The "Back in my day" Thread

GaryM said:
And the more obscure transitional design that Coors used for a few years. Push in the small button to release pressure, then the big one to drink. It worked pretty well as the earliest commercial solution to opening a drink can without having to remove and discard a pull tab.

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It was Bill Coors who engineered that opening. He was also the engineer who pioneered the use of aluminum in making beer cans . Or so he told me at one of our chats at a growers meetings . Also said his biggest mistake was going national. Much better as a regional brewer.
 
Those plastic whiffle ball bats had a little hole in each end due to the molding process. If you enlarged the hole in the big end, you could put the stick for your bottle rocket in there and make a bottle rocket "rifle" for better accuracy in your bottle rocket wars.
 
KRyan said:
Those plastic whiffle ball bats had a little hole in each end due to the molding process. If you enlarged the hole in the big end, you could put the stick for your bottle rocket in there and make a bottle rocket "rifle" for better accuracy in your bottle rocket wars.
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I always used a section of 1/2 inch copper pipe with one end plugged. The proper technique included bending the fuse first upwards then downwards at the midpoint creating an upside down V that would hold the bottle rocket in place at the pipe rim while you lit it. When the fuse burnt half way, it would then drop into the pipe for precise aiming at your friend's eyes, ears or anywhere else that might cause maiming.
 
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Always reminds me of the Men In Black line: "This is a fascinating little gadget. It's gonna replace CDs soon. I guess I'll have to buy the white album again."
 
KRyan said:
Those plastic whiffle ball bats had a little hole in each end due to the molding process. If you enlarged the hole in the big end, you could put the stick for your bottle rocket in there and make a bottle rocket "rifle" for better accuracy in your bottle rocket wars.
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Mahneuvers said:
I always used a section of 1/2 inch copper pipe with one end plugged. The proper technique included bending the fuse first upwards then downwards at the midpoint creating an upside down V that would hold the bottle rocket in place at the pipe rim while you lit it. When the fuse burnt half way, it would then drop into the pipe for precise aiming at your friend's eyes, ears or anywhere else that might cause maiming.
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somewhere I have a video of, uh, some crazy kids that showed up at rough river and had bottle rocket duels on the runway at 2 in the morning. those crazy kids, I tell ya.
 
The center of the Estes model rocket catalog was the "technical section" with articles on how to balance your rocket, how to build a wind tunnel, etc. There was always a "don't do this" page devoted to the "basement bomber"... "Bobby built a rocket by putting 500 match heads in a half inch copper pipe and blew his fingers off when it exploded." We'd be saying, "Cool, Dad has some copper pipe... hey Brian, do you have any matches?"
 
There was kid a couple grades older than me in grade school who was into rockets who started 7th grade with only a thumb and partial pinky on his right hand from doing something similar.
 
Growing up mine was model 1897 pump 12 gauges, it’s a miracle (or more appropriately proper training and actual handling experience from a very young age to never have the barrel point at a person) that none of us accidentally got shot. The number of accidental discharges I can remember between my brother, dad, uncles and myself is really scary looking back. Cold weather, thick gloves, very light trigger pull, and a slam fire design… sometimes thick gloves wouldn’t let the trigger reset, and cycle the pump=boom. I still love them, but would only use one solo hunting now, not walk five guys abreast in tall grass 30 feet apart like we use to.
 
Pugs said:
I’m restoring my great grandfathers 52 Ford F1 and will put one in. I have a nice LC Smith double that will look nice.
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My father had a double barrel LC Smith. Choke on the left side was so tight a dime wouldn't drop in the hole ...
 
Zeldman said:
This totally what the other kids and myself would be doing back then.
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Homeland Security would have had a field day at my 9th and 10th grade chemistry classes. (We put those slate tables to the test.)
 
JackL-3J said:
Homeland Security would have had a field day at my 9th and 10th grade chemistry classes. (We put those slate tables to the test.)
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Yah, we pulled stuff that would have gotten us expelled or worse.
 
flyingron said:
Yah, we pulled stuff that would have gotten us expelled or worse.
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The schools had different concerns back then. They wanted to make sure we didn't make any fatal errors while learning. I wonder if learning is even a concern today.

I made (small quantities of) napalm and black powder with a teacher's supervision. We blew stuff up (from a safe distance) with acetylene gas we made from carbide. Students made flintlock pistols, halberds, and bowie knives in shop class.

