Hello - I just added my name to the list and wanted to share my experiences
with "various gasses in the presence of oxygen".

Experimentation began when my friend Cliff was driving behind a hospital supply
truck, when to his amazement a breathing-oxygen cylinder fell off the truck
and rolled into the gutter. I know some of you might be smirking, but this is
REALLY what happened. By the time Cliff got to the cylinder, the truck was
long gone. A few minutes later, it was on my doorstep.

Experiment number one was a 2-liter, plastic soda-pop bottle. We filled it
with water, and bubbled-in 5 parts oxygen and 1 part propane. Cliff figured
the ratios from his recollection of the combustion of propane. I placed a
spark plug with 50' of 2-conductor cable in the neck, and connected it to
a 5KV neon sign transformer. Plug-in, switch-on. Instant detonation. The
bottle skeetered in the gutter for about 75 feet; the spark plug was pushed
backward and lodged under the tire of my car - it was somewhat wedged in there.
Afterward, I retrieved the bottle, perhaps 30-40 seconds later. It was still
warm. By then, several neighbors were looking around....

The noise summoned too many people, so we opted for underground kabooms. I
dug a hole and buried a plastic quart-oil can under 8-10" of dirt. At
detonation, a wonderfully pleasant DOOF was heard. The sound had a very large
portion of sub-sonic energy.

Next, I replaced the 5KV transformer with a lawnmower magneto and a polapulse
battery (for portable use!). We gathered our supplies and went into a local
storm-drainage basin. The apparatus was a 1 gallon milk bottle. From our
previous sucesses, we were quite aware of the explosive potential that was
lurking. We carefully placed the spark-plug inside, capped it, and put it in
a burlap sack weighted with large rocks. We lowered it into the water, but
soon there were bubbles coming up. Knowing that the gas was leaking out, I
quickly detonated it. From 20+ feet away, and with the experiment 6 to 8 feet
below water, I was astonished when the ground shook. The noise was different
too: in dirt, they go DOOF, but in water they go THOKK. The shockwave
stirred-up the sludge in the channel (about 10-15 feet deep), and zillions
of gas bubbles bombarded the surface. Too bad we didn't try shoving a pipe
down earlier and make a tiki-torch! Oh, what happened to the milk jug ?
We pulled-up the sack, and it was hideously shredded. Looking further, we
saw a the shredded remains of the milk jug. It was pocked with all kinds of
small holes and almost looked like a severe case of acne. After almost dying
of laughter, we decided to do 'one for the road'. This guy was a cardboard
can (empty, unfortunately) of Cheez Balls. Well, not much was left, and it
was LOUD.

In my next posting, I'll tell you about the 5 gallon paint bucket.

From: John De Armond

>Has anyone tried this?  It works great, and is relatively cheap and safe.
>Fire up a welding torch and adjust the mixture for a good hot flame.
>Put out the flame and fill a ballon to about fist-sized with the mixture.
>Tie off the balloon, put in a paper bag, light the bag on fire and get away.
>It makes a great BOOM, and at night there's a bright green flash.  The only
>problem is that the mixture becomes inert after a few hours in the balloon.
>(does anyone know why, or how to avoid the problem?)

The largest one of these that I've detonated was a 15 ft weather balloon!
The blast defoliated a large tree nearby and blew a hole in the ground about
3 inches deep.  This is a seriously impressive explosive and the best 
part is that it leaves no incriminating residue :-)

While I get bored to tears by those who get in groups like this and
wring their hands at the dangers involved, I gotta add a couple of
warning comments.

First off, putting a balloon in a bag and igniting the bag is just plain
stupid.  A little bit of tramp gas or leakage and boom.  A good
rule of thumb is to never put fire around an explosive until you are 
ready to explode it.

Secondly, if one decides to experiment with acetylene/oxygen, one should
be aware of a couple of properties of the gasses that demand some respect.
First off, acetylene and oxygen in combination is somewhat photosensitive.
This means that bright sunlight can cause a permature detonation.
Use due caution and dark balloons.

Thirdly, both gasses as delivered from their cylinders are extremely dry.
Typical dewpoints are below -50 deg F.  This dryness brings on the hazards
of triboelectric static discharges.  Tribo electricity is caused by the 
motion of dry, non-conductive gasses (or liquids).  The hazard is that 
a static buildup could discharge and detonate the balloon while you
are filling it.

