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+---
+title: The Banana Peel Bomb
+---
+
+Fast forward about 30 years. We lived in Maine. I was married and had 4
+children. I guess I was having a mid-life revival of my childhood love
+of pyrotechnics. It was all the kid\'s fault, actually. I bought a few
+model rocket kits to fly with the kids. That was what rekindled the
+firebug in me. This quickly escalated into wanting to build bigger and
+more powerful rockets. The internet was just starting to be a great
+source for a lot of interesting knowledge and a way to buy mail-order
+chemicals to feed the curiosity.\
+\
+My goal was to design and build my own rocket motors. I was no longer
+content to buy the feeble little black powder motors you could get for
+model rockets in the local hobby stores. I was a mighty engineer and I
+could do better. After considerable research, I decided to try a formula
+I found in the on-line literature. The problem was that the rocket motor
+design required quite a bit of specially fabricated metal parts. I had
+neither the skill nor the tools to do this kind of work, but I knew
+someone who did. Brother Bibber was a machinist by trade and was willing
+to help me achieve my goal by doing the machining. I gave him the
+drawings and waited. It was nearly 3 months before he had the time to
+make my parts, but finally, he delivered a shoe box of beautifully
+crafted rocket motor parts. The design consisted of a piece of
+chromium-molybdenum pipe with threads at both ends. The concept required
+cylindrical shaped castings of rocket fuel that were placed inside the
+pipe container and then the end pieces were screwed on to enclose the
+solid rocket fuel. It was not much different than those silly home-made
+bullets I made as a child. It was still basically a fancy pipe-bomb,
+just a lot bigger and a lot more expensive. However, I was still just as
+naïve to believe my newest incarnation would work perfectly the first
+time.\
+\
+I thought my test plan was reasonable. I wanted to do a static test
+firing of the new motor design. I built a wooden test stand out of
+scraps of lumber. This stand was supposed to hold the motor in a
+stationary position while it was fired. This would allow me to
+demonstrate that the motor would actually develop enough thrust to cause
+a rocket to fly. After a successful static test, I would then use it to
+send a rocket into the sky.\
+\
+On the fateful day of the static test, I set up the test stand in the
+driveway in front of the garage. I loaded the assembled motor into the
+test stand and installed an electric ignitor. I called the kids to come
+see the test and we all stood about 10 feet away from the test stand as
+I pushed the button to ignite the motor. It worked beautifully for about
+10 milliseconds and then went kaboom with a bright flash of fire and
+smoke. My test stand, which was constructed of sturdy 4-by-4\'s, was
+blown into a cloud of tooth-pick sized splinters of wood. The motor
+itself was nowhere to be seen. I just disappeared into thin air. I
+finally found it a few days later when I spied it on top of the garage
+roof. After retrieving the motor from its perch on the roof, I realized
+how incredibly lucky we had been. The rocket motor looked like superman
+had opened it like a banana. One end of the motor casing had split open
+and the sides of the tube were bent back just like a half-eaten banana.\
+\
+It was evident from the shape of the wreckage that the metal alloy had
+been able to burst open without splintering into deadly metal shrapnel
+that might have seriously injured me or one of my children. This is when
+it finally dawned on me that I was incredibly lucky and still had rather
+poor judgement when it came to assessing the risks of doing pyrotechnic
+experiments. Furthermore, my beautifully machined metal parts, for which
+I had waited anxiously for many months, had been totally destroyed in an
+instant. It put a serious damper on my enthusiasm to become an amateur
+rocket scientist.\
+\
+This dramatic failure caused me to take a new direction in my
+pyrotechnic experimentation. I decided that rockets were too
+complicated. I would use the chemicals I had purchased to make fireworks
+instead. This kind of skill didn\'t require so many expensive tools and
+complicated parts. Most of the fireworks could be made with common
+cardboard tubes and glue. Thus, fate had sent me on a whole new kind of
+hobby pursuit. However, it didn\'t do much to lessen the likelihood that
+I would still experience epic failures. As you will soon see, my list of
+pyrotechnic failures was only just beginning.