My oldest son wasn't allowed to carry his grandfather's boy scout knife into the same gymnasium that I carried school owned .22 rifles through to get to the range set up behind the gym. The grandchildren of those a couple years ahead of me in school get warnings for looking at things that are "pointy" or "sharp" on school issued laptops.
 
JackL-3J said:
The schools had different concerns back then. They wanted to make sure we didn't make any fatal errors while learning. I wonder if learning is even a concern today.

I made (small quantities of) napalm and black powder with a teacher's supervision. We blew stuff up (from a safe distance) with acetylene gas we made from carbide. Students made flintlock pistols, halberds, and bowie knives in shop class.

My oldest son wasn't allowed to carry his grandfather's boy scout knife into the same gymnasium that I carried school owned .22 rifles through to get to the range set up behind the gym. The grandchildren of those a couple years ahead of me in school get warnings for looking at things that are "pointy" or "sharp" on school issued laptops.
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Of course it's a concern. However, litigation from our sue-happy society has forced them into keeping potential weapons out of kids hands. Far easier for schools to say "no knives" than it is to pay for millions in lawsuits so that Timmy can carry a pocketknife every day.
 
JackL-3J said:
Homeland Security would have had a field day at my 9th and 10th grade chemistry classes. (We put those slate tables to the test.)
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So, in eighth grade, I answered an add in the back of a magazine and got 91 feet of cannon fuse for $1. I cut it into 1.5 inch pieces and sold it at school for 1 cent per piece.

Science teacher was fresh out of the Army and very cool. So one day he shows us how to make nitrocellulose. A couple of days later, he takes the now dry material and some poster board to make a large firecracker. And commented, that if he had a fuse, he could detonate it.

I raise my hand and tell him I had fuse. So I gave him a couple of pieces. He lit one and mentally timed the burn rate. Then inserted another piece into his firecracker, then lit it. Talking about how we should not try this at home, it was dangerous, est. I am freaking as the fuse burns down.

Then he flicks up to the corner of the room at the ceiling and proceeds to blow up the ceiling tile.

As I said, very cool teacher.
 
I remember walking into a chemistry teacher and asking for sulfuric and nitric acids. I then asked if he had any cotton and he realized what I was asking for and said hell no. I went down to a biology teacher who I had done some assisting work for and asked if I could get some from her. She says sure, as soon as the chemistry teacher returned her ring stands. I go back to the chemistry teacher and says Biology teacher wants her ring stands back. He gives them to me and I go back and swap it for the cotton. Twenty minutes later the chemistry teacher catches me under the vent hood swirling the cotton in the acids. He let me proceed as long as I enumerated the issues involved in what I was doing.

We had in previous years made ammonium triiodide which is always fun. One of the other schools in the district had to be evacuated due to some kids not being careful in their preparation of this (they found a whole bowl of it drying out somewhere). After that they got picky about leaving the raw materials out where the students could find them.
 
Memory is a bit faded on this one, but the statue of limitations has long expired and the main facts are true: My best friend in grade school was in a family that owned farmland in a rural location in TN. His father leased part of that land to companies to extract sand and gravel. In one of those abandoned sand pits one of our buddies discovered a discarded dynamite case just inside the woodline that still had a few sticks in it. There was even some fuse line left. My friend and I took one of those sticks, went home and cut it in half, and stuck a cherry bomb in the yellow powder after attaching several inches of fuse to the cherry bomb. Then I taped it up. Forget how many we made. But a few days later it was Halloween, so one guy that had a car drove us around the very small town and I got the job of flinging out the redneck IEDs. The one I distinctly remember was a long throw to the top of a grassy hill overlooking a drive through dairy bar with a gravel parking lot. The lot was full of cars. We got a hundred yards up the road and heard the boom. Soon there were many headlights on the road behind us. Casually turning around we headed back to the dairy bar and there were only a couple cars left but a gigantic cloud of dust hanging in the air. Scared the crap out of everybody that night.

We may have 'bombed' a couple other locations but I can only remember that one for sure. After that seeing how loud (and dangerous) that dynamite was, we decided to get rid of the rest of it. Took the case with some remaining sticks back to the sand pit and put another IED in it with a longer fuse this time. Then we cleared out. The resulting explosion was heard in a town 15 miles away.

