The father of a friend of mine had a 6’x6’ stack of gutter downspouts behind their house. When he would get pissed at my friend, he would threaten to make him replace the downspouts on their 2 story house, knowing that the kid was terrified of heights, and the back of the house was actually 3 stories. We were about 15 at the time. I solved the problem by shoving a string of these into the middle of the stack. It destroyed them all, mostly with shrapnel. Couldn’t do this at my house, my Dad had a vile temper, and would have done me harm.
Not sure how my brother and I survived the 80s but we blew up a lot of stuff, and these were one of my personal favorites. The hardware store gladly sold me all the black powder and fuse I could buy. This brings back some fun memories.
Early 2000's for me.... After kids started increasingly shooting up schools and whatnot, I cut that shit out real quick. Just too easily misinterpreted. Out of nowhere people might see you as some crazy nut job.
The fact that you guys are not scientific is absolutely awesome. It relates so much more to the inner "light the fuse and run for your life"-child we all possess. Never change, you guys are doing what was my dream as a kid
@@mystic_tacos As far as your limbs go, if you don't fuck it up, you'll be fine. Same as anything else right? But like seriously don't fuck it up. The consequences are severe, and immediate lmao. As far as prison goes, your first mistake was talking about it lol
A close friend set fire to his parents house with the match head and 22 powder version of these. I am not sure what he did wrong, but we heard the bang three blocks away. He survived the blast and fire but was injured by fragments. He eventually became a ranch hand and was killed by cattle stomping him to death in a box car. Overall not a particularly lucky man. He was only 35 years old at the time of his death.
@@hodwooker5584 I used to make a lot of match head bombs and firecrackers as a kid. I bet he didn’t grind the heads into a powder. They just fly like fireballs all over the place if they are not ground
I used to make mine with crushed up blackcat firecrackers, reuse the green fuses tied together with bred ties and crushed up match heads. Used to blow chucks out of an old stump in the yard until it caught fire and thus letting my dad catch us. Also probably not a good idea to set off random explosives around a combat vet after only 8 or so years after the Gulf War.
Yeah for sure! Living just a few hours away from China Town in NYC was great, quarter and half sticks whenever we wanted made for an amazing childhood!!
Dude! Living out in the country is way better than the city. You can play with knives and throwing stars and shoot any gun you want and set crap on fire and blow stuff up and shoot coyotes and raccoons and predators and hang out anywhere you want to in the woods on your property and dig holes and make landmines and set traps and alk kinds of cool crap that in any city you'd be beaten and arrested for.
@@jackspratt44 yep, that was my exact life. Quarter mile from my neighbor and best friends farm, and a hundred miles from the city.. **We used to HATE the whiney little biych city slickers that would come up for the summers and weekends and think they could complain about our dirt bikes or anything else for that matter!!
I love how in the end he said arms length to set them off because you honestly don't want to be anywhere near that when you set them off. Me and my buddy set them off all the time back in the day and I still mess around and do the same thing except with empty bullet shell casings. And even as small as a .22 shell can issue a nice injury. Great video tho and informative
You don't get too many second chances in that biz. I respect the folks that do it and those that work in other risky occupations - like high amp/voltage electrical work. Hats off to ya'll.
I came up with a design for an anti-coyote mine based on these about 30 years ago. It was a pretty nasty little device. I never even built one, as I had no way to exclude non-target species. Glad I thought it through. No regrets.
We did these as kids back in the 70's. I was 12 years old and had no problem buying the powder at Gibsons. We blew up tool boxes and all sorts of stuff. Thank God I have all my limbs intact.
It's December 2024 now, and my favorite podcast did an episode on Columbine. They were talking about all the explosives that they brought with them, and they mentioned cricket bombs, which is why I'm here. I didn't really know what they were, but I knew Ordnance Lab would have some information about them, and you guys did not disappoint 😊
I never heard that name before. I used to make these when I was a teenager. I always called them CO2 bombs. Another cool thing I did was to fill up a piece of aluminum arrow with black powder and put a shotgun shell primer on the end. Then tape a bb on so it will push the primer. Then just stick the piece of aluminum arrow onto a regular arrow shaft to make an explosive tipped arrow.
