Childhood DIY experiments

[ARWadsworth]

Sod Teddy Bears. This article reminded me of my first childhood DIY experiments

had several DIY childhood experiences and the bigger the good hiding from my parents the more damage I must have caused.

The most memorable experiment was when my brother and I found our Dad's hammer on the landing and we smashed the bathroom sink into bits to see how long it would take to smash the sink into bits.

So what DIY experiments did you perform as a child? I know that one regular poster deliberately electrocuted his sister.

Adam

[John]

I made a dimmer out of a basin of salt water and some bare wire (mains)

[Andy Cap]

I used some shelves from the larder, that my mum had washed off and left outside, to make a sledge. Can't remember if I got a whack for that one, but she wasn't happy !

Andy C

[The Natural Philosopher]

I sawed the top off a live 22 cartrdidge to see what was inside.

A big bang..

[Graham.]

I used to fill lemonade bottles with hydrogen by electrolysis of salt-water. The idea was to detonate the "hydrogen bomb" remotely with a match-head with a couple of turns of nichrome wire wrapped round. That part was not very successful IIRC

I couldn't have electrocuted my sister, as that is by definition always fatal, but the alarm system I built for my secret cupboard in my bedroom had the ability to deliver a shock derived from a 4.5v cycle lamp battery and an induction coil. She didn't speak to me for weeks!

[Al]

Stupidest one? Half filled a jam jar with sodium chlorate and sugar mixture, screwed the lid on good and tight and threw it into a bonfire.

The 'pop' was very quiet, but it took ages for all of the bits to fall to the ground. I suspect some achieved orbit.

Remarkably I escaped injury.

Electrocuted myself a couple of times (when I got bored with explosives I moved onto electronics). And once to my eternal shame I blew the circuit breaker for an entire block of labs and offices while testing a new new 'invention'.

Perhaps this is why I stay clear of power tools (the chainsaw idea was a non-starter, and I've still not plucked up the courage to get an angle grinder yet).

Al.

[Graham.]

I brought a 4ft diameter met balloon into collage once and we decided to fill it with gas from the Bunsen burner supply* in one of the labs. We released it from a top floor window aided and abetted by our lecturer. I suggested that we should attach a card with a message on it from us, but he didn't think that was a good idea.

*proper coal gas, not the modern heavier than air substitute we get now.

[Rod]

Spent quite a while playing with a blowtorch and lead piping (from an old toilet). Much fun but have always wondered if I absorbed rather a lot of lead.

Played with a doorbell, model railway transformer and various other bits

- gave quite a powerful pulse-like shock as you twanged the hammer spring.

Melted iron in the fireplace - coal plus a cylinder vacuum cleaner. Very impressive. Especially the burns on the carpet from the sparks. The iron did melt and filled a hole in the bottom of the fireplace.

Tried to move soil by pointing a hosepipe at it and letting the water jet do the job. Yes - it moved the soil. But after doing that for a couple of hours, it set like concrete when the sun baked it over the next weeks.

Replaced a fuse (this was at my boarding school) - firstly with a couple of strands of fuse wire. Later with around a dozen - probably effectively 60 amps. Still managed to blow it by putting magnesium ribbon across sockets and switching on.

[Graham.]

I posted this anecdote that my sister told me about (the one I nearly electrocuted) a couple of years ago. I will just cut & paste:

My sister used to teach in a private girls' school in London. The story goes that there was some renovation being done to one of the classrooms and a small sealed-off room was found that no-one could remember. It had obviously been a store room for a lab and among the things found there was a kilogramme or so of a soft metallic substance not quite covered in oil. Fortunately someone there realised how dangerous the find was, and it was dealt with accordingly.

Can you tell what it is yet?

[Neil]

I wondered what would happen if i wired a 240v - 12v transformer the wrong way round...

Well, when I could see again, my fingers were black, with soot, thankfully, and the fuse in the plug simply disn't exist any more.

N

[Neil]

Oh, and there was the time I made a home-made 'firework' boosted with magnesium pinched from the school chemistry lab. According to witnesses, my head was enveloped in a ball of flame - it had a similar (temporary) effect on my eysight and I staggered home without eyebrows,

N

[Bob Eager]

Not viewed the video, but I'd guess sodium....

[Bob Minchin]

We undertook an experiment in the first floor school science labs to see if the water or gas supply had the highest pressure by connecting them together one afternoon. The teacher kept lurking nearby so the supplies were connect for quite sometime. We only got the real result the next day when there were no school dinners. The cooks had tried to light the ovens in the ground floor kitchen only to find that water was coming out of the burners for some reason!

After that all the rubber hoses on the laboratory sink taps were shortened so they did not reach the nearby gas taps.

Anon (aka Bob)

[brass monkey]

Not experiments as such, but I remember making a weed-killer & sugar pipe bomb, copper tube, small hole drilled in the centre, flattened one end in Dads vice, filled with the mixture then flattened the other end in the vice (I cringe when I think). A length of Jetex fuse (remember that?) into the centre hole, light it and run like f**k. To this day I remember the copper shrapnel flying over our heads. And bonfire nights, struth, my mates dad owned a newsagents, he used to come out with oodles of bangers and rockets, tie a few bangers to a rocket stick and wait for a likely target. One night we managed to get a banger-rocket into the wooden hut of a parking attendant at a local car park. Then there was the bangburst, in someones entry (terraced houses) put maybe 10 bangers in a circle around an empty bangersworth of powder, always lay a trail to banger #11 then light the powder and yep, run like f**k. Kabam 10 times, followed by footsteps down the entry, followed by kabam #11. This was when a penny banger was worth a penny. Hmmmm, I prolly should still be in jail ;) Then there was the time when, nah, scrub that.

[ARWadsworth]

That's more like it. At school we made up lots of 13A plugs with the live and neutral connected together and plugged them into various sockets around the school at dinner time.

There were no fuses in the plugs as I owned a soldering iron. A few sockets needed to be replaced.

Adam

[R]

Ditto............But used the pipe bombs up the local woods to blow up the rubbish bins.

Progressed from bins to couples shagging in cars. Enormous fun chucking one or two large "bands" of bangers next to a steamed up car and waiting for someone to fall out shocked as f*ck and half naked, semi deaf and shouting obscenities.. I suspect there were a few pregnancies avoided due to that little bit of fun.

[Toby]

We did a similar thing, but connected the neutral and earth, so the RCD would just keep tripping - best place was in a socket hidden behind a cupboard :-)

[Toby]

:-)

Me too - but because the gas supply to our lab came down from the ceiling, we only filled the rooms gas pipes!

People were using the Bunsen's at the time, so the extra pressure made the flames really high, for a while, then strangely they went out and the Bunsen's were shooting water in the air :-)

[The Medway Handyman]

Ours were mainly explosive. I grew up in east London during the late 50's & early 60's, still lots of 'bomb sites' as we called them (derelict land), where you could find all sorts of useful stuff, build 'camps' etc.

Our best find was a metal tube about 3" diameter, 30" long hinged along its length - this became our breach loading rocket launcher when bonfire night came around. Penny bangers were OK, but you could get bigger ones for 3p. Stuffed into the middle of a rotten apple from the local market clear up, they made excellent hand grenades - if you got the timing right they exploded mid air showering bits of apple all over the place.

We also made a paste from potassium permanganate & something else? When it dried out it became a sort of contact explosive. We used to apply liberal amounts to the striker plates of heavy cast iron door knockers & wait...

[ARWadsworth]

We did not have RCD protection at my school. The trick was to just get the earth pin slightly in and then kick the plug in with your foot because of the flashback.

Adam