I take two precautions.  First, I never fill a balloon up front and
personal.  I've constructed a filling/detonating stand that has a 
nipple to slide the balloon down on, 2 fittings for the acetylene
and oxygen and a spark plug for detonation.  I fabricated the fixture 
from a steel plate, some tubing and a couple of welding gas fittings.
I run a couple hundred feet of hose from the tanks to the fixture (The
fact that I owned a welding supply wholesale distributor helped :-).

Second, I use in-line humidifiers to saturate the gases with water.
These are the kind used by medical oxygen systems.  For detonation,
I have a little box rigged up that contains a battery, an ignition
coil, a GM ignition module and a 555-based oscillator.  One push
of the button and BOOM.  This setup is entirely safe and extremely fun
to play with.  As usual, one must respect this explosive just as one 
would any other.

PS, if one would like to see photoreactivity up front and personal,
a mixture of clorine and hydrogen will always detonate in  the presence
of strong sunlight (actually UV light).  Clorine and hydrogen is 
easily made in a salt electrolytic cell.  Consult your chemistry book
for details.

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Battery Explosion
Date: Wed, 19 Jul 2000 13:31:29 -0400

Chris Bryant wrote:

> On Tue, 18 Jul 2000 21:28:11 -0400, in message
> <3975042B.F4CC959F@bellsouth.net>,Neon John wrote:
>
> <<..>>
> >Actually the mixture is exactly correct.  For every molecule of
> >water electrolyzed, two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen are
> >produced - the perfect mix to explode.  Used to have great fun as a
> >kid exploiting this fact.  Connect all the cell vents together with
> >some tubing, grossly overcharge an old battery and viola!  A stream
> >of explosive.  We started out with test tubes of the stuff and
> >graduated up to laundry bags.  Makes a right nice boom!
> <<..>>
>
>         Looks like I have my weekend project lined up  :)

:-)  My kind of guy!  Make sure you keep the gas well humidified and
use CMOS anti-static practices.  Triboelectric discharges created
from the flowing gas can ignite the mix.  A garbage or laundry bag
full of this mix can easily take off a hand or do other
unmentionables.  Bubbling the gas through water (I use a disposable
medical oxygen humidifier) will do the trick.

Had a friend who learned about this the hard way.  I'd shown him how
to fill a small balloon with an acetylene/oxygen mix from a torch
and then detonate it using masking tape for a fuse.  He didn't pay
attention to my caution about humidifying the mix and had an 11"
balloon go off in his hands from static.  Looked like someone had
taken a scalpel and sliced each finger pretty much its entire
length.  He kept them all but it put a major crimp in his career as
a gunsmith.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Ballooon (was Battery) Explosion
Date: Thu, 20 Jul 2000 15:02:13 -0400

AF Rigger wrote:

> Dry Ice in an Evian style water bottle about 1/4 full (3/4 empty
> depending on who you are) also creates a nice boom.  I've never seen
> people hit the ground so quick!

A 2 liter coke bottle makes an even bigger boom.  The smooth bottle
has fewer high stress areas and so will hold more pressure before
bursting.  Unfortunately the media stumbled on this a few years ago
and the result is, in many areas this assembly has been classified
as an destructive device.  Lets the cops and BATF get themselves off
on a power trip of arresting the guy who's just having a bit of fun.
Strangely enough, they haven't discovered the acetylene balloon yet.

When I owned a welding supply distributorship, we once got a wild
idea.  We sold helium and balloons, including a 16 ft diameter
weather balloon used to hoist banners up in the air for grand
openings and the like.  We decided to fill one of those with
acetylene and oxygen and detonate it.  Somewhat aware (but not
totally) of the energy involved, I welded up a little pipe on a
stand that would hold the balloon and conduct the gases into it from
tubing stretched back to the warehouse.  That way I could fill and
detonate it without ever having to approach it.  The pipe also
contained a spark plug that I fired with a neon transformer.  I put
the thing about 100 ft away from the building in the gravel lot
behind the building. I filled that sucker to bursting and then
stepped back inside the building to plug in the transformer.  My
medical gas saleslady wanted to stand in the doorway to watch the
thing go off.