As one of my friends later described it: "The night we threw dynamite."
 
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Pinecone said:
So, in eighth grade, I answered an add in the back of a magazine and got 91 feet of cannon fuse for $1. I cut it into 1.5 inch pieces and sold it at school for 1 cent per piece.

Science teacher was fresh out of the Army and very cool. So one day he shows us how to make nitrocellulose. A couple of days later, he takes the now dry material and some poster board to make a large firecracker. And commented, that if he had a fuse, he could detonate it.

I raise my hand and tell him I had fuse. So I gave him a couple of pieces. He lit one and mentally timed the burn rate. Then inserted another piece into his firecracker, then lit it. Talking about how we should not try this at home, it was dangerous, est. I am freaking as the fuse burns down.

Then he flicks up to the corner of the room at the ceiling and proceeds to blow up the ceiling tile.

As I said, very cool teacher.
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ever since I was a kid watching Macgyver, I wished that I had a science teacher like that. I had some good teachers along the way, but none that taught anything useful regarding chemistry. It was all theoretical and not at all about any practical or commonly available ingredients that could be used for any sort of real application or even for fun.
 
JackL-3J said:
I wonder if learning is even a concern today.
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SoonerAviator said:
Of course it's a concern.
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Yup…my daughter was a para for a while. The school was concerned that her students were doing too well, and they would lose funding. They told her that her students weren’t allowed to score better than 40% on spelling tests.
 
flyingron said:
We had in previous years made ammonium triiodide which is always fun. One of the other schools in the district had to be evacuated due to some kids not being careful in their preparation of this (they found a whole bowl of it drying out somewhere). After that they got picky about leaving the raw materials out where the students could find them.
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Ah, yes, the contact explosive. I remember it well. Two of us made a big batch in the HS chem lab, putting small portions on filter paper disks and distributing them across all of the lab benches to safely dry before the next period, when the lab would be empty and we could safely set them off one at a time (it didn't take much, a slight jostle or loud noise would do it). The bell rang, and we both ran to our next class just to check in and say we had to finish up a lab experiment and would be at that class a little late. By the time we got back to the chem lab, a lab prep aide had gathered all of the filter papers (not yet dry) and packed them into a small corner of one bench. Now they were dry...one goes off, the whole batch goes up.

The chemistry teacher told us it was our mess to clean up, so we geared up in all of the protective gear the lab had...lab coats, rubber gauntlets, hearing protection, goggles and face shields...and the guy inside the lab would use long tongs to verrrrrryyy carefully move one piece of filter paper into a stainless steel tray, set another tray over the top, and carefully walk it to the window. I'd carefully take the tray, walk it a few paces into the parking lot, set it down, hit it with a small pebble to set it off, then pass the trays back in through the window. We'd successfully detonated a dozen or so charges without incident, when I noticed that a police cruiser had crept up behind me, and the cop was watching the operation intently. We blew up the next dozen or so charges without incident, when they kid inside finally jostled a paper and the rest of the charges blew up in unison. It was impressive, but at least we'd gotten rid of maybe 3/4 of the material so no real damage was done.

We both got a lengthy detention (the only one I ever received) and had to write "I will not perform any more unauthorized experiments in the chemistry lab" 1000 times.

I had writers cramp for a month, and a few years later, a Ph.D. in chemistry.
 
SoonerAviator said:
Of course it's a concern. However, litigation from our sue-happy society has forced them into keeping potential weapons out of kids hands. Far easier for schools to say "no knives" than it is to pay for millions in lawsuits so that Timmy can carry a pocketknife every day.
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When I was in high school ROTC we had a live fire rifle range (22 caliber) on school property that was used for qualifying ... :biggrin:
 
Daleandee said:
When I was in high school ROTC we had a live fire rifle range (22 caliber) on school property that was used for qualifying ... :biggrin:
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I remember the ROTC guys walking through school and out to the range behind school carrying M-1’s.
 
GaryM said:
Ah, yes, the contact explosive. I remember it well. Two of us made a big batch in the HS chem lab, putting small portions on filter paper disks and distributing them across all of the lab benches to safely dry before the next period, when the lab would be empty and we could safely set them off one at a time (it didn't take much, a slight jostle or loud noise would do it). The bell rang, and we both ran to our next class just to check in and say we had to finish up a lab experiment and would be at that class a little late. By the time we got back to the chem lab, a lab prep aide had gathered all of the filter papers (not yet dry) and packed them into a small corner of one bench. Now they were dry...one goes off, the whole batch goes up.

