As bonfire night approaches I have been getting in a store of fireworks to amuse the little uns as we hopefully have some fun around the bonfire.The fireworks of today whilst being still capable of producing a miniature version of shock and awe amongst children, seem to lack a certain something. That something may I think be danger, or if not danger an air of unpredictability. The pic above shows some fireworks of my childhood containing two of my favourites, the aeroplane and the rip rap. Did they ever make more dodgy fireworks? with the rip rap and aeroplane you were guaranteed to have people diving on the floor and generally running round in if not in fear of their lives then in fear of a good singeing. This article gives instructions for making one of the long banned fireworks....I may indulge.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
More bangs!
As bonfire night approaches I have been getting in a store of fireworks to amuse the little uns as we hopefully have some fun around the bonfire.The fireworks of today whilst being still capable of producing a miniature version of shock and awe amongst children, seem to lack a certain something. That something may I think be danger, or if not danger an air of unpredictability. The pic above shows some fireworks of my childhood containing two of my favourites, the aeroplane and the rip rap. Did they ever make more dodgy fireworks? with the rip rap and aeroplane you were guaranteed to have people diving on the floor and generally running round in if not in fear of their lives then in fear of a good singeing. This article gives instructions for making one of the long banned fireworks....I may indulge.
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13 comments:
What I want to know is:
If you buy fireworks in the States, do you get more bang for your buck?
B.E. if you set off fireworks in Californis the only bangs you will hear will be that of the police shooting at you....lots of guns but no fireworks allowed.
we used to call them 'hop-jacks'; much amusement could be had by tying a ten foot length of cotton to the last fold and pinning the other end of the cotton to a girl's coat.
oh what fun.
first used by Dave, who once tied his sister to the brick out-house door and fired a roman candle at her. Her screams drew me to view the spectacle from a hundred yards away...
Haddock...a cliche I know but stuff like that was rather fun I think.
I like the look of that i may get the kids making them tomorrow.
One question whats B.P?
Monkey...bp...the magic ingredient, Black powder or gun powder to me and you.
When I was a kid we didn't make our own home made gunpowder which we didn't became experts at weights and measuring,the ingredients from local chemist and of course we didn't use steel piping filled gunpowder and tamped by putting a stick in the ground and in the tube and hitting the base with house brick and getting out of the way very quickly,we didn't then use Jetex fuses or make our own fuses with tissue paper and salty peter or string,we then didn't take these fireworks to Wallasey sandhills (now called the Gun site after 4 big navel WWII guns )by bus and test our fireworks in the sandhills or use planks of wood loaded with well anything explosive we could get hold of and set the fuses and push the thing out into the Irish sea, and of course we never had a sight to behold as the stuff went off,we didn't make our own rockets especially ones out of shoe polish tins with the outside of a tv arial plug for jet exhaust,but then as I didn't do these things we didn't have plod or elf and safety telling us how naughty we were,if plod had came by it would be to see how things were going and he wouldn't bring loads of plod with guns and helicopters and close 10 miles of motorway .
I of course didn't read this comment.
Of course you didn't read,it never happened,we never put a banger on the end of a rocket and fired them out of cardboard tubes,this never happened in Birkehead Park, Jetex fuses and Jetex tablets,now Jetex is a name you won't hear about these days,see if you can find anything on that name Thud it was Americanski stuff.
Remember our aeroplanes used to 'take off' from on top of the washing line post? And there was nothing quite like being chased by an errant rip-rap!
Bangers in Airfix models as well.
And to think you can't even buy a party popper or christmas cracker without ID these days.'Ahhh we had it tough'....
just brilliant Thud, just seen this post. All those lovely fireworks came shooting back. Thank you.
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