We made these in the 70's. Pipe cutter to remove the rounded end, pull the crimp off. Our powder of choice was "D" engines for model rockets. There are three types of powder and three burn rates. Test them for the one you want. One wrap of duct tape around the fuse is a perfect fit in the nozzle. Insert the fuse, invert so open end faces up and add powder. Usually a tablespoon was enough. Stuff the interior with old newspaper almost to the end then seal it with JB Weld and let cure for 24 hrs. Light and take cover, these will create shrapnel.
@@SlavicCelery i learned it one day after throwing a bunch of styrofoam into some gasoline and playing around with the goopy result for a while, before deciding to light it on fire and throwin it like a catapult. Was like when i was 12 or something.
Dude. I made those 25yrs ago. They are dangerous but fun. Bury one just to the top and put a 1gallon zip lock filled with gasoline on top. Awesome ending of a fireworks show.
I actually like the butcher paper idea for this use case. It does well enough to show the spread pattern, unless it’s an actual directed explosion or shaped charge it’s not likely to be much different in the open area direction than the other 3 sides. Plus it’s reusable, so it’s environmentally friendly too lol
Interesting channel, pretty sure UA-cam would have been much more interesting in the early 90s, we woulda really gotten in trouble. Glad you guys are doing things safe and legal, enjoyed it!
Long ago an uncle told me how he used to make these in the 60's when he was a teenager. He and his friends got into all sorts of stuff growing up in san francisco, which is a big reason my mom made sure to get us out of there back then.
I still can't hear right and that was 10 years ago lol. We always had more fun with the pill bottle bombs tho. Sometimes it just flared up, but one time it turned a 1/16 scale ford explorer into a memory. Plus you didn't have to check and make sure everyone was alive afterwards 😂😂😂
I'm not confessing to anything....I'm an innocent bystander who witnessed nothing, didn't see nothing, didn't hear nothing, don't remember nothing or anybody.....that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
No internet back in the day, so, we had to make our own fun using different sources of sketchy information. A friend of mine would have done less if he had been able to see it on UA-cam.
The reason the black powder mixed with smokeless powder worked so well is because of the nitroglycerin and the overall larger gas’s volume that the smokeless powder creates, the black powder speeds up the reaction instead of making it just hiss or something
I've got a pound of old Pyrodex and a half pound of old smokeless leftovers of many different flavors, I'll try and mix them together and try in cardboard tubes. Not expecting much tho..
I used to put these into model rockets. The fuse of the cricket bomb touched the back of the rocket motor (clay removed), causing it to detonate mid-aid. One time the weight was off balance, causing the rocket to fly sideways. Detonated on someone's roof.
Same here but we never had them explode we used them as mortar's and rockets.. We could launch using a metal pipe and hit a 6' square at about 150 yds We fired over water and beach so we knew what was down range all of the time.
I'll never forget when the Newark police came my house at 5:00pm, there to show my parents remnants/shrapnel from by first pipe bomb, clean bust and I didn't even get in trouble. It was 1969, I was 14.
I never knew these had a name....used to make em all the time as a kid. It's sad to think that I was probably the last generation of kids who will be able to enjoy fun like this (late 90's and early 00's). Although I doubt much will ever change for kids out in the really rural areas thankfully. Anymore it seems like the rural areas are the last decent and free places in America
In 1980 our school mate Michael Bealey, age 12, was killed by one of these. He brought the recipe with him when they moved from Ontario to Saskatchewan. We all started making them in the summer of 1980. In November or December of that year he lit one off in his basement while he was alone. Fragments cut into his chest and he bled out. His grandmother heard the noise and went to the top of the stairs to yell down to the basement if he was okay and Michael said yes Grandma, I'm okay. But he wasn't. It was the first time I was at an open casket funeral. Don't f*** around with explosives. Michael was his father's only child. Imagine how devastating that must have been on his father and his grandmother.
I used to sit and smoke the whole time I was reloading for pistol or rifle shells, But when the black powder came out it was ALL serious business making these. One spark, even a static spark can cause a serious explosion. These co2 devices were equal to or stronger than 1/4 stick loads. They could throw shrapnel up to 50 yards or more. If sealed with candle wax, they would even work under water. Glad I survived the 70's lol.
I know two different kids when I was younger who made these. Both used firecracker fuses. They both have pincers for left hands. Other than that they are OK except for the brother who had to pick up the fingers of one
@@lairdcummings9092 Yeah it's a sub-sonic reaction, likely why most black powder guns used .50 cal sized rounds. They just used the shear weight and size of the lead round instead of modern rounds which rely more on the shock effect.
