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Remember Argos?

Grumpy Old Lemons Like You
stevensfo
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Re: Remember Argos?

#465180

Postby stevensfo » December 12th, 2021, 9:45 am

XFool wrote:"This week I 'ave been mostly learning: 'Don't pick up things that might explode'. "


I didn't know that you'd met my wife! :lol:

Steve

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465185

Postby XFool » December 12th, 2021, 10:03 am

bungeejumper wrote:How do you neutralise a pressurised gas cartridge?

I have found one method, but I really cannot recommend it. Alternatively, you could look here:

How Do You Dispose of Camping Gas Cylinders? (Guide)

https://www.arcticdry.co.uk/how-to-dispose-of-camping-gas-cylinders/

GAS CYLINDERS COLLECTION AND DISPOSAL

https://thesafegroup.co.uk/gas-cylinder ... d-disposal

stevensfo
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Re: Remember Argos?

#465226

Postby stevensfo » December 12th, 2021, 11:59 am

XFool wrote:
bungeejumper wrote:How do you neutralise a pressurised gas cartridge?

I have found one method, but I really cannot recommend it. Alternatively, you could look here:

How Do You Dispose of Camping Gas Cylinders? (Guide)

https://www.arcticdry.co.uk/how-to-dispose-of-camping-gas-cylinders/

GAS CYLINDERS COLLECTION AND DISPOSAL

https://thesafegroup.co.uk/gas-cylinder ... d-disposal


Our safety procedures at work have become very heavy over the years, and it once took me weeks to organise the disposal of five very old camping gas bottles that were originally destined for bunsen burners in the labs.

I would willingly have experimented myself, using my old air rifles and pistols and having a lot of fun. However, the age and condition of my old childhood weapons meant that if the small gas bombs hadn't killed me, the rusting springs and gas bottles in the weapons would have had a good try! 8-)


Steve

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465229

Postby vrdiver » December 12th, 2021, 12:06 pm

bungeejumper wrote:How do you neutralise a pressurised gas cartridge?


As a kid, a group of us chucked a (small) Calor gas cartridge onto our campfire. That took care of it - never ever saw it again...

As an older and wiser lemon, I'd now recommend getting someone you don't like to chuck it on the fire for you. :evil:

VRD

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465235

Postby bungeejumper » December 12th, 2021, 12:19 pm

vrdiver wrote:As a kid, a group of us chucked a (small) Calor gas cartridge onto our campfire. That took care of it - never ever saw it again...

As an older and wiser lemon, I'd now recommend getting someone you don't like to chuck it on the fire for you. :evil

Aaaah, the folly of youth. A couple of my schoolfriends (aged 13) decided to make their own fireworks, using an explosives recipe that would probably have the terror squad down on me if I said anything more about it. They eventually made it back to school the next week with facial scorch marks, little hair on their foreheads and no eyebrows. It was a true miracle that they both still had their eyes. :|

BJ

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465239

Postby XFool » December 12th, 2021, 12:40 pm

vrdiver wrote:
bungeejumper wrote:How do you neutralise a pressurised gas cartridge?


As a kid, a group of us chucked a (small) Calor gas cartridge onto our campfire. That took care of it - never ever saw it again...

As an older and wiser lemon, I'd now recommend getting someone you don't like to chuck it on the fire for you. :evil:

I know.

Way back in the 1970s some 'naughty boys' from the school next to where I worked (I believe the same school Graham Young the mass poisoner went to...) set fire to a contractors shed full of those blue, barrel shaped gas containers. The ensuing extremely strong, sub-audible thumps and some smoke eventually attracted our attention. Eventually we all piled onto the flat roof of a three storey building to watch the spectacle.

I still remember the fireman in a silver 'asbestos' suit - and he turned on his heels and fled. One went up before us: Better than any film, there was suddenly a fireball around 30 feet in diameter, a ginormous THUD and the, presumably, top valve section of the cylinder hurtled upwards into the air heading our way. We all ducked below the parapet, it sailed right over our heads and fell the other side of the building. We all rushed to the parapet on the other side and looked over. Our gaze was met by a puzzled looking person standing, staring upwards, with a smouldering piece of wreckage embedded in the tarmac at their feet.

One thing I always remember is what an explosion actually sounds like if close by. Nothing like the typical cinema 'explosion' sound, but an enormous single THUD. Rather as if Wales were raised a couple of inches off the ground and allowed to fall back down.

TUK020
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Re: Remember Argos?

#465305

Postby TUK020 » December 12th, 2021, 5:03 pm

XFool wrote:I know.

Way back in the 1970s some 'naughty boys' from the school next to where I worked (I believe the same school Graham Young the mass poisoner went to...) set fire to a contractors shed full of those blue, barrel shaped gas containers. The ensuing extremely strong, sub-audible thumps and some smoke eventually attracted our attention. Eventually we all piled onto the flat roof of a three storey building to watch the spectacle.

