A Blast from our Pasts

On page 74 of the September 2011 Popular Science is a one page article called "A Blast from my Past".

In the 1950s and before Chemistry sets that one bought for boys older than about 8 or 10 years of age around the same time parents gave their sons a .22 rifle or pistol also contained often Charcoal, Saltpeter and sulfur. He mentions that he  (as well as my 5 years older cousin and I) and thousands to millions of other boys around the world made what he calls a home made sparkler. However, what we (my cousin and I built was more like a roman candle in action. First we ground (separately so no one gets killed or injured) with a mortar and pestle (try not to use iron or any metal mortar or pestle's because that can be more hazardous than necessary) first the saltpeter, then the charcoal and then the sulfur. Then we mixed the three together carefully with a piece of wood because you don't want metal to be present at this point. Later, if you want you can add iron or metal filings or copper filings and when they ignite they will color the flames according to the metal each has a different color when the filings burn. The picture he shows is of a paper or cardboard cone that he has wrapped with tape because the tape will cause the whole thing if the paper ignites to burn more slowly. The metal filings can create a fountain of sparks. What my cousin and I did was to use an old tennis ball and to drill a hole into it and then fill the tennis ball with the slow burning type of gunpowder that comes from mortar and pestling them all separately one by one first. Then we put an upside down cone of paper to act as a funnel into the hole into the old tennis ball and poured the slow burning type of gunpowder mixture in. Next on the very top we put the metal filings without mixing them in because that might be dangerous. Then we put the tennis ball on a flat driveway and lit the cone of paper like a fuse. When the paper burned down it set off a fountain of sparks sort of like a roman candle or a whole lot of sparklers depending upon your mixture and the moisture in the air where you are when you set this thing off as fireworks. Another thing we did in the 1950s and early 1960s was to go to a party and take some .22 bullets that we had taken the lead and the gunpowder out of. Then if there was a fire going we would throw the backs of the bullets where the cap is into the fire. When the back of the cartridge heated up it would fire the cap and sound like a gun going off and scare everyone. For a 10 to 15 year old boy this was the height of fun back then. But these days I'm not sure how well it would go over. Sometimes we would take the gunpowder from the .22 shells we took the lead off of and add it to the roman candle like hollowed out tennis ball before we set it off. Life was sure a whole lot different than life is today then.