When i was a kid my parents got my brother and into model rockets... Used to break up the solid fuel packs and stuff it into .308 and -06 shells, put in the igniter, crimp it, and use them with the electric firing device to blast ground squirrels... Ah the joys of growing up in rural Arizona.
I enjoy the respectable boom you get when I used to put foil and muriatic acid in a plastic pepsi or coke bottle. Oh man! I remember when I was in middle school, my best friend and I lived on opposite sides of a old gravel pit, used for a concrete company. Anyway... the plastic ketchup bottles ( the kind with the no leak, squeeze top), those things would stretch and stretch and stretch to double its size and the boom was always epic! Especially since it was down in this bowl shaped pit with 360° of sound reverberating walls. Shooodang those were the days. Anybody ever make your own bottle rockets outta shotgun shells, some balsa wood and a basic chemistry set from a local hobby store etc? Got pretty good at it, to the point where we engineered a secondary charge to go off and deploy a parachute. Cant wait to tinker around and share my childhood joys with my kid. Safety first of course.
@@chrish5224 I would suggest you leave out / save for later those that involve hot acid spraying around... Getting burns or "tatoos" from flash powder explosions is one thing, hot acid in your face is something else.
I used to make these things the early 90's using 4F flash powder. I put one in a model rocket and the longest burning jet I could find. Could barely hear the report when it went off. Used to have a lot of fun with these things.
Here I was thinking I was a genius 25 years ago when I made these as a kid... I didn't know they were called cricket bombs, never knew anyone else made them. I used to fill them with smokeless powder. I knew it was sketchy as hell, even at 13 or 14. Always made sure me and the boys were behind cover, lol. I got tired of being so paranoid about when and where I could set them off, so instead, I started filling ping pong balls with smokeless, and wrapping them with an absurd amount of electrical tape. They were decent, we called them "black thunders," lol. Couple years later I'd discover traditional salutes, and that ended my experiments with sketchy ass homemade crap. I still think kids that age would be better served with salute cannons, or those mug-type devices. All the bang with hardly any of the risk. Big harm reduction, imo.
I used black powder and green waterproof fuze. I thought "if these are designed to hold a huge amount pf pressure, then these should make a great grenade" I once found one with an inverted bottom. Back then I was also taping a pack of morning glories to cans of butane. That all abruptly stopped once jail time was mentioned.
One time we stuffed a Co2 full of match heads, pinched it and threw it in a campfire. It nearly put it out. Another time we were throwing aerosol cans in the campfire. The best was the can of rug shampoo. It left a momentary horizontal trail of white foam 20' long and the diameter of the can that fell across logs etc. and held it's shape then melted.
First learned about these when I was 12. My good friend Jon watched his buddy lose 4 of his fingers on his right hand and had to help find his fingers in a field in the middle of the night. After hearing that story is when I decided to give it a try. The trick: ALWAYS use cannon wick that fits snugly and you'll probably be keeping all your fingers. Probably
Next, let's see a hybrid flash powder/nitrocellulose mix. I can tell you from experience, adding smokeless to a faster explosive like flash powder or HMTD, massively increases power over either one by themselves. When I was younger I dissolved one ounce of Acetone Peroxide (I know, but everyone starts somewhere😉) into three ounces of smokeless powder with acetone, then formed it into small cylinders with cardboard tubing and let them dry. Those were terrifying little cylinders for their size. I also formed some into small balls (1/4"-3/8") and shot them from a slingshot rifle, (it used a piece of cord behind the pouch for a trigger so nothing was pinched inside the pouch). The balls were impact sensitive with the acetone peroxide above 200 FPS, but the nitrocellulose decreased it's sensitivity enough to handle safely and shoot from a slingshot safely. That was a fun little thing, I was shooting moths on the walls of my dad's shop with them, I only had to hit within a few inches of them and the shockwave would strip the wings off them lol. Man I did sketchy stuff when I was a kid lol.
@@321aquaponics4 I would love to do so but I keep energetic materials off my channel for safety reasons (safety from the law), APCP rocket fuel is as far as I will go with energetics on my channel. Despite that I'm an avid follower of channels like Labratory of Liptakov and other similar like-minded channels, I do wish I could pursue some of my "other" interests more freely.