I still remember the fireman in a silver 'asbestos' suit - and he turned on his heels and fled. One went up before us: Better than any film, there was suddenly a fireball around 30 feet in diameter, a ginormous THUD and the, presumably, top valve section of the cylinder hurtled upwards into the air heading our way. We all ducked below the parapet, it sailed right over our heads and fell the other side of the building. We all rushed to the parapet on the other side and looked over. Our gaze was met by a puzzled looking person standing, staring upwards, with a smouldering piece of wreckage embedded in the tarmac at their feet.

One thing I always remember is what an explosion actually sounds like if close by. Nothing like the typical cinema 'explosion' sound, but an enormous single THUD. Rather as if Wales were raised a couple of inches off the ground and allowed to fall back down.

About 20 years ago I worked in Basingstoke in an office overlooking the M3. When the noise started, the thumps rattled the entire building, I am amazed the windows didn't give way. About 1/4 mile away, a Calor gas cylinder delivery lorry was going up in flames on the hard shoulder. Big gooey looking patch on the tarmac afterwards

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465317

Postby XFool » December 12th, 2021, 5:48 pm

TUK020 wrote:Big gooey looking patch on the tarmac afterwards

Same this end, on a much smaller scale of course. Although he already knows about it, I was thinking that next time I saw the guy whose stove it was, pointing to the small patch of black congealed plastic on the table and saying: "Err... you remember your camping stove?"

The fire effectively destroyed the stove but to my memory it still seemed structurally intact afterwards. However, after the gas cylinder went off, the shock wave really did for it! It looked like it had been run over by a car. To think my left ear took the brunt of that...

Lucky I wasn't holding it vertically looking at it, or it would have been a 999 call and I might have lost an eye.

Christ it was loud! Didn't seem to put the foxes off their dinner.

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465328

Postby stevensfo » December 12th, 2021, 6:19 pm

bungeejumper wrote:
vrdiver wrote:As a kid, a group of us chucked a (small) Calor gas cartridge onto our campfire. That took care of it - never ever saw it again...

As an older and wiser lemon, I'd now recommend getting someone you don't like to chuck it on the fire for you. :evil

Aaaah, the folly of youth. A couple of my schoolfriends (aged 13) decided to make their own fireworks, using an explosives recipe that would probably have the terror squad down on me if I said anything more about it. They eventually made it back to school the next week with facial scorch marks, little hair on their foreheads and no eyebrows. It was a true miracle that they both still had their eyes. :|

BJ


The 1970s? The old musical TV ad 'Light up the sky with Standard Fireworks'?

I think most of us tried it. Burnt knuckles and wafting the smoke and smell outside asap before the security police (parents) detected it?

I once came close to constructing both a rocket and capsule with parachute for one of my pet gerbils. I was obsessed with spaceships.

Fortunately, NASA (my mum) had already witnessed preliminary tests and withdrew all support.

Which in those days consisted of 'Clear that mess up, or I'll tell your father!' 8-)


Steve

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465336

Postby XFool » December 12th, 2021, 6:50 pm

I'm still trying to make sense of this: What really happened?

Curiously the bottom of the aluminium gas cylinder was also stoved in on one side. How? this seems counterintuitive as it blew 'out'. My first thought was the shock wave. Perhaps it was reflected off the table after destroying the stove and then damaged the cylinder that caused it? Then I had a second thought: Newton's Third Law of Motion.

Surely the damaged body of the cylinder that I was left holding must itself have been more that a little moved by the detonation, considering the top has not been seen since? Yet I was simply left standing with it in my hand with a wrecked stove. Perhaps it had moved hard enough, with my hand attached, to hammer the stove, destroy it and damage itself in the process? Seems simple, but I have not the slightest memory of this happening.

Possibly, under the circumstances, I was stunned and have partially lost my memory of events?

(Perhaps then an unconsciously ironical thread name?)

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Re: Remember Argos?

#465405

Postby bungeejumper » December 13th, 2021, 8:29 am

stevensfo wrote:I think most of us tried it. Burnt knuckles and wafting the smoke and smell outside asap before the security police (parents) detected it?

Knuckles aren't the only thing that some people singe. Don't try this at home, kiddies. (Get your parents to do it, so you can watch through the window.)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/ ... stunt.html

BJ

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Re: Remember Argos?

#466415

Postby XFool » December 16th, 2021, 4:00 pm

XFool wrote:I'm still trying to make sense of this: What really happened?

Curiously the bottom of the aluminium gas cylinder was also stoved in on one side. How? this seems counterintuitive as it blew 'out'. My first thought was the shock wave. Perhaps it was reflected off the table after destroying the stove and then damaged the cylinder that caused it? Then I had a second thought: Newton's Third Law of Motion.

Surely the damaged body of the cylinder that I was left holding must itself have been more that a little moved by the detonation, considering the top has not been seen since? Yet I was simply left standing with it in my hand with a wrecked stove. Perhaps it had moved hard enough, with my hand attached, to hammer the stove, destroy it and damage itself in the process? Seems simple, but I have not the slightest memory of this happening.

Possibly, under the circumstances, I was stunned and have partially lost my memory of events?

That's a wrap then.

Forensic examination of the wreckage today, before disposal, clearly showed a circular imprint from the base of the gas cylinder in the distorted metal of the stove. So Newton's third law of motion wins again and I must have had a momentary memory blank out caused by the detonation.


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