3 ms·

> WARNING – Extreme care must be exercised in flying a whoosh rocket and students must be supervised when using this type of rocket. Only surpassed by the time

> WARNING – Extreme care must be exercised in flying a whoosh rocket and students must be supervised when using this type of rocket. Only surpassed by the time I tried to grab a falling soldering iron by the tip this is the source of the worst burn I've ever received. I cannot stress how vicious an ignited alcohol mixture in a container can be.

maccam912 2y ago
What went wrong?
- timewizard 2y ago
  Something in my childhood I presume. In this specific case, you see how they depict the long necked "BBQ" style lighter? That's a /really/ good idea.
  - kbenson 2y ago
    > Something in my childhood I presume. LOL, I can empathize quite a bit, as someone that has a nasty burn scar on my hand caused by a glob of melted saltpeter and sugar from an accidental ignition of a concoction I was cooking one fourth of July in my youth.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      A lot of good lessons to be learned from KNO3. An early lesson was not to melt it and incorporate fuel on a kitchen stove. Next lesson was how to build a outdoor brick stove. Then we learned a couple pounds would fill up several square blocks with dense smoke and burn a hole through blacktop. Not sure how we made it through our youth without learning what the inside of a jail cell looked like, but I suppose things were different before 9/11.
      - kbenson 2y ago
        > An early lesson was not to melt it and incorporate fuel on a kitchen stove. That was, indeed, an aspect of the problem I alluded to before. I have made it a few times before, and I was going to use the gas grill outside, but it seemed to be acting up, and I didn't trust it, so I thought it would be "safer" to move inside. Combine that with me iterating on a few different batches with "improvements", such as lining the bottom of the pan with tinfoil so I could lift it out, and then next making an extra large batch... well multiple lessons were learned that day, including how to deal with insurance companies from some shrewd negotiating from my parents, given most the entire kitchen needed to be replaces and the entire house needed to be scrubbed floor to ceiling. > Not sure how we made it through our youth without learning what the inside of a jail cell looked like, but I suppose things were different before 9/11. Ha, probably true, especially since my recipe came from a copy of the anarchist cookbook my older brother happened to have (and I wouldn't be surprised if you happened upon it the same way). It's got a lot of dangerous stuff in it, but honestly, as a tool for sparking curiosity it works pretty well.
        dhosek 2y ago
        I grew up with a (stolen, of course) copy of Steal this Book in the house.
      - dhosek 2y ago
        As a grade school kid, I was taken to the police station for making a bomb with a couple friends. Fortunately for us, no charges were pressed (presumably because we didn’t manage to ignite the bomb and it was the 70s).
        hermitcrab 2y ago
        I met someone on holiday whose brother has been blinded for life by a pipe bomb he and a friend made. So the risks of messing around with that sort of thing are very real. Better to couple youthful enthusiasm with some adult oversight. It can still be a lot of fun (see my comments on youth rocketry competitions elsewhere in this discussion).
dmd 2y ago
Is this you? https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-08-at-9.15.01-AM.png?w=848&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Sc...
- qoez 2y ago
  HN is turning into reddit/twitter
  - latchkey 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
    - qoez 2y ago
      I'm aware of this rule but I think it's clearly not true that quality hasn't degraded over time. Look at any pg thread from 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233848 Anyway I get that commenting this isn't the best use of space but I still think it's true (I also suspect not being allowed to call this out is not helping the quality).
  - HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
    Thank god.

maccam912 2y ago

What went wrong?

timewizard 2y ago
Something in my childhood I presume. In this specific case, you see how they depict the long necked "BBQ" style lighter? That's a /really/ good idea.
- kbenson 2y ago
  > Something in my childhood I presume. LOL, I can empathize quite a bit, as someone that has a nasty burn scar on my hand caused by a glob of melted saltpeter and sugar from an accidental ignition of a concoction I was cooking one fourth of July in my youth.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    A lot of good lessons to be learned from KNO3. An early lesson was not to melt it and incorporate fuel on a kitchen stove. Next lesson was how to build a outdoor brick stove. Then we learned a couple pounds would fill up several square blocks with dense smoke and burn a hole through blacktop. Not sure how we made it through our youth without learning what the inside of a jail cell looked like, but I suppose things were different before 9/11.
    - kbenson 2y ago
      > An early lesson was not to melt it and incorporate fuel on a kitchen stove. That was, indeed, an aspect of the problem I alluded to before. I have made it a few times before, and I was going to use the gas grill outside, but it seemed to be acting up, and I didn't trust it, so I thought it would be "safer" to move inside. Combine that with me iterating on a few different batches with "improvements", such as lining the bottom of the pan with tinfoil so I could lift it out, and then next making an extra large batch... well multiple lessons were learned that day, including how to deal with insurance companies from some shrewd negotiating from my parents, given most the entire kitchen needed to be replaces and the entire house needed to be scrubbed floor to ceiling. > Not sure how we made it through our youth without learning what the inside of a jail cell looked like, but I suppose things were different before 9/11. Ha, probably true, especially since my recipe came from a copy of the anarchist cookbook my older brother happened to have (and I wouldn't be surprised if you happened upon it the same way). It's got a lot of dangerous stuff in it, but honestly, as a tool for sparking curiosity it works pretty well.
      - dhosek 2y ago
        I grew up with a (stolen, of course) copy of Steal this Book in the house.
    - dhosek 2y ago
      As a grade school kid, I was taken to the police station for making a bomb with a couple friends. Fortunately for us, no charges were pressed (presumably because we didn’t manage to ignite the bomb and it was the 70s).
      - hermitcrab 2y ago
        I met someone on holiday whose brother has been blinded for life by a pipe bomb he and a friend made. So the risks of messing around with that sort of thing are very real. Better to couple youthful enthusiasm with some adult oversight. It can still be a lot of fun (see my comments on youth rocketry competitions elsewhere in this discussion).

dmd 2y ago

Is this you? https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Screen-Shot-2016-03-08-at-9.15.01-AM.png?w=848&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/makezine.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Sc...

qoez 2y ago
HN is turning into reddit/twitter
- latchkey 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.
  - qoez 2y ago
    I'm aware of this rule but I think it's clearly not true that quality hasn't degraded over time. Look at any pg thread from 2014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233848 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21233848 Anyway I get that commenting this isn't the best use of space but I still think it's true (I also suspect not being allowed to call this out is not helping the quality).
- HeatrayEnjoyer 2y ago
  Thank god.