You should cut grooves into the canister with a Dremel tool or something to produce more fragmentation. That would be an awesome video comparing cut vs not cut canisters and diffrent paterns to see how it changes the fragmentation.
I used to build these all the time with fine black powder I got from the local gun store. My friends showed me the genius of them. They’re pretty powerful. I’d blow giant old TVs to tiny pieces. I never had a problem with shrapnel, the CO2 container usually just peeled open.
I made the combination black/smokeless powder CO2 bomb in the 80's. I lost 2 two fingers not counting other scars. I did it when I was 14 and got a thumb ( toe to hand transplant) for my 15th birthday. It could have been worse. Good video, thank you.
Dude! I made sparklers bombs for years. The last one was the LAST one. I blew away a refrigerator. The blast radius was 150 feet. I won't make another one.
@@MarcusToroian That was Obviously factored into my count too. I went out and Bought everything he listed with the Total *After Tax* being *$97* That was the *"Minimum"*
I had no idea there were called “cricket bombs” or that they were destructive devices. Me and my friend used to make these as kids using powder and fuses from arial fireworks as a kid. Guess I’ve been a “felon” for longer than knew.
Yep. As a kid I made some by grinding down Estes rocket motor propellant. I played around with all kinds of stuff making smoke bombs, cannons, rockets, etc. Needless to say things were much different in the 80's and 90's.
@@justme-ij2qy And things were equally as different from the 80's and 90's in the 50's and 60's and so on. Go back to the late 1800's early 1900's and you could buy opium over the counter and a mixture of opium and alcohol was used instead of a pacifier to prevent teething children from whining (it worked, but sometimes they got a bit too quiet...). Any random fool could buy dynamite at a random farming supply store. You could mail order submachine guns at least into the 1930's. It was common for children to bring a knife to school; how else could you make bark-boats and play mumblety-peg (which usually involved throwing pocket knives so they stick into the ground close to your own foot).
Haters usually never learn beyond their knowledge barriers because they are too sensitivite about certain topics. This simulation is very scientific and very interesting!
I made dozens of these in my late teen years. I never knew they had a real name. Also didn't know they were a felony until years later. I destroyed many things with them.
I made these as a kid in the 70s. I epoxied carpet nails to the outside of the co2 cylinder. Set one off in the inside of my dads aluminum shed. The nails were imbedded in a great circular pattern in the shed . The shed leaked in the rain from that day on ! Sorry dad !!
Great PSA. Protestors in France could have learned a thing or two. "Things go wrong" is a mantra. Good example why not to put smokeless powder in a black powder riffle. It is powerful.
I worked a crime scene where an adult bully in the neighborhood was targeted with one of these that was used as a boobytrap. It basically blew three of his fingers off. We followed ant trails to locate chunks of the guys fingers.
I made one of these when I was 9yrs old and it went off while I was holding it in my hand. I spent many days in the hospital and needed a blood transfusion. It took off two fingers and a thumb. They were able to reattach one finger and my thumb with about 240 stitches and I have to say this brought back horrible memories I remember every day. I'm seriously lucky to be alive I'm sure . please be careful people and don't end up like me.
You don't need powder at all. Take a full co2 cart and 2.5 feet of fuse wrap it tightly around the cart leave 10 or so inch tail for lighting and enjoy
You can hold it with some tape or even tinfoil it must be tightly wraped. For the gas to expand and cause the destruction you desire. Please move far away and use proper safety gear
45 years ago we would take the bearings out of paint spray can, find a pipe that they would fit tight in, and use a black jack firecracker to propel them. Also we would cut the bottom and andtops off of beer cans. Stack around 5 with duct tabe and the bottom can with a small cut in the side with the bottom on. Dropped a pensy pinkie rubber ball on and use lighter fluid as a propelmen
You should try power augering a small (2 - 3 feet deep) hole in the dirt (minimizes shrapnel effects), dropping the cricket bomb in under a water filled (to add weight, use a syringe) tennis ball. Usually goes pretty high. Angle the hole for a mortar effect. Use water color paint for a splash effect.
One of the first things my wife did when we first moved in together was throw out all my home-made device shells and fuses. It was my favorite way to get rid of fire ants.
I made those when I was a teenager, but I used powder out of constructions pin gun cartridges which is laced with nitroglycerin. As a fuse I used match heads stuffed in the neck of the cartridge with one glued at the very top, so you can strike it like a match. Thank goodness that never got in trouble for this.
