Motorcycle power socket

I don't think so, TBH.

I've read far worse in fiction.


--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

Surely a box of matches wrapped up in clingfilm would be simpler to
implement?

 

Don't get me started.

I know a lot about matches, see. When I was four or five years old, I
Discovered the joys of fire, growing up in a house where the only
heating was from two open coal fires. Saturday and Sunday mornings I
would always be first up, and I'd spend ages coaxing the living room
fire back to life, feeding the last embers with strips of tissue,
paper, cardboard and shredded kindling.

By six or seven, I was into lighting fires: on the beach with driftwood
and any other combustibles that had washed up or blown in; in the woods
with dead fallen limbs; in fields with dry wood ... or one very
memorable occasion, tall dry grass.

The source of ignition was always matches, of course. Dad had a
lighter, a proper old shiny chromed steel Ronson with a leather cover
but there were no cheap disposable lighters then, so kids used matches.
Proper matches with red sulphurous heads, none of your girly safety
matches. We'd light little fires in alleys, round the back of the
shops, anywhere there was something that would burn. We experimented
with trying to recreate the blazing torches we'd see on telly, but
they'd either go out too quickly or they'd burn far too fast to be
useful for anything except burning skin and clothing.

We discovered the joy of striking a match and while it was still
flaring, stick it back into the box next to the other match heads -
that made a great, intense flare that was sadly short-lived. Access to
petrol was, fortunately, difficult - but we could get paraffin, meths
and turps. We made big flares that burned gloriously, we made better
flaming torches, we lost layers of skin and patches of hair joyously.

We discovered building sites, and the cornucopia of flammables therein.
Bonfires weren't restricted to November and it was open season on
scarpering from incoming blue lights down carefully pre-planned routes
through narrow alleys and over walls where adults wouldn't pursue.
That all came to an end with the first serious burning, when one of the
big boys discovered the exquisite agony inflicted by burning tar on a
nylon shirt.

When I went to Cubs, my firelighting skills were in great demand: on
the beach or in the hills, we'd drag soggy sossijjes out of greasy
pockets and cook them over fires on sharpened sticks. One-match (Swan
Vesta, natch - favoured despite their short length for the sheer
quantity in a box) fires were a source of great pride, but OTOH the
flint and steel in a tinderbox was always in my pocket, and I could
smoulder up a spark from a bow quite well too.

Later, on expeditions I found that drying out clothing (that had
contained pocketed matches that had got wet) over a fire was a bad
idea. Wet match heads roll off the wood, leaving smears of sulphur and
phosphorous in the material. So not only were the matches useless
except for use as small kindling when they'd dried out, the deposits
within the pockets went up a treat once they'd got hot enough. Not
only do slightly singed trousers feel awkward, explaining loss of
pockets to parents was a little awkward too. "A big boy did it and ran
away" doesn't really cut it in that scenario.

We didn't have cling film then, and the ostensibly watertight tobacco
tins crammed with 'survival' gear didn't always work that well. So I
started dipping matches in molten candlewax. Wax-impregnated matches
flare really well, you know - I've got pink fingertips from skin loss
due to that still. The best way, I found, was to tape several matches
together side-by-side, and dip them like a line of soldiers. They
could be broken out individually when required and the middle matches
were less heavily waxed, so burned in a more predictable fashion.

I have tried clingfilming matches in later years, but the advent of
cheap lighters has gone past that - it's easier to keep a lighter dry,
or use a Zippo which doesn't suffer from moisture ingress so badly if
you keep a flint in the cottonwool. I don't think I've ever had great
success with clingfilm, in fact - getting a good seal seems to be a
problem, as is condensation (probably of sweat in a pocket) and age
seems to be an issue too. A ziplock resealable bag is prolly better,
but I think the alternatives are superior and easier.

Now you've made me cast my mind back, I can smell the aroma of snared,
skinned and spitted rabbit smoking over one of my fires now. I'll draw
a tactful veil over my later, more adult firelighting activities, as
there's prolly no Statute of Limitations on them.

Suffice to say, I know matches.

 

How about wrapping several matches tightly in 'Bacofoil' then throwing
them in the fire? That's discounting the experiments with the contents
of proper old fashioned FOAD bangers, DIY gunpowder and fuses made from
string and saltpetre solution.

The lad was trying that method only recently without much success. I
blame 'Safety Matches'.

Matchless prose !

--
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| Gilera GFR * 2 Moto Morini 2C/375 Morini 350 "Forgotten Error" |
+-------------------------------------------------------------------+

 

Oh, yeah. We were into that - shaving the heads into a square of foil
was effective in making a satisfying 'crack' when it got hot enough: a
subtle way to get the Girl Guides shrieking by slipping one into their
fire too. With just the heads in foil, smashing the package between
two big stones made a good bang and produced a great cloud of stinking
smoke too.

