bro and I were trying to impress a girl called Liz who lived in a flat below the kitchen of the adjacent Chinese takeaway. We though we'd give her a demo of our fire-breathing act

I love the assumption of a logical connection between the first idea and the resulting act. Yet again, I'm sat here p!ss!ng myself laughing at this thread. Thank you, you nutters, excellent stuff

 

[TheDoctor]

Seriously, I did once read in a kit-car club newsletter of someone who had a pit in their garage, to ease the doing-of-things under said kit car. And so it came to pass that one day they were doing some welding on the chassis.
Petrol vapour is apparently heavier than air.
Guy was lucky to make it out alive...