The chemistry teacher told us it was our mess to clean up, so we geared up in all of the protective gear the lab had...lab coats, rubber gauntlets, hearing protection, goggles and face shields...and the guy inside the lab would use long tongs to verrrrrryyy carefully move one piece of filter paper into a stainless steel tray, set another tray over the top, and carefully walk it to the window. I'd carefully take the tray, walk it a few paces into the parking lot, set it down, hit it with a small pebble to set it off, then pass the trays back in through the window. We'd successfully detonated a dozen or so charges without incident, when I noticed that a police cruiser had crept up behind me, and the cop was watching the operation intently. We blew up the next dozen or so charges without incident, when they kid inside finally jostled a paper and the rest of the charges blew up in unison. It was impressive, but at least we'd gotten rid of maybe 3/4 of the material so no real damage was done.

We both got a lengthy detention (the only one I ever received) and had to write "I will not perform any more unauthorized experiments in the chemistry lab" 1000 times.

I had writers cramp for a month, and a few years later, a Ph.D. in chemistry.
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Speaking of contact explosives, we made nitrogen tri-iodide by dissolving iodine crystals into very strong ammonia... both ingredients conveniently available from a mail-order chemical supply house. Same drill - deploy the paste and let it dry. Depending on quantity, SNAP or BOOMlet when jostled a little bit, followed by a small cloud of purple smoke. Fun for the kids. Never got caught, never any ambulance worthy incidents. That was education at it's finest!

-Skip
 
Brother-in-Law had been married before. His ex in Missouri sent their two boys to visit him on Oregon one summer.

Their carry-on luggage was packed with fireworks. No problems....

Ron Wanttaja
 
Nitrogen tri-iodide, the mouse trap that alerts you when you get one
Edit: (Yes, nomenclature is incorrect, don’t want any kids reading this to try it)
 
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Daleandee said:
When I was in high school ROTC we had a live fire rifle range (22 caliber) on school property that was used for qualifying ... :biggrin:
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Yep. I was on the rifle team; we'd carry the rifles through the school to get on the bus and ride through town with them to go to matches at other schools. We'd be down on the range practicing almost every day. That range had been there since the school was built, and the Sgt Major had a story for every random ricochet mark. There weren't very many; we were all well trained and disciplined.
 
I was on a college rifle team, and while we usually kept the rifles on the varsity range, if we had to leave for an early match the next day we'd often bring them back to the dorm overnight. Never a problem, a lot of students had firearms. I had my trap shotgun in the dorm, and my MEC 600 reloader, plus my favorite .357 revolver. My roommate also had one, and he had the Lee press we used to reload for them, sometimes set up in the TV lounge.

One day we were cleaning guns, and the Resident Assistant burst through the door unannounced, declaring "Hoppes! I love that smell!" We all talked guns for a bit, and he left happy.
 
GaryM said:
I was on a college rifle team, and while we usually kept the rifles on the varsity range, if we had to leave for an early match the next day we'd often bring them back to the dorm overnight. Never a problem, a lot of students had firearms. I had my trap shotgun in the dorm, and my MEC 600 reloader, plus my favorite .357 revolver. My roommate also had one, and he had the Lee press we used to reload for them, sometimes set up in the TV lounge.

One day we were cleaning guns, and the Resident Assistant burst through the door unannounced, declaring "Hoppes! I love that smell!" We all talked guns for a bit, and he left happy.
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During my brief stay at college, we were required to have our firearms locked in the dorm's secured storage. We could check them out for cleaning and such. One afternoon we'd been out plinking with a couple of rifles -- one was my M1 carbine. So we're up in the room cleaning them, and a cop shows up at the door. Apparently someone called in a report that we have "machine guns" in the room. No big deal, but it did give us a fun idea. We had our beds up in a loft to clear up floor space. That left a dozen bed legs, basically lengths of iron pipe. They looked great wrapped in paper and taped into a bundle...
 
MauleSkinner said:
Yup…my daughter was a para for a while. The school was concerned that her students were doing too well, and they would lose funding. They told her that her students weren’t allowed to score better than 40% on spelling tests.
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I’d go right from the meeting to calling every media outlet in the region, and naming names.
 
