Roadside Bombs & IEDs (catch all)

[Tom Odom]

The Daily Item, 10 Jun 08: Swampscott PD to Speak to Students on Dangers of IEDs

We use to make "IEDs" when I was a kid with gunpowder from dud firecrackers and other fireworks. Of course M-80s wrapped together with a single fuse were just dandy.

And my older cousins in Oklahoma were all in the Nat Guard and used to bring home hand grenade and artillery simulators as well as .30 cal blanks that were great in my 03 Springfield--much better than going bang bang when you played army.

I remember Mom coming out rather indignant when Dad was trying to get a nap one afternoon at the family homestead in east Texas, "Tommy do you have to throw those bombs while your father is trying to sleep!?!"

Tom

[selil]

In high school metal shop I made a completely accurate 1/8th scale Army Cannon based on blue prints I found from the 1870s. My instructor was none to happy when he found out that it was fully functional. In wood shop I made the cart for it. It'd shoot a tennis ball a long freaking ways. Or not very far at all if you loaded to much smokeless behind it. Estes rocket motor igniters are how we fired it off.

[Jedburgh]

I grew up in an area right next to a RR switching yard. We'd often hang out there and just slap various stuff together to see what kind of bang or flame it would make. There were some really good ones, along with a few dud experiments....

Some kids just don't have any sense, though, and go beyond the normal boyhood exuberance in doing the pipe bomb thing - and with black powder it always seems to go wrong when screwing down the metal end-caps. I have a picture somewhere of a high school kid who was doing exactly that in his garage (for a school science project - approved by the teacher!) and blew himself across the hood of dad's car. That was a few years ago - but it was only three months ago that a Mom in Oklahoma was charged with "explosives manufacturing" for buying her teenage son supplies to build pipe bombs.