he leaves out the part where he has to go change his shorts

Hocrest wrote: My BIL used to fill trash bags with acetylene and tape a strip of newspaper to it as a fuse... He'd set it out in the middle of a field and run like hell. It made a hell of a bang but never really made much of a crater.

A few years ago I worked in a lead smelter. The old guys would tell me stories of how on night shift they would take the garbage bags for 55 gal drums, fill them with MAP gas or acetylene, tie a fuse of toilet paper to them and release them in the feed dryer building (HUGE buidling 200' long and 100' wide). This fun stopped when they over filled the bag and managed to blow out a good chunk of the windows on time...

old welder's trick, fill a coffee cup w/ acetylene and light it off next to a sleeping guy... it'd wake the berkeleyin' dead

16vCorey wrote: We also used to shoot tennis balls out of old drive shaft tubes with oxy/acetylene. Think potato gun, with a LOT more bang. It would shoot a tennis ball nearly a 1/4 mile.

we used to do that with air cannons made for confetti.. while no where near 1/4 of a mile.. we launched all sorts of neat stuff.

The best was 500 "snappers" the little firecrackers you throw on the ground and they go "bang". I will have to get the video sometime.. but it looked like the carpet bombing videos from WW2

Shooting tennis balls out of drive shaft tubes is a half done job without soaking them in lighter fluid first.

We used to blow the doors off cabinets in shop class with Acetylene. Ah, the good old days.

Acetylene used to be the light source for motorcars back about a hundred years ago. Tons of accidents and burns.

I remember something about acetylene gas tanks having a special lining - IIRC if the gas is released too rapidly it can self combust.

I always wanted to see the inner structure of an FJ.