GaryM said:
I was on a college rifle team, and while we usually kept the rifles on the varsity range, if we had to leave for an early match the next day we'd often bring them back to the dorm overnight. Never a problem, a lot of students had firearms. I had my trap shotgun in the dorm, and my MEC 600 reloader, plus my favorite .357 revolver. My roommate also had one, and he had the Lee press we used to reload for them, sometimes set up in the TV lounge.

One day we were cleaning guns, and the Resident Assistant burst through the door unannounced, declaring "Hoppes! I love that smell!" We all talked guns for a bit, and he left happy.
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Guns were (and probably still are) illegal in the area of south Chicago where I started college. It was amazing how many here actually were in the house.
 
kyleb said:
I remember the ROTC guys walking through school and out to the range behind school carrying M-1’s.
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We had M1927s (.22 cal M1903s), and the firing / archery line was right behind the gym with the backstopping being a berm 150 yards or so away.
 
When I was a freshman at Parks College, I came across a jar of potassium nitrate in the chemistry lab, or so I thought (for the uninitiated, potassium nitrate, sulfur, and charcoal are what make up gunpowder). I decided that should be "liberated" even if I couldn't find any sulfur or charcoal. Besides, I'd heard that sugar mixed with the potassium nitrate worked almost as well.

When I got back to my dorm room and looked more carefully at the bottle, I saw it was potassium nitrite, not nitrate (one less oxygen atom). What the heck, I'll try it anyway. I had also heard that dissolving the powders in water would mix them more thoroughly, then the water could be evaporated off.

As some can probably tell, I hadn't gotten too far in practical chemistry.

Anyway, I ended up with what should have been predictable, a cafeteria bowl full of a thick sticky syrup that refused to dry or evaporate. Hoping to help it along by wicking the moisture out, I tried to blot it up with toilet paper, which just spread the mess out. At this point I put the bowl under my dresser and forgot about it for a couple of months. When I found it again, it was still a sticky mess, additionally mixed with dust from under the dresser.

Now, the light fixtures in the dorm rooms were just a u-shaped glass shade around the wall mounted light bulb, with the top open. Maybe I can use the heat of the bulb to dry it out? It sounded perfectly reasonable to the 17 year old kid I was (and they gave that stupid kid a Private Pilot certificate around the same time!!!). I put a small dollop of the mixture on top of the bulb and went back to doing homework or whatever it was I was doing... until I heard a hissing sound and a purple flame shot out from the top of the light fixture and the room filled with acrid black smoke!

The flame went out immediately and nothing was left but a scorch mark on the bulb and lampshade and the now dissipating smoke. "This is promising," I said, and considered what to do next.

My good friend Eric was hanging out with me while all this transpired. He lived down the hall and wasn't on the best terms with his roommate. It probably wasn't always fair, but his roommate was in the college's professional pilot program and the PP students were seen as entitled while the rest of us were broke engineering or A&P students. I got a bigger glob of the stuff and while Eric distracted him, put on the lamp in their room and then we left, closing the door.

A few minutes later the door flies open and the roommate erupts from the room chased by a cloud of black smoke. He was squawking like a chicken and flapping his arms like he wanted to take off. Everybody else didn't stop laughing for a long time.

Despite the scorch mark on the ceiling this time, we didn't get in trouble. I don't know what happened to the roommate, but Eric went on to get advanced degrees in aerospace and aircraft maintenance engineering, an A&P certificate, ratings through ATP, flew corporate for awhile and then joined the Air Force, flew F-15s and went to the USAF test pilot school... and got killed some years later as a civilian flight testing a bizjet after flight control software changes were made.
 
JackL-3J said:
Were those fancier than New England Arms?
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LC Smith is the only American sidelock shotgun and werereally well made. the one I have was built I940 and still locks up solid. I’d shoot clays with it at least once a month. They are on par with Fox and Parker guns.

New England arms, like so many, New England arms rebranded or acquired other brand names and their product line varied as you’d think.
 
Pugs said:
LC Smith is the only American sidelock shotgun and werereally well made.
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Unfortunately they’re prone to cracks in the wood of the stock, just behind the lock plates. The extra wood that has to be removed for a sidelock compared to a boxlock leaves them a little weak for modern high powered ammo.

I had a gunsmith repair mine and glass the wood under the locks. It’s fine as long as I stick with light loads.
 
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