Aye. We started off with "genies" made by laying the contents of a
proper banger on the ground and lighting it. Then we had to go bigger,
of course, so it became a pile of the contents of several fireworks ...
which later led to experiments with fuses as the girls really didn't
like the look of blokes with no eyebrows and apparent premature male
pattern baldness.

Yeah, doesn't work with Safeties. The inevitable traces of wax get in
the way and clog up the striker on the box immediately, aprt from
interfering with the chemical ignition sequence.

I thank you, Sir. I am only one of many here, and a mere acolyte to
some.

 

Pip wrote:

I feel it encumbent upon me to point out that I don't *think* there was
a single swear word in that lot......

--
Catman MIB#14 SKoGA#6 TEAR#4 BOTAFOF#38 Apostle#21 COSOC#3
Tyger, Tyger Burning Bright (Remove rust to reply)
116 Giulietta 3.0l Sprint 1.7 GTV TS GT 3.2 V6
Triumph Sprint ST 1050: It's blue, see.
www.cuore-sportivo.co.uk

 

But you omitted one thing - modifying them into bangers. We used to wrap
Swan Vesta heads in silver foil, tightly, and then chuck them into fires
or otherwise ignite them.

And they'd go off like firecrackers with a surprisingly loud BANG.

If you had the patience to (carefully) scrape the heads off a whole box
ofthe things, you had a surprisingly powerful miniature explosive.

For some reason safety matches just when "phut" under the same
treatment.

 

'Proper' delinquents got a 3/4" bolt, wound a corresponding nut onto
it so just under 1/3 of the nut was on the bolt, put the scraped off
heads of about 20 swan vesta matches into the open half of the nut and
then tightened another bolt onto the match heads. The real knack here
was to tighten the bolts together enough to make a good tight
connection but not set the matches off or you might lose fingers.

Once this was done you hurled the whole lot at the road as hard as you
could and relied on one of the bolt heads making a good solid contact.
If all went well the IED shot off into the distance and might travel
a couple of hundred yards before either running out of energy or
hitting something. Big fun when you're 11 years old.

When I was an apprentice we played a similar game with 1" bolts but
put the powder out of .22 blanks into the gap. We then put the device
horizontally in a vice, smashed one end with a 4lb hammer and watched
the other end of the device fly off up the workshop into whatever
you'd aimed it at. This sort of toy would go through doors. Big fun
when you're 16 years old.

I really enjoyed engineering when I was younger.

 

Heartfelt thanks due to Beav for prompting that glorious monologue.

--
R100RT
Aprilia Pegaso 650 IE "The Flying Mythos"
Formerly: James Captain, A10, C15, B25, Dnepr M16 solo, R80/7, R100RT
(green!)
www.davidhowardjeweller.co.uk

 

Pip took a blunt brush and painted...

<snip>

Applause! Nice story, as always Pipster.

Personally I'm a cheapo plastic lighter man, simply cause I lose them a lot.

 

Oh indeed with patience a schoolboy can prime his first flintlock pistol and
half inch ball bearing mortar.

Of course the danger is escalation to stripping out shotgun cartridges which
inevitably leads to commercial explosives and from there the sky is the
limit......

 

Oi! Hog! Check your SMS messages and emails!

Ta.

 

Does the email addy start sm911 as per the header and does the phone number
end 333

If not that would be why I've not heard anything

Though you also have my work email addy

 

I recall doing that when I was a kid too. Back when you could buy
proper fireworks legally. Ones that would take out the neighbour's
letterbox in a big way.

Another one when I was in army cadets at school was to throw sealed
cans of army issue vegemite into the bonfire we were all sitting
around. They go off quite nicely but we a small can, probably 50-100g
max. Some bright spark chucked in a sealed can of concentrated butter.
Like a 600g can. I saw it enter the bonfire and asked him what it was.
****! Run!. It went off like a bloody mortar and the bits burned hole
in a nearby tent.

Kev

 

Just email me. Have a pig to collect first weekend in March.

 

The flash would leave you with disturbed vision for hours afterwards
and indoors made far too much smoke to explain away to parents.

How no one got seriously injured when my school went through this
craze I am not sure.

 

A 33cl bottle of lager bedded into the coals of a hot BBQ is fairly
spec-tac-lee-arr

 

Drop the head off at Riley Avenue.

 

I was almost tempted to not snip and simply add... "You've given this some
thought, haven't you"?



--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

Or a small length of neoprene tubing that'll fit in the tank filler hole. It
could also double as a tank siphoning tool if the bike runs out of fuel.
Can't see it getting fuel out of the Zippo though.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19