Blowing up things

I am not sure for how many years the 'Boy's Own Book of Home Experiments' had sat on the bookshelf on the landing.

It was in a prominent and accessible position on a lower part of the shelving but something about a yellow hardbacked cover and the absence of any writing on the spine did not encourage an inquisitive mind to extract and open it.

I expect, when new, it will have had a very exciting and illustrated jacket cover showing keen youngsters amongst household implements, wearing safety goggles and having a jolly good time undertaking educational but enjoyable and healthy, fun packed science based activities. It was because it looked like a surplus school text book that it held no interest for me.

Where it had come from I do not know.

Perhaps a jumble sale, an inheritance from grand-parents or bought for pocket money after a clear out at the local library.

It came to my attention after my Uncle David had spoken about how he used to make his own sherbet. I could not remember all the ingredients after bicarb and citric acid and dared not risk concocting something which would turn out either highly caustic or poisonous.

Thinking that the archived book may have come from Grandad Dick and Nanna Nelly's, Uncle David's and my own mother's parents, I made my way to the bookshelf and pulled the single volume out accompanied by a thick clump of falling  dust and dander.

The index immediately caught my interest. There were entries on how to make your own radio using a crystal, a colander and a coat-hanger, how to make a hovercraft using your mother's Hoover (be sure to ask permission first), how to embalm a domestic pet (make sure it is dead first) and, the most intriguing project; How to make a small explosive device.

Of course, times were different then. A schoolfriend regularly used to order huge amounts of explosives under his father's name for the manufacture of fireworks for his own private use. The amount of scars on his face, on a monday morning, mainly from fragments of his garden shed/laboratory were still frightening if becoming very familiar to us classmates. Nowadays the delivery of such materials to a residential address would form part of a massive sting operation by the members of Homeland Security.

I scuttled away with the book as though I had stumbled on the alchemic formula for turning base metals into gold. There was a list of items, everyday items in the house, which I collected up in nonchalant fashion so as not to attract the attention of siblings or parents.

A Golden Syrup tin with tight fitting lid, length of hose pipe, night light or stunted candle, two bricks and  half a pound of plain flour.

The tin was easily sourced but I had to make a couple of sandwiches from the residual contents before rinsing the tin out with hot water. I cut a length of hose pipe from the garden coil. Unfortunately and to the bemusement of my father the length came from the middle of the 100 foot pipe rather than, on reflection as a more sensible course of action, the very end. At least he now had two hosepipes almost equidistant in length.

I found a night light in the attic from a backlit Christmas Nativity scene, the bricks came from under the half empty rainwater butt which then listed seriously and the flour from a glass Kilner Jar in the kitchen.

The assembly instructions, read in my bedroom, were very straightforward.

1) Carefully punch a small hole in the base of the tin commensurate with the girth of the hosepipe. The hole must be slightly off centre. 2) Insert night light/stunted candle and ensure it is level, stable and adjacent to the pipe mouth.3) Carefully place, to a depth no greater than 6/8ths of an inch, the flour around the nightlight/stunted candle.4)Place tin to straddle the two bricks allowing for the projecting pipe to run clear and with the open pipe end at least 3 feet away from the tin.5) Light the nightlight/stunted candle.Allow flame to fluorish 6) Quickly push on lid ,ensure it is tight to the rim. 7) Gently at first but with increasing pressure blow down the tube............Within one full exhalation the tin lid, in a roar and cloud of aerated flour shot up and almost buried itself into the ceiling.

I had succeeded in the experiment but doubted that it would be a commercial success amongst demolition experts or terrorists unless fine flour dust could be relied upon to cause discomfort to asthmatics or those with a Gluten intolerance.

Perhaps a bit too selective to be a weapon of terror.

I soon got bored of this basic form of explosives. I graduated to the real stuff. A friend who lived on a farm let me have a shotgun cartridge which I took apart and carefully separated the gunpowder from the lead shot and wadding. The fine textured gunpowder I formed a thin, black line along the external cill of my bedroom window between the two side opening casements. I formed a small mound of the powder at the far end and then lit a match.

Very surprisingly to me, although I had no scientific knowledge or common sense of how ammunition would behave in the open, the ignited powder coursed and snaked along the softwood cill, spitting fire, making a raucous hissing and tearing sound before burying itself in the small end heap with a crescendo of smoke, flame and explosive noise.

I quickly shut the window hoping that what I had just activated would go away. It took a few minutes for the thick white smoke to clear and reveal the damage of a deep, burnt trench along the cill. I kept the curtains drawn for many months after until volunteering to go up a ladder and paint my bedroom window, purely because it was about due and certainly for no other reason.

I did not pursue my interest in explosives or pyrotechnics after that.

I am, however constantly reminded of my 'Boys Own' experiments, flour and gunpowder based,  if I am driving into Hull City Centre from the east bank of the river. Standing opposite each other, only a roads width apart are two buildings. To the south the massive brick edifice of the Clarence Flour Mills and to the north the manufacturing site of the Shotwell gun cartridge company. How these two explosive processes have managed to peacefully co-exist is a matter of mystery to me.

I do find myself simultaneously speeding up along that stretch of road whilst keeping a careful lookout for a small boy with a syrup tin, hosepipe, nightlight or stunted candle, a box of matches and engrossed in  a large , second hand, yellow coloured hardback book, for instruction.