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FROM ABC NEWS, 8/9/2002

Doctors at Royal Perth Hospital believe the next 24 hours will be crucial for the chances of a man surviving severe injuries he has suffered while trying to fire a home-made cannon.

The man had tried to fire the makeshift device after packing it with gunpowder, and lighting a fuse.

The middle-aged man from Kendenup, about 345 kilometres south of Perth, was camping with three others in a private pine plantation in the Porongorups, near Mount Barker.

Police have been told he received severe shrapnel wounds to his lower body and legs when he tried to fire a projectile from a metre-long pipe mounted on a metal plate.

The force of the blast blew holes in a nearby caravan, but the man's companions escaped unhurt.

The critically-injured man was flown from Albany to Perth for emergency surgery at Royal Perth Hospital.

[ends]
 

Toby Fiander writes to draw attention to the NECESSITY to safely conduct experiments in chemistry, which a lot of people really like to do.

If there is any doubt about how easy it is to do something wrong, read the article above  about someone who thought he would show off with an explosive device and a projectile.... no doubt he had done it before.  But he won't do it again, because he may not live and even if he does he will not enjoy his life much.

As a kid I used to delight in making things explode.  At various times I nearly made myself deaf from close explosions triggered by percussion and I had a serious go at blowing the fingers of my right hand off by thoughtlessly picking up some filter paper which had dried with an unstable chemical on it.  To say I was stupid and lucky to make it through is a bit of an understatement.  It is just a matter of luck that I still have most of the various bits of me and they mostly work.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO BE CAREFUL.  Make that your starting point to PLAN your experiment.  Think of would COULD go wrong and take enough precautions to make sure it will not injure you.  Only then can you have some fun.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this tale before.  Age you know.

Years ago my wife was teaching at a certain Catholic girls school in Canberra.

She had the lowest class and managed to get some interest going by doing various experiments and having leeches and other creepy crawlies about.  Or having a gosling following her about a la Konrad Lorenz.  But I digress.  The other classes were somewhat jealous of this treatment as they had almost no experimental stuff.

In those days 35mm film came in aluminium canisters with a nicely raised lid.  One could put a small hole in the lid add some water and drop in a small piece of calcium carbide.  Put on lid and light the gas as it issued forth.  We were in the habit of using the light when camping.

One so called science teacher heard of/saw this demo and deciding to try and stop the kids moaning about the joy that my wife's classes were having enquired about what to do.

My wife assumed that said teacher had some idea about science and didn't go into all the fine details.  Said teacher for reasons unknown decided to use a biscuit tin for the purpose.  A most satisfactory result from the students’ point of view, something akin to the cannon result, but it ended the fledgling adventure with the experimental approach.
 

Ray reported:

Not so long ago Toby, near Perth I think, someone had made the grave error of storing tanks of glycerol right beside nitric acid in a warehouse.  There was a fire, and the results from keeping those two substances in close proximity was reduced only by sheer luck.

There are lots of 'nevers' in Chemistry.

Never store an oxidizing agent in proximity to a flammable one.

Never add water to concentrated sulphuric acid, but always add the acid to the water.  (diluting sulphuric acid is an exothermic reaction, and better any splash back from boil be mostly water than mostly acid)

MSDS  (Materials Safety Data Sheets) provide all necessary information about substances, and all substances must be properly tagged where necessary (like water is safe enough to go without) with Hazchem codes.

One erstwhile partner of mine was a dab hand with "jelly" and decided to blow up a rat colony under a large tree beside our workshed adjacent to piggery building. We were away at the time and when we returned we found our workshed crushed to a few inches high by the large tree and 3-4 dozen concrete slabs 1 m x 750 mm x 50 mm and clay pipes etc. were strewn broken all over the place many yards from the tree against which they had been stacked.! Oh by the way there weren't any rats in the vicinity for a while. Bloody fool!

The story doesn't end there, years later when we were working in the main work shed bashing some framing around etc. we discovered the balance of a 30 kg box of jelly sweating as if it were raining, probably around 25 kg remaining. My brother Howard very gingerly picked up the box and slowly walked to a windrow of cleared trees a good distance form the building and set the box down very carefully, then he did the four minute mile back to the shed. It was then my turn to go and light the windrow to burn the bloody stuff it burns well! As you can see we are still here more than 25 years later so we were successful. I can't recommend the procedure but the box was too close to the houses and the calculated risk was taken.

Sleep well!
 

Stephen Douglas Berry wrote:

As an experienced person in this field I am always appalled by the stupidity of people who play with weapons and explosives in this mannner.The production of barrels for firearms is a complex and specialised trade and even then a relatively minor overload of propellant can result in a serious injury.Likewise the production and
handling of explosives is not safe for the untrained amateur.If you see anyone behaving in this way and can't talk them out of it ring the police immediately - the life you save may be your own.

Obviously this bloke in the news had not read much or he would have realised that making something out of a piece of pipe had some problems and putting that much gunpowder anywhere ought to have been a signal that this was going to be an issue.

Not even when I was at the height of my experimentation (about 12yo) did I try to make some thing with a barrel on it.  Later, of course, I was given things with barrels on them to fire, and told to clean them before and afterwards which rather damaged the novelty of having something that made such a racket.