Could this be why we are mechanical nuts


Back in the day....

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Yard Art
Yard Art

Posts: 79

Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 10:12 am

Location: Cushing, Wi

Post Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:44 pm

Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Arrows? I didn't even see the Indians!
Around age 10 my dad got me one of those Little
Compound Bow beginner kits. Of course, the first month I
went around our place sticking arrows in anything that could
get stuck by an arrow. Did you know that a 1955 40 horse
Farmall tractor will take 6 rounds before it goes down?
Tough sumgun.


That got boring, so being the 10 yr. old Dukes of Hazzard
fan that I was, I quickly advanced to taking strips of cut
up Tshirt doused in chainsaw gas tied around the end and was
sending flaming arrows all over the place. Keep in mind this
was 99.999% humidity swampland so there really wasn't
any fire danger. I'll put it this way - a set of post
hole diggers and a 3ft. hole and you had yourself a well.


Anyway, one summer afternoon, I was shooting flaming arrows
into a large rotten oak stump in our backyard. I look over
under the carport and see a shiny brand new can of starting
fluid (ether). The light bulb went off. I grabbed the can
and set it on the stump. I thought it would probably just
spray out in a disappointing manner . . lets face it... to a
10 yr. old mouth-breather like myself, ether really
doesn't "sound" flammable. So, I went back
into the house and got a 1 pound can of pyrodex (black
powder for muzzle loader rifles) to add to the excitement.


At this point, I set the can of ether on the stump and
opened up the can of black powder. My intentions were to
sprinkle a little bit around the ether can but it all sorta
dumped out on me. No biggie...1lb pyrodex and 16 oz of ether
should make a loud pop, kinda like a firecracker - you know?
You know what? Screw that. I'm going back in the house
for the other can. Yes, I got a second can of pyrodex and
dumped it too. Now we're cookin'.


I stepped back about 15ft and lit the 2 stroke arrow. I
drew the nock to my cheek and took aim. As I released I
heard a clunk as the arrow launched from my bow. In a slow
motion time frame, I turned to see my dad getting out of the
truck... OH SHOOT! He just got home from work. So help me,
it took 10 minutes for that arrow to go from my bow to the
can. My dad was walking towards me in slow motion with a "what's goin
on"
look in his eyes.

I turned back towards my target just in time to see the
arrow pierce the starting fluid can right at the bottom.
Right through the main pile of pyrodex and into the can. OH
- SHOOT.

When the shock wave hit it knocked me off my feet. I
don't know if it was the actual compression wave that
threw me back or just reflex jerk back from 235 decibels of
sound. I caught a half millisecond glimpse of the violence
during the initial explosion and I will tell you there was
dust, grass, and bugs all hovering 1ft above the ground as
far as I could see. It was like a little low to the ground
layer of dust fog full of grasshoppers, spiders, and a
crawfish or two. The daylight turned purple. Let me repeat
this...

THE DAYLIGHT TURNED PURPLE!

There was a big sweetgum tree out by the gate going into
the pasture. Notice I said "was". That mother got
up and ran off.


So here I am, on the ground blown completely out of my
shoes with my Thundercats T-shirt shredded, my dad is on the
other side of the carport having what I can only assume is a
Vietnam flashback: " ECHO BRAVO CHARLIE YOUR
BRINGIN' EM IN TOO CLOSE!! CEASE FIRE CEASE
FIRE!!!!!

His hat has blown off and is 30 ft. behind him in the
driveway. All windows on the north side of the house are
blown out and there is a slow rolling mushroom cloud about
2000 feet over our backyard. There is a Honda 185s three
wheeler parked on the other side of the yard and the fenders
are drooped down and are now touching the tires.


I wish I knew what I said to my dad at this moment. I
don't know - I know I said something. I couldn't
hear. I couldn't hear inside my own head. I don't
think he heard me either... not that it would really matter.
I don't remember much from this point on. I said
something, felt a sharp pain, and then woke up later. I felt
a sharp pain, blacked out, woke later.... repeat this
process for an hour or so and you get the idea. I remember
at one point my mom had to give me CPR so dad could beat me
some more. Bring him back to life so dad can kill him again.
Thanks mom.

