Match Rockets.

[schmendict]

While scrolling through my edition of the Anarchists Cookbook, i noticed an extract about match rockets. Having remembered these from my Backyard Ballistics book, i decided to give it a shot.
And give it a shot i did.
Match rockets are awesome, haha, they just fizz and shoot like hell. Unfortunately, _tom_'s and Indyrocks just fizzled and died. They must have been doing something wrong...
Heres a pic of mine going "BLAM".
Has anyone else had experiences with home-brew pyrotechnics?

[sambo]

lol excellent.

actually i have recently discovered a cool way of launching matches at people. it may be old news to you but if you hold a matchbox with the 'lighting' surface upwards, then position a match with it's head on the 'lighting' surface and hold it there with the thumb/ finger that is holding the matchbox, you can then get your free hand, flick the match and it flies through the air burning as it goes!!!! it's so cool it's like a mini cannon thing. as well as just the awesomeness of firing matches, it's also really good to scare people with- sending a burning match past their ear is great fun.

that explanation is pretty horrible but basicalyl you have to hold the box AND keep the match in position with ONE hand so that you have a free hand to flick it. but like i said this may be old news to you.

[indysmith]

mine suck! i cant make them fly-
maybe i need better foil?

as for experiences with homebrew pyrotechnics, i made a bomb out of the insides of party poppers once. it was new years eve evening, and it set fire to a carpet in a hotel - and i got chucked out. my parents yelled. i giggled.

[schmendict]

I dont know why yours dont work very well indy, i make sure mine have an immensly tight exhaust pipe made my wrapping up a pin with the stick, then removing the pin. This greatly increases the velocity.
So much so that here i have two pics.
One of them is the rig before ignition.
The other is 1/30th of a second later.
They go very, very fast.

:Edit: It seems that the first picture is below the second.

[Dakine]

Play with fire and Ye Shall Get Burnt!!!!
Be warned, LOL
That said, was abit of a firestarter back in the day.
COurse, now in US get to carry a gun and all and really cause havoc LOL!
Amazing what fun you can have shooting beer cans (shaken), gas cans (semi full) with a semi-auto 9mm ROFLMAO

[_tom_]

lol excellent.

actually i have recently discovered a cool way of launching matches at people. it may be old news to you but if you hold a matchbox with the 'lighting' surface upwards, then position a match with it's head on the 'lighting' surface and hold it there with the thumb/ finger that is holding the matchbox, you can then get your free hand, flick the match and it flies through the air burning as it goes!!!! it's so cool it's like a mini cannon thing. as well as just the awesomeness of firing matches, it's also really good to scare people with- sending a burning match past their ear is great fun.

that explanation is pretty horrible but basicalyl you have to hold the box AND keep the match in position with ONE hand so that you have a free hand to flick it. but like i said this may be old news to you.

I was doing this earlier hahah sooo much more fun than matchstick rockets. I dont know whats so satisfying about it but theres something!

[sambo]

exactly lol. i mean i actually have no idea what the rocket things are but they seem to require too much effort- i mean its so much easier to just flick away and watch that fire fly!  :twisted:

[_tom_]

exactly lol. i mean i actually have no idea what the rocket things are but they seem to require too much effort- i mean its so much easier to just flick away and watch that fire fly!  :twisted:

yup, one time my mate did it and it set fire to this girls hair, that wasnt so funny, maybe it would've been if she wasnt so hot  8) quite litteraly hot come to think of it  :lol:

[sambo]

haha excellent  :D  :twisted:

[indysmith]

once when i'd broke my arm i had a cast on, and i set fire to it in a physics lesson with the bunsen burner. it was funny til i couldnt put it out  :lol:

[sambo]

hahaha!

[The amazing Phil]

I remember match flicking back in the day, and stupidly enough, deodorant flame throwers. One thing that was safer and more "intresting" was spraying patterns on concrete pavements then quickly lighting them, it looked ace. And road cones, spraying the inside of those then lighting the end, it made a big "whoomb" noise and shot a jet of flame out! Ah, being a teenager wasn't so bad thinking about it. :lol:

That said, I would advise fire playing with to be done very rarely if you really must do such things, I know warning people is pointness because I was warned and never listened... lads'll be lads and all that. It's better to just say "if you're gonna bugger around with things like that be bloody careful!".

[sambo]

lol thanks for the advice mr.phil.

[jimibt]

loosly related. reminds me of one summer many years back when we found our way into the british rail store room near our local station. now they were doing quite a bit of maintenece on the line and this store room literally had HUNDREDS of small line detonators (the idea was that the rail worker put some on the line so that they could hear the bang to let them know that the train was a comin).

what we decided to do with the first fifty or so was to string them out in a straight line along the track some 4-5 feet apart. with the second dose, we emptied the gunpowder from those out into a neat pile and placed it on a bit of wood next to the final detonator (well actually it was two in a row 'just in case'). well, when the next train came thundering through, it sounded like a machine gun going off, followed by the most almighty bang. we almost sh$t ourselves - and we KNEW what was going on...

ahhh - to be 16 again :)

[sambo]

sounds niiiiice. but i doubt you'd be able to do that nowadays- security is probly a lot tighter at places like rail stations.