When I plugged in the transformer, I thought for a moment that I'd
blown up the whole building.  The blast picked up my saleslady and
pitched her backwards about 6 feet, fortunately into a crate of
wiping rags.  never seen anyone laugh and cry at the same time.  It
blew all the windows out of the building and cracked the concrete
block wall facing the explosion.  The metal stand, along with most
of the gas tubing was GONE.  So was the gravel and all the loose
dirt in about a 50 ft radius around ground zero.  It pretty much
defoliated a nearby tree.  I was impressed.  When the cops came
snooping around, I blamed it on a sonic boom.  Damn, it was hard to
say that with a straight face :-)

A stochastic mix of hydrogen and oxygen in a balloon will float.  If
the balloon is allowed to float away, it makes an extremely
challenging target to shoot at with a .22 (net cops - please spare
me the shit about shooting in the air).  The slug will reliably
detonate the balloon.  The impact of an explosion at low altitude is
vastly more strongly felt than the same one on the ground.  Problem
is, a bobbing and weaving balloon is a TOUGH target to hit.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Ballooon (was Battery) Explosion
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 01:02:31 -0400

Stan Birch wrote:

> One day I got a call from a bookstore in the city where he was going
> to school---the book he ordered was in. What book? I asked.  "The
> Anarchist's Cookbook,"  they said.  Must be some mistake, I figured,
> and told them he wasn't interested in "cooking."  The book isn't about
> "cooking;" they tell me, it's about how to make bombs! :-)

It's about how to blow yourself up!!!  It will probably never be
known for sure but it is suspected that the formulas in that book
were one of the more malicious disinformation campaigns of the CIA.
It is known that the formulas came from a CIA insurrection manual.
It is also known that many of the techniques will blow up in your
face.  I don't think that the connection is accidental.

There are lots better books out there including the one I used to
maintain on the net. (No, I don't still have it - too many hard disc
crashes ago) I'm sure your son figured out that the ACB was total
BS.  I'm making this note to warn others who might want to
recreationally blow stuff up - forget that book.  One of the better
ones that used to be on the net and probably still is, is the TBOOM
list.  There's also an out-of-print book on formulating explosives
by DuPont out there, though they're had to come across anymore.

John

From: John De Armond
Newsgroups: rec.outdoors.rv-travel
Subject: Re: Ballooon (was Battery) Explosion
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 03:45:22 -0400

Stan Birch wrote:
>
> >Stan Birch wrote:
> >
> >> One day I got a call from a bookstore in the city where he was going
> >> to school---the book he ordered was in. What book? I asked.  "The
> >> Anarchist's Cookbook,"  they said.  Must be some mistake, I figured,
> >> and told them he wasn't interested in "cooking."  The book isn't about
> >> "cooking;" they tell me, it's about how to make bombs! :-)
>
> >On Fri, 21 Jul 2000 Neon John <johngdNOSPAM@bellsouth.net> wrote:
> >It's about how to blow yourself up!!!  It will probably never be
> >known for sure but it is suspected that the formulas in that book
> >were one of the more malicious disinformation campaigns of the CIA.
> >It is known that the formulas came from a CIA insurrection manual.
> >It is also known that many of the techniques will blow up in your
> >face.  I don't think that the connection is accidental.
>
> Fortunately he survived!  Although after the Oklahoma bombing, I
> figured that the 40 lb. bag of ammonium nitrate he used to keep in the
> garage should forthwith be spread on the lawn. :-)

Hey, I still have mine :-)  This is a perfect instance of why people
ought to know about this stuff. The government and media would have
you believe that any yokel who can mix fertilizer and diesel fuel
together can blow up things.  They use this as the justification for
crucifying anyone caught with "bomb making materials".  Reality is
slightly different.  It takes a LOT of shock energy to detonate the
mix.  A boosted detonator or dynamite or some other high velocity
primary explosive.  Putting a fuse in it, shooting it, putting an
M-80 in it, putting a hunk of low percentage dynamite in it and all
the other stuff that people claim to work don't.  I tried most all
of 'em as a kid.  And when I hit on what worked (detonator firing a
little hunk of TNT), I blew in the bank of the nearby creek and
flooded my parents' house - but that's a different story :-)

When you suddenly discover that the government is bullshitting you
on 2 or 3 areas in which you're an expert (in my case, explosives,
guns, nuclear radiation and a few other things), it dawns on you
that perhaps the government is bullshitting you on most stuff.
Bingo!  Especially something to think about if you get selected for
jury duty.