One thing is for sure... I never had to mow around that
stump again. Mom had been complaining about that thing for
years and dad never did anything about it. I stepped up to
the plate and handled business.

Dad sold his muzzleloaders a week or so later. And I still
have some sort of bone growth abnormality either from the
blast or the beating. Or both
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Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 759

Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:44 pm

Location: New Salisbury, IN USA

Post Sat Dec 15, 2012 6:07 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Actually...MY infatuation with wrench-twistin' probably occurred because my family owned a garage.

But I had a friend we called "Crazy Stuart." Now, "Crazy Stuart" was a scientific genius, but with a slightly warped bend to his personality. His streak of crazy was probably fed by the fact that his parents were the richest ones within my circle of friends, and just about anything Crazy Stuart wanted, he got. In grade school, that meant he had every James Bond 007 toy known to man, as well as all the "Man From U.N.C.L.E" stuff, too. [Parenting note: even if you ARE as rich as God, it might behoove you to NOT spend money on your kid as opposed to spending time with him/her/them.]

In Crazy Stuart's garage, there was a natural gas outlet...yep, the type with the hose nipple just like the ones we hooked to our Bunsen burners in high school chemistry class. Crazy Stuart decided that it'd be a hoot to go out to the garage at night, fill a plastic garbage bag with natural gas, tie about a ten-foot tail of masking tape to the bag, light the tape, and release the bag. The first couple of times, he achieved some impressive fireballs in the sky that prompted older residents to call the police and report UFO sightings. But one bag went awry during its flight, and nearly burnt Mrs. Enlow's favorite maple tree to the ground. I think what got Crazy Stuart out of the garbage bag/fireball business was the night one of 'em went up, then came down and lodged in Doc Alton's TV antenna, raining bits of burning plastic onto Doc's roof and nearly catching the whole house on fire.

Crazy Stewart moved on. When he got a job at a local hardware store, he got tired of getting parking tickets...so he filled the parking meter with SuperGlue, so no one who ever parked in that space would see the dreaded word "VIOLATION" in THAT parking meter's window. Unfortunately, Crazy Stewart also discovered pipe threading machines, pipe, pipe caps, and black powder during his stint at the hardware store...so with a firecracker detonator and a long fuse, he began making pipe bombs and setting them off at his Uncle Eldon's farm. That all stopped after the time he "misplaced" one of his pipe bombs...and Uncle Eldon "found" it while bush-hogging his field. Fishing a bush hog out of Blue River was the kind of adventure that neither Uncle Eldon nor Crazy Stuart anticipated, and that kind of stuff stopped.

Then Crazy Stuart discovered technology...specifically, he built a tone oscillator. Now, a tone oscillator is mighty handy, to some people; Crazy Stuart used HIS to "hack" the telephone system in the late 1960's/early '70's. Midnight calls to the White House switchboard, or "free" worldwide long distance calls..the world was suddenly Crazy Stuart's oyster--or more accurately his shrimp, because he loved shrimp but hated oysters. Eventually, the FCC and the phone company caught up with Crazy Stuart...but instead of prosecuting him, the phone company hired him. They decided that they were safer if they had folks like Crazy Stuart working FOR them, rather than AGAINST them.

So today, Crazy Stewart is semi-retired, a tech consultant for the phone company he once harassed, and living in Florida. And ME? I'm still wrenching on old trucks, and looking toward making my FIRST million.
My posts contain my own opinions...your mileage may vary, void where prohibited, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear, and alcohol may intensify any side effects.
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Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 528

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 6:22 pm

Location: Grand Junction, Colorado

Post Sat Dec 15, 2012 10:03 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Thank You guys so much for all the entertainment this morning. I laughed so hard and kept wondering now why didn't I ever think of that? MM
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Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 639

Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 6:19 pm

Location: Creston, British Columbia, Canada

Post Sun Dec 16, 2012 3:35 pm

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

My Dad, a German immigrant, brought us 4 boys up, with (I'd be amis to add), mostly my mothers help!! yeah, I know,...we dads like to give ourselves a bit more share of the credit sometimes!
one day, Dad told me to burn up the one acre couchgrass patch he'd avoided dragging around with the cultivator, and the rest of the field was black dirt. It had already been "round-upped" so was crisp brown, and very very dry in the 92Fheat of the summer day.
Well, me being no stranger to having some fun, I thought that about 5 gallons of farm purple gas would about do, and I borrowed moms"watering jug" she'd mix "killex" chem. into and do her own weeding. I filled the green jug with gas and started at one end (keep in mind,..not a breath of wind at all!) and wove a snakelike path criss cross all across the whole patch, having just enough gas to give myself a 50 ft leader, which I did (not really enough). I struck a couple of matches, the first two missing, but the third caught and with a jerky kind of popping, it jumped ever closer to the patch. and then [b][i]whooooommmmmppp[b][i] The next thing I knew was that I was flat on the ground and the sky was a funny color and little black stringy things were floating down like snow, but the patch had no evidence of black grass on it, something I'd have to explain to Dad. It has become one of the families favorite repeat stories at reunions.

Rusty Driver
Rusty Driver

Posts: 110

Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2012 9:39 am

Post Fri Dec 21, 2012 9:32 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Another "world class" tale wisconsinjimmy.

Take a look at this link on Smokestak, I believe it's No, 16 for another ether story.

http://www.smokstak.com/forum/showthrea ... detonation


Bud

Pile of Parts
Pile of Parts

Posts: 35

Joined: Sun Dec 09, 2012 9:27 pm

Post Sat Dec 22, 2012 11:38 pm

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Thank You Wisconsinjimmy for making my day. I had to walk away several times so I could get my sides to quit hurting, I was laughing so hard. Don

Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 8937

Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2012 12:45 pm

Location: Canada's left Coast

Post Wed Jan 16, 2013 10:03 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

Check out "burning black gun powder " on YouTube.
I would rather have tools I do not need than to need tools I do not have
Thinking risks being controversial and possibly being offensive

Rusty Driver
Rusty Driver

Posts: 125

Joined: Fri Nov 30, 2012 2:04 am

Post Wed Oct 23, 2013 8:16 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

To all, the dumbest thing I've done with ether was trying to start a wankel engine back in the '70's when they were popular. Where I worked at the time, several guys were trying to get a car started on winter day, without any luck. I was told they poured a gallon of gas down the carb, and wanted to try ether today. I had already been working on diesel semi's for several years by then, enough to have a healthy respect for either, but not enough sense to not try. I told them to crank the engine until I said to stop. I didn't start spraying the ether until the engine was spinning. I started off with a full can, and used the whole thing. Think about it, a whole can (11 oz.) plus plus who knows how much gas was left in the engine, plus a working ignition system. It didn't explode, and I never thought of that until later. It did finally start though. As far as I could tell, I think I might have rinsed out the gasoline with the either. Maybe. Or I was present at some miracle, and didn't know it at the time. As the engine started to run, a huge cloud of white fog came out of the tailpipe that burned your eyes, if you got to close. i wish I knew more details, but don't care to experiment just to see. Not interested in being my own barbecue. Bill

Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 5170

Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 9:28 pm

Location: Lyman, IA

Post Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:23 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

ether it self is not bad, it is the disposable cans that cause the problem along with where they are sprayed. I have ether as a back up on all my semi's but it is a measured shot, and injected right before the valves. Very little ether is used, and when really cold, multipule shots ar required to keep the engine fireing. The either itself isn't enough to start combustion as there is too little to burn on its own, but acts as a catalist to start the diesel burning.
Too often when cans are used, it is thought of as a last resort, and too much is sprayed in at once, too far from the cyl. By the time it get to the combustion chamber there is enough for it to light on its own and you get the knocking that is so hard on the engine or even kick back, where it fires too soon and turns the engine backwards.
Now if you really want to have fun, propane fog a 2 stroke Detroit.... from a safe distance... once the mixture reaches a flamable level, the open ports in th cyl will ignite the mixture in the airbox, and parts fly everywhere!
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Golden Jubilee
Golden Jubilee

Posts: 1887

Joined: Thu Nov 29, 2012 10:40 am

Location: Wichita, Kansas

Post Wed Oct 23, 2013 9:46 am

Re: Could this be why we are mechanical nuts

cb89-
And how is it you know this? :lol:

Dean
Lifelong Kansan
Grew up with red paint
Moved off the farm 33 years ago.
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