Things we used to do

[vernon]

Talking about gunpowder has just reminded me of Lott's chemistry sets. These came in different sizes, and contained something called logwood chips in a little jar. I have absolutely no idea what they were for.

The logwood chips were used as a pH indicator.

 

[vernon]

With a formula from Encyclopaedia Britannica (1965 edition?), we were able to source all the essential ingredients of gunpowder from the local chemist, no questions asked. We blew things up with our DIY concrete and steel encased mines, detonators courtesy of steel wool , Jetex fuses, and motorcycle batteries.
It was great fun but I very nearly killed myself in a self-inflicted shrapnel explosion, and decided to quit at the tender age of fifteen.
Luckily.

Jetex engines - I once had one of those (a Jetex Scorpion with augmentor tube) break free from the toy car it was attached to. The panic that the free flying engine induced as it hurled around the passageway bouncing off the walls at various heights induced before coming to rest on the carpet and burning a hole in it witnessed a level of personal agility that I have matched only once. That was thirty years later when I attached one of the relaunched Jetex engines to a Duplo car and launched it down a school corridor only to see it do a u-turn, take off and head back towards me and the pupils that I was demonstrating it to. Their agility matched mine.

I escaped injury with my crater making activities unlike my friend who needed skin grafts after putting an oil drum on a bonfire and not following my lead in beating a retreat.

 

[vernon]

Non-absorbant toilet paper at school and in public lavvies.

It made a passable kazoo when folded over a comb.

 

[slowmotion]

Anybody tried a bare Jetex engine on a DIY zip-wire? They reach impressive speeds.

 

[vernon]

Anybody tried a bare Jetex engine on a DIY zip-wire? They reach impressive speeds.

They're even faster in freeflight mode.

 

[vernon]

They're even faster in freeflight mode.

Sadly, the second generation Jetex engines are no longer made.

 

[Over The Hill]

Stand for the national anthem which was played in the cinema at the end of the film.

And the telly shutting down at about 11.30 at night with the national anthem and the bloke reminding you to unplug your set.

Then the BeeeeeeeEEEEE noise to make you switch it off.

 

[claudbutler]

My dad used to send me to the offy with an empty pop bottle and i would get it filled with sherry from out of a big red plastic barrel.

 

[Pro Tour Punditry]

Talking to an ex-pat in a bike shop reminded me of:

Is it not about time they called themselves immigrants?

 

[Tim Hall]

Rushing to the pub so as not to miss lunch time closing. Two thirty on Saturday, two on Sunday.

 

[ianrauk]

When pubs had a separate off sales window

 

[Illaveago]

Putting the cat out at night.

 

[vernon]

Rushing to the pub so as not to miss lunch time closing. Two thirty on Saturday, two on Sunday.

Getting last orders in in County Durham gulping it down and then getting your sober chauffeur to get you into North Yorkshire where the last orders was half an hour later.

It never occurred to us that starting the drinking in North Yorkshire at the same starting time as in County Durham would be a better use of drinking time.

 

[Profpointy]

Jetex engines - I once had one of those (a Jetex Scorpion with augmentor tube) break free from the toy car it was attached to. The panic that the free flying engine induced as it hurled around the passageway bouncing off the walls at various heights induced before coming to rest on the carpet and burning a hole in it witnessed a level of personal agility that I have matched only once. That was thirty years later when I attached one of the relaunched Jetex engines to a Duplo car and launched it down a school corridor only to see it do a u-turn, take off and head back towards me and the pupils that I was demonstrating it to. Their agility matched mine.

I escaped injury with my crater making activities unlike my friend who needed skin grafts after putting an oil drum on a bonfire and not following my lead in beating a retreat.

One of my maths lecturers shared a similar story, albeit on a rather larger scale. During the war it was believed (righltly or wrongly) that Japanese submarines had been shooting at lifeboats so they thought they'd arm lifeboats with a mini-torpedo. Conventional torpedos are hugely complex but a rocket propelled one would be much simpler. A demo was arranged with some top brass observing from a barrage balloon. Unfortunately the sea-skimming rocket lost a fin, then shot out of the water into the sky narrowly missing the general in his balloon. I gather it was more or less the end of my lecturer's rocketry career.

Really nice man - quite a story too.

Can you still get Jetex motors? As a kid I had an old (even then) book of plans for Jetex propelled models - but never saw them for sale. Presumably the propellant is something you could cook up at home - and I dare say all you need's on the internet.

 

[NorthernDave]

When I was just a kid spending an entire evening polishing my bike including the steel wheel rims not realising it would effectively stop the brakes from working

Which reminds me of a mate who cleaned his wheel rims with WD40 which brought them up a treat.
It was all going so well until he tried to stop at the bottom of the hill...