🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <IZwNThu00VQc0GOWF1@andrew.cmu.edu> kz08+@andrew.cmu.edu (Ken Zuroski) writes:
>Once we got it open (it was all encrusted and rusted; by now it was
>twenty or twenty-five years old); we looked inside and gasped.
>Contrary to what my mother told me, it wasn't dynamite caps at all. It
>was bona-fide sticks of dynamite. Four pieces. Like roman candles. So
>old that I remember that there was some kind of oil oozing out of
>them.

The oozing oil is referred to as "sweating".  It is NOT oil but is infact semi-
hydrolyzed Nitroglycerine.

>Now, I didn't really know anything about dynamite and still don't, but
>if I found a box like that today you can bet that I would be very,
>very far away from it in a second's time. Who knows how unstable it
>would be after all those years? I haven't a clue; but it would seem

The better part of valor is PF Flyers.


>Whenever I am feeling depressed and thinking that life has done me a
>bad turn, I remember this incident and how lucky I was.  And I
>immediately am happy again, knowing that I am living when I don't
>deserve to be. Anyone out there know how likely it was for this stuff
>to explode?

You should look back on this experience as an "UNLIFTING" experience and
count your lucky stars and say thank you to your guardian angle.

How dangerous was?  The "sweat" can be caught on you finger and flicked
at a solid object.  When it hits there will be a small explosion, like
a Craker Ball that kids step on. *** this is a small drop of the nitro.

Typically a sweating stick of 60/40 dynamite (general construction mix)
will ecavuate a crater about three feet across and two feet deep. Most of
the Navy EOD (Explosive Ordance Disposal) guys I knew would gingerly move
this box to a detonation crater an blow it IMMEDIATELY!

You are definitely two lucky souls.



-- 
Philip E. Johnson                    UUCP:  usenet!ingr!phil
MY words,                           VOICE:  (205) 730-8112
MY opinion!