Another alcohol-fueled bad idea (H/T: David Thompson).
Found on Nextdoor...
A friend of mine was at the bank yesterday before they closed and the teller was handing these out.
The man in front of her smiled and winked as he gave it back to the teller and said, “Oh I need a MUCH bigger one than this.” The teller said “No sir, it goes on your finger for the ATM.”
From Powerline's The Week in Pictures.
5 comments:
I can smell this photo.
I loved the smell of my cap gun in the morning!
Oh, and did you ever take a whole roll of caps, and smash it on concrete with a big hammer?
...did you ever take a whole roll of caps, and smash it on concrete with a big hammer?
Yep! And one at a time as well, trying for a machine gun sound effect.
I immediately recollected the smell of burnt caps when I saw that photo.
We also would sometimes lay out a role and try to pop them, usually with a flat rock.
Reminds me, too, that we used to make a crude form of gunpowder, with saltpeter, sulfur and charcoal. Mostly, we'd just lay down a trail and light one end, then sit back and watch the beautiful whitish-yellow and salmon-colored flames take off.
Finally, I recollect an incident that could have been a disaster in other circumstances but turned out to be a nothing burger. Old Paco worked for the ATF, looking for illegal stills in North Carolina. When they would raid one, they'd round up any moonshiners who didn't get away, collect a few pieces of evidence and then blow up the still. One time I was poking around in his government car and found some blasting caps in the glove compartment. I grabbed a few, and me and the boys tried to explode those things, using a hammer and a big rock. Nothing worked. My father later told me that those were the kind of blasting caps that had to be ignited with an electronic ignition of some sort; pounding on them didn't do anything (oh, yeah; he told me to stay the hell out of his squad car, too).
Smashing any blasting cap with a hammer is a bad idea.
They contain chemicals sensitive to shock, electrical or non-electrical, like mercury fulminate. That is set off by a smaller “explosion”, which in turn sets off the chemical, which in turn sets off the primary explosive, through sympathetic detonation. A single cap is strong enough to blow a hand off.
The good news is a hammer is generally not strong enough to set a cap off. But if a cap is defective … … hoo, doggy! One going off will set the others off. Not a pretty picture.
Personally, I’d carry electrical caps in an RF shielded box in the trunk. Radio transmissions can set them off (I assume your pa’s squad car had a radio). But they are packaged and shipped to minimize that potential. Your dad was fairly safe, although an OSHA inspector today would excrete gold bricks.
Still …. …. that’s cool, your dad carrying around explosives. Whee!
Yeah, his car had a radio. I can't remember what kind of package the caps were in. Definitely not OSHA-approved!
Post a Comment