No budget to be scientific, just slow down the playback speed that's provided by this platform. Spoiler alert, an explosion is just an extremely fast fire.
I had a friend in high school that made these. Except he bought the little hundred packs of paper matches and pack them in after cutting the heads off and matches to make the fuel for the explosion. Needless to say one day he was making them in his room and was using a screwdriver to pack the cutoff match heads into the small neck of the CO2 cartridge as he usually did. The friction ignited the match heads while he was packing them and holding it in his hand. It exploded and tore the meat off of a few of his fingers. Shattered the glass that he had put on top of his desk and his brother was in the room at the time watching. His brother was knocked over they were both temporarily deaf. They both suffered glass shrapnel wounds as well. They got a visit from the ATF. I think we were like 15 at the time maybe 16
I used to make these and they were pretty powerful. Years later I made some and they were far less potent. I believe the cartridges were cheapened up "thinner".
"Register with the atf"
That's the best joke you've ever made.
no, that was when he said "things got out of hand"when he blew up the mannequins hand
Yeah never try this at home! Always do it at a friend's house.
The father of a friend of mine had a 6’x6’ stack of gutter downspouts behind their house. When he would get pissed at my friend, he would threaten to make him replace the downspouts on their 2 story house, knowing that the kid was terrified of heights, and the back of the house was actually 3 stories. We were about 15 at the time. I solved the problem by shoving a string of these into the middle of the stack. It destroyed them all, mostly with shrapnel. Couldn’t do this at my house, my Dad had a vile temper, and would have done me harm.
Best comment ever! And so true
Lol
help my friends house is gone
I wouldn't even try it at my friend's house.... I love my fingers. And with the metal flying around faster than a bullet, no thanks.
the fact that you guys are sponsored by a literal international ordnance dealer is absolutely amazing and i love it
That's a bit of a puffed up tag. Anyone importing russian ammo could be called that.
International is the key phrase here lol
Stop war
@@jeffgill420 No u.
@@camojoe83 ammo is ordinance?
Not sure how my brother and I survived the 80s but we blew up a lot of stuff, and these were one of my personal favorites. The hardware store gladly sold me all the black powder and fuse I could buy. This brings back some fun memories.
"kid must have a lot of stumps to remove" lol
How did you seal the bomb? So that the pressure does not go out through the hole where the wick enters
@@Likinis2200 I think the fuse effectively seals it
@@Likinis2200 stick the fuse in and then hot glue it sealed. works like a charm!
@@bobbyc2768did guerrilla glue, works amazing. It swells a bit inside and seals tighter
Turns out I was a very felonious kid in the mid-90's.
Me too. But also in the 80's😉🤣🤣🤣
during that time we thought felonious was just a fancy way to say fun. Had we know otherwise we would have tried harder not to get caught lol.
Early 2000's for me.... After kids started increasingly shooting up schools and whatnot, I cut that shit out real quick.
Just too easily misinterpreted. Out of nowhere people might see you as some crazy nut job.
Me as well!!
Fuck I got caught. It was not fun. Oh well.
And... Just like that we're all on a watch list.
damnit youtube recommended
🤣🤣🤣 Watch this.... 🧐
If I'm not on at least 2 watch lists already, someone's not doing their job.
@@mikegautier8650 😆🤣😂🤣
Damnit bobby
The fact that you guys are not scientific is absolutely awesome. It relates so much more to the inner "light the fuse and run for your life"-child we all possess. Never change, you guys are doing what was my dream as a kid
you can buy empty co2 cartridges and black powder online you know
@@squidwardo7074 he also has hands and fingers he wants to keep on using.
@@squidwardo7074what about fuse line
i am 40 now and i still could grap some firecrackers and do silly stuff all day ^^
I know someone who made hundreds of these as a kid. We just called them "CO2 bombs".
That's what we called em too. They'd send a man hole cover six feet into the air!
Yep we would put lil birdshot in em from the 12 gauge shells we used to get the gun powder to fill em up from.
They added a lot of interest as the nose of model rokets ,
@@jameshale8013 Great for mailboxes, and fit perfectly into a large metformin container surrounded by BBs, bolts, and 22 bullets :)
We would grind up sparklers lol
you should try lighting these things off near ballistic gelatin to show the actual power the fragments have.
@old school honour and respect. Oh I'm sorry, i didn't realize they were