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---
title: Ricochet Rockets in the Basement
---
Life Lesson: Cleanliness and organization are good habits
The fireworks lab was in the basement in our home in Windham, Maine. I
was not yet very tidy down there and often left odds and ends from long
past projects lying around on the workbench. It was on a Saturday when
this next little fiasco occurred. Lori was away from the house for some
unknown reason, but at least some of the children were home. However, I
was working alone in the basement at the time. I don\'t remember what I
was even working on, but I was using my electric grinding wheel to
sharpen or shape some piece of metal. The nature of grinding wheels is
that they quite often produce a lot of bright metal sparks shooting out
the back side of the grinding wheel.\
\
Now, normally, this is not a real fire hazard because the sparks are not
hot enough to start fires or even cause damage to the surrounding
surface of the work bench. However, I had left a paper cup of flammable
powder of some kind on the work bench. It was left over from some other
project and never properly disposed of. After many months of sitting on
the back of the work bench, I didn\'t even take notice of the cup or
what dangerous substance might still be lurking inside. As you can
guess, the sparks from the grinding wheel ignited this cup of powder and
caused a large poof of flame that startled me quite a bit. This was not
the end of the incident, however. Lying next to the paper cup were a few
fireworks rockets. They were meant for large stick rockets, a lot like
bottle rockets, but much larger. Whereas bottle rockets are about one
and a half inches long and attached to a foot long stick, my stick
rockets were about six inches long and normally would be attached to
3-foot-long sticks. Well, the flash and flame from the paper cup caused
the fuses of the rockets to ignite and before I could react they were
flying around in the basement, ricocheting off the walls and ceiling
just like a Wiley Coyote cartoon. The whole basement quickly filled up
with smoke and then the smoke alarm started wailing.\
\
All this racket caused Megan to wonder what was going on in the
basement. She opened the door to the basement, only to discover it was
filled with smoke and the alarm was still making an ear-piercing noise.
About this time, I finally got my wits about me and quickly told Megan
to close the door so the smoke wouldn\'t go upstairs. My first act to
recover from this disaster was to grab a pillow and stuff it around the
fire alarm to deafen the awful noise. Then I opened the patio door to
let the smoke go outside. Gradually, the smoke cleared and the fire
alarm stopped its annoying wail. It was then I realized that some sparks
of some kind had managed to get under the cuff of my shirt and caused a
nasty burn. I still have a nice little scar on my arm that reminds me of
my stupidity to this day. Fortunately, no other harm was caused by the
incident and I again considered myself very lucky that I escaped with
only a bit of a burn on my arm.\
\
From this scary incident, I learned that cleanliness and organization
are good habits to have when working with explosives. A little
carelessness on one day can cause a serious accident to sneak up on you
many days in the future when you least expect it to happen. Alas, my
lesson still didn\'t prevent other fiascos to follow.
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