[shades] Message #40: Thu, Jan 28, 1988 12:40 am From: Holographic Imaging Panspectral (HIP) shades Subject: this didn't seem appropriate for horsepower node, so I'm posting it h. Diary of a Pyro Let's see... I don't really know how it started. I have been fascinated by fire for as long as I can remember. The earliest specific action I can remember taking is building my own tiny fire at the beach while everyone else gathered around the main bonfire. I would stare endlessly, watching the flames dance. It triggered something mystical in my young mind. Fire seemed to have such power, reducing wood and paper to ash while pouring out light, heat, and smoke. I suppose there is a bit of it in every person; after all the taming of fire was one of the key events that made civilization possible. But some of us have it more than others... I suppose the first "explosion" I ever heard was from a cap gun. I went through untold rolls of caps. The first time I saw the "new, improved" type that use the large plastic-encapsulated caps, I was awed. Other things I particularly enjoyed playing with as a child were magnifying glasses and matches. I remember early 4th of Julyes. The fireworks my father bought us seemed enough back then. This was back when, to me, "firecracker" was just a synonym for "firework". We had lots of fun with things that smoked, snaked, or shot fountains of sparks. This was all to change. I remember very clearly one day when we were at the beach after the 4th. My youngest brother and I built our own little fire. He came back after scouring the sands with a small cylindrical object that looked to me sort of like a firework I had seen called an "oriental smoke bomb". I assumed that that was what it was. It had a very short fuse coming out. I tried lighting it while I held it, but nothing happened, so I put it in our little fire. My brother and I sat there playing with the fire... Suddenly, there was a terrible explosion, and the fire was blown to bits! I was astonished; I had not known that such devices existed. I was never the same again. The beach was the site of many of my early discoveries. I once put a tin of wax in the fire and was tremendously pleased to discover that once it melted and started boiling, it would burn by itself without a wick. My brother and I later tried this at home in the fireplace. This was a mistake. When my father saw what we were doing he tried to blow it out, but that just made a big flame billow up at him. He was displeased. At least he knew enough not to try throwing water on it. The water will instantly vaporize and blast boiling, burning wax into the air, creating an inferno. We did this for fun at the beach. On one of the trips to the beach, we saw some people with homemade rockets. This was another new thing to us. They had taped model rocket engines onto arrows and were shooting them out to sea. They told us that we could buy the engines at a hobby shop. My brother and I promptly headed for the hobby shop and bought some tiny electrically ingnited engines. I made a crude rocket by taping them onto a coat hanger and brought it with me the next time we went to the beach. I aimed it and excitedly closed the contact, but nothing happened. I don't know what I did wrong. I dejectedly tossed the rocket into the fire and watched the engines fizzle away. My first attempt at rocketry was a failure; I didn't try again for several years. I'm sometimes amazed that we didn't burn our (or someone's) house down. We came close often enough. There was the time a friend's mother left me in charge of burning some boxes in their large fireplace. Naturally I stacked up as many as I could and started then burning, then went out to get help her get some wood. When we got back inside, some of the boxes were burning on the floor, damaging the imitation brick flooring. Then there was the time I left a little heater going in my rooftop "fort" when my youngest brother and I left (our house was built on a hillside so our roof was a deck and was at street level). The heater was one of the cone- shaped devices that you screw into a light bulb socket. I liked it because it had exposed elements. I apparently forgot about it when we went to eat dinner. Later, my father came in looking very angry. He told us that he had just put out a fire on the roof. I managed to place part of the blame on my brother. I claimed that I had left before him and instructed him to turn it off when he left. He was too young to realize that something I said might not be true so he didn't dispute it. I hate to think that that's the kind of brother I was... He had pyro tendencies too though. The woods next to our house once caught on fire. After the fire department had come and put it out, we found him hiding under a bed crying. He had been playing with matches, just like little kids are warned not to... One day my other brother and I got hold of some .22's; I forget how we managed to acquire them. I took the bullet off of one of mine, crimped the casing over, and held it in some pliers over a candle to see what would happen. I got quite a welt in my leg from the casing when it went off. Meanwhile upstairs my brother hit one with a hammer. It sliced through his shoulder. All of the above happened during grade school. Greater things awaited us. (more if anyone wants it).
[shades] Message #44: Fri, Jan 29, 1988 1:21 am From: Holographic Imaging Panspectral (HIP) shades (spcecdt@ucscb) Subject: The Making of a Pyro, Ch. 2 A new chapter opened in my life when I entered 7th grade. The reason is that I left the public school system at that point, and (with my brother) began attending a boarding school in Watsonville named St. Francis. This school certainly had its flaws. For example, there were only boys there; the only women we saw were the day student's mothers when they came to pick them up and the nuns peeking out into the dining hall to see how we were enjoying the food. However, it had one redeeming virtue: given the size of the student body (105 total day and boarding students) it had an amazing proportion of pyros. Also, it had one pyromaniac science instructor. My first clue as to the environment there occurred when one of the Fathers told us that another student was going to give us a demonstration of rocketry. We went out into one of the large fields, where the student, Tim, had set up his equipment. It was a type of rocket I had never seen before; it actually had fins and was launched from a launch rod (to guide it in its early moments of flight). He pressed a button and it went up with a loud FWOOSH, disappearing into the sky. It was fantastic. Finally we saw the parachute open and it came drifting down. I soon made the acquaintance of Tim. He told us that hobby shops not only sold rocket engines, but model rockets to put them in as well! This was something I had never realized. The next weekend when my brother and I went home, we picked up engines and rockets. In my eagerness to get my rocket flying I put it in front of the heater to speed the drying of the glue. This proved to be a mistake. When I launched the rocket, the parachute did not deploy correctly. I recovered the remains and found that the parachute was melted. At first I thought that the ejection charge had melted it, so when I repaired the rocket I did the exact same thing again but increased the amount of parachute wadding (which is supposed to protect it). When I ended up with the same result, I finally realized what I was doing wrong. My third launch was a success; I was on my way. Rocket launches were soon almost a daily feature at St. Francis. Others with such inclinations came out of the woodwork. I remember John, John, Francis, Tim, my brother and myself as being among the more active. For a while we were content to launch the standard models. Soon, however, we began to implement our own designs. These often were not so stable. My attempts at building a three stage rocket quickly became infamous; they tended to turn 90 degrees as soon as they were off the launch rod and start chasing people around the quad. Sometimes the unusual behavior was intentional; I made a two stage rocket which had a long delay before the ignition of the upper stage so that it was pointing toward the ground from on high when it went off. It impacted near the pool. The school authorities generally approved of our rocketry since they realized we were learning of it. But, we eventually began to delve into other areas. One day I realized the implications of the fact that the engines we bought were filled with gunpowder. I proceeded to pound the solid core out of an engine with a hammer and grind it up. I then poured it into the casing of an expended engine, hammered a marble into the end to seal it, and put a fuse in it. My first homemade "device"! I brought it with me when I returned to school. We went down by the lake and lit it, and it exploded thunderously. Though tedious to construct (pounding and grinding the powder was a pain), and rather expensive since the powder came from rocket engines, this type of device served us well for some time. Since they were made from expended engine casings, they fit perfectly into rockets. I soon mounted one in a rocket in such a way that it was ignited by the rocket's ejection charge (which normally popped the 'chute). It worked beautifully. This gave me an idea. Since one of the Johns was particularly mellow, I decided to play a little joke on him. I slipped into his cubicle in the dorm and put one of these things into his rocket which he had all loaded and ready to go. Later that day, he brought it out and launched it. While he waited for the parachute to deploy, I waited for it to explode, and indeed it did. Little bits of rocket tubing came drifting down. I told him what I had done and apologized, but he thought it was rather funny. I also played a joke on the other John. I had a decrepit rocket which wasn't really capable of another launch. Therefore, I mounted one of my repacked casings in it where the engine normally goes, put an electrical igniter in it, and brought it out to "launch". I then asked if anyone would like to have the privilege of pressing the button. John spoke up, so I let him do it. I backed away and plugged my ears. John got quite a start when the rocket was reduced to shreds about ten feet away from him. Father Al, one of the stricter ones, came over to investigate since we weren't supposed to be playing with explosives, but I explained that it had been a defective engine... The pyro-inclined instructor was named Bill. He once mixed up a several pounds of sulfur-zinc rocket propellant in the school lab. However, he decided that it would be too much trouble to make a rocket with it, so he dumped it in a pile in the quad and lit it. It burned quite spectacularly. I remember that afterward the ground where it had been was actually glowing. When he demonstrated burning magnesium, he just pulled some off of a roll and lit it, unraveling more from the roll as he lectured. My brother so liked this that he filched the roll from the lab. He brought it into the bathroom and lit it as we watched. He unrolled it just as Bill had, and in fact burned the entire lot. We were so mesmerized by the brilliant flame that we didn't realize that the bathroom was filling with smoke... One week, Tim returned from home with an M80. It was the first one I had ever seen. He wanted to put it on a rocket, but couldn't figure out how to get the engine to ignite it. Instead, he just fit it into the tube at the top of the rocket, with the fuse sticking out the side. One of us would light it, then Tim would press the button. Somehow Bill became aware of our plans, but he didn't put a stop to it. He just insisted on lighting the M80 himself. We gathered out in the quad and Tim set the rocket up. Unfortunately the cable on his ignition system was only a few feet long meaning that he was rather close, but he wasn't worried. Bill lit the fuse, quickly moved away, and Tim pressed the button. Nothing happened. The fuse burned closer and closer, and still nothing happened. Bill, realizing that he had aided and abetted us, yelled for Tim to get away, but Tim doggedly held the button down. At the last moment, just as would happen in a movie, the rocket launched. It didn't get a chance to climb to 1000 feet; instead it exploded when it was no more than 30 feet overhead. The engine, still burning, shot around wildly. We thought it was great fun. A favorite pastime at this school was match wars. We would all stock up with many packs of paper matches, then go about flicking burning matches at each other, striking them as we sent them on their way. This sounds rather stupid, and undoubtedly was, but it was a way for boys locked away from the rest of the world to pass the time. The only times we were burned were when the matchheads would stick to our fingers instead of heading off toward the enemy. Another thing we played with were rubber-band powered airplanes. This naturally induced various experiments. I tried to boost one with a RATO unit by gluing a rocket engine on, but the wings ripped of in the first moment of flight. We sometimes taped firecrackers on, wound up the rubber band, lit them, and let them go. They disintegrated impressively in midflight. It was at St. Francis that I saw my first tennis ball cannon. It was made from three soda cans (they were steel back then) taped together end to end. The can ends which would block the interior had holes punched in them with a can opener. One of the ends of the tube was left blocked; the other was cut off. A small hole was also made in the side near the blocked end. In operation, lighter fluid was squirted in the open end; then a tennis ball, which happened to fit perfectly, was inserted. The contraption was then set on the ground and a match was put near the small hole at the bottom. The naptha fumes ignited explosively, sending the ball high into the air. I was delighted by its elegant simplicity. I had soon made dozens of them, varying such parameters as the size of the internal holes and the number of cans to get optimum performance. In later years I considerably improved the design. I spent only one year at St. Francis. After I left, I missed the community of pyros there, but eventually found local friends who enjoyed similar pursuits.