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[QUOTE]Originally posted by glassman: [QB] M-80's in the late 60's early 70's were not th eM80 of today. i have family on the NC SC border so my cousins (about 100) could drive 20 miles to SC and buy these firecrackers that were nothing like what we get today. i took apart all of 'em that i got at one time or another. i started off pretty young too... like 9? i was unrolling those Estes rocket engines even before that. They were most fun if you just glue a couple fins on them tho... a regualr fircracker, black cat or lady finger is tightly wrppped paer rolled around some silvery gray black powder. The Estes rocket powder was pure black. Black powder isn't really an explosive, it just burns very fast. The wicks or fuses on lady fingers and balck cats are also "just" paper rolled around the same stuff... take apart ten black cats and make a little pile and you get alot of grey smoke and an orange flame. It is more or less the same thing our great-granpappy's and their dads used in their guns even when cartridges came out. now, a real M80 or an ash-can - i dunno where the termash-can came from, prolly a brand name,they had cannon fuse (usually green an waxy looking) and the construction was a cardboard tube similar to a toilet paper roll, or paper towel roll only thicker. It would be waterproofed as is the cannon fuse. There's glue on either end and they were about an inch to an inchanadhalf long, and a half inch across. I clearly remember the first time i disassembled one. The powder was not powder at all. I didn't know it at he time, but it was pure nitrocellulose. It looked like wood shavings instead of powder. I have seen what looks like cotton in some M-80's too that's also nitro cellulose, and they are not waterproofed so that you can blow the toilets off the wall at school, (nope i never did that) they are waterproof so the nitro don't leak out from waht htey call 'sweating', and the nitorcellulose won't acidify and break down. I piled all of the contents of one M-80 on some paper and lit it and backed off expecting a really big flash... the damn thing exploded without being packed like black powder requires. That was the closest i ever came to getting hurt cuz i only got about 3 steps back and i was facing it... i do learn quick tho, and i realised that i had soemthing really unique, and better be craftier if ididn't want lose an eye ;) I was not even 11 yet. There is big friggin differnce between guncotton (nitrocellulose) and black powder. took aprt quite a few road flares over the years too... road falres are very similar to thermite ;) when i lived in the Tidewaterarea? I did alot of boating, boat repairs (cars too) and i spent alot of time poking around in boat junkyards... I picked up every out of date signal rocket i could ever find. The good ones cost at least 40$ NEW and they are sealed to last about ten years... But every one i ever found still worked and some of them were 25 years old. coast guard will tell you to rpeplace them when they go out of date, and so will i, cuz whne you really need one? it better friggin work-- they are pretty cool 1000 feet in the air is impressive.. just don't shoot them off on a day when somebody might think you are really in distress, cuz they bring the Cavalry... I shot my last one off two years ago on new years eve here in the middle of farm country.... people were telling me about seeing it two weks later - i just grinned and nodded, yep i saw it too... they are even better than the mortars i can legally buy here every New Years and July 4th.. i don't expect to die young [/QB][/QUOTE]
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