Re - My Father a young lad during ww2 used to collect ammo rounds

Hi Roy, your dad sounds like a fellow pyromaniac 😁 We used to blow everything up as kids, found if you put a mighty cannon firework (about 6"long and 1"diam) in a can in the ground, it made a great mortar with a bigger bang. Some of my mates used to disassemble fireworks and make bigger ones by wrapping the gunpowder tightly in layers of masking tape ( till about the size of a tennis ball, with a fuse built in. Rather impressive! I once chucked a half full camping gas bottle in a drum incinerator and stood a looong way back,- best bang ever! crap was coming down from the sky for 10 mins, (lucky it was a thick walled chemical drum, as I think a std 44gal might not have stood up to it.)!😊

When I was press setting for a big plumbing fitting company years ago, I worked with a guy from the UK Midlands who looked like Kenny Everett and was just as mad. One day, I was sitting on the throne when a jumping jack came under the 3" gap at the door bottom and went behind the bowl. Don't know if you've ever been trapped in a confined space with your trousers down and a live firework ricocheting round your feet, and the space instantly filling with gunpowder smoke, but needless to say I emerged half deaf and coughing, but most importantly, plotting my revenge😆. Can't remember what the retaliation was, (something like gluing his overall sleeves and legs shut, dog turd in a pocket or something of that nature😁
I'm sure we all did stupid silly stuff when we were young, but wasn't it FUN😁😁😁 ?- it's how you learn limits. If I could go back, I'd do it all again, better bigger and SAFER😁😊

JB

I went 'Modern' 35 Years ago. Have 2 Sievert Gas torches👍👍

I still have two Sievert blow lamps I use to heat a small brick furnace I use for heating metal for wrought iron work, not used it recently but its there should I need another set of gates or railings.

Hi Doug.
Love it.
Just shows what a varied and mad group of professional lunatics we all are.
👍👍👍👍👍👍
Regards Bill 🍷🍷🍷

Used to heat the tip using a primus paraffin blowtorch. They had a meths tray with a coil above to vaporize the paraffin, then you pumped like hell to get a blowtorch flame over a 1000Deg C.
Model Engineers who are no longer with used to use 2 of them to heat the loco boilers for silver soldering Complete with a hearth of coke! You also got a petrol version that didn't have the primer tray.
Glad that I used gas to build my boilers though 2 Primus Sievert Torches you got a good suntan putting a loco boiler together😀😀

Aerobatic dustbins, incinerator mortars!😮
This thread has gone from light hearted to heart stopping💥
😎

Hi CB90,
Re :- a bit heavy duty for modern electronics

Could be interesting on surface mount components LOL!!!!!

Martin555.

Hi jbkiwi,
My Father a young lad during ww2 used to collect ammo rounds which he found on the marshes in Essex UK, he had quite a large amount of gunpowder / cordite also magnesium from incendiary bombs, seemingly towards the end of the war the Germans would drop their load over the Marshes and turn back for home.
Dads collection of stuff (powder) was kept in the kitchen cupboard on a baking tray.
A story goes that he filled a washing up liquid bottle with the stuff and used a cordite fuse, lit it and panicked and put it in a dustbin
when the thing exploded it sent the dustbin lid up into the air cutting off the smaller branches of nearby trees that were 40ft high, if you looked up you could see the hole it had cut in the treetops.

Surprised he didn't kill himself, he later joined the RAF (conscription) as a Armorer for Meteor 8's 50mm canons.

Regards
Roy

I have one of these which was my grandfathers ( a builder,- died in 76 at 83) which I used for years till the tip fell off, (now tied on with copper wire and still works ) I still have a perfect Sievert blow torch with the original proper lighting tray (most I've seen on YT don't, and people are filling the depression in the top with meths to start them - seem a bit dangerous to me😮🙈) last thing you want is to vapourise kero inside the tank.

I was told by my welding instructor (who actually repaired Montgomerys' staff car petrol tank in Africa while in the British Army, - lots of vehicles damaged by rocks ) many years ago that kero when vapourised has an explosive power something like 3 x the power of petrol (longer slower explosion) He used to repair car, truck, tank fuel tanks by filling them with kero, and allowing it to burn while welding the tank,- until he was welding a bus tank in the main Auckland govt bus workshops many years later using this method, when his boss came in, saw what he was doing, told him to turn his torch off and run. After the fire brigade had been his boss explained the danger to him.

Reckoned he couldn't see the problem as he'd been doing it for about 20yrs and had welded hundreds of tanks in the war and later, but he was stopped from doing it that way. I've always been careful after that. Nearly blew my grandfathers 44 gal drum incinerator apart when I was 12, - vapourising kero on the hot metal and lighting it! never realised the significance, but knew it made a bloody good whooomf!😁- one time, blew the contents of the incinerator about 60ft into the air😊, - came frighteningly close to my mothers wooden spoon😁

JB

Hi All.
When I joined PO Telecommunications (BT) in 1979, the external guys used these and heated them up on a Bunsen burner, and used them to solder wires in underground joints, a bit heavy duty for modern electronics, should be good for soldering copper pipe joints.
Regards
Roy

Brilliant tools I still have my granddads.
Always ready as long as you have a fire.
Cheers Colin.

Easy Mark, it didn't happen yesterday or this morning!🤔
😁😎

Well remembered Doug .
Cheers Marky👍

Just make sure it doesn't BOLT just when you need it though Bill😁
Marky taught me all about these a year or so ago😉
Cheers, Doug 😎

Hi Bill,
I have used many of these, and have not experienced any problems.
Although i have seed an apprentice pick it up using the wrong end.
He was very quickly educated.
He only did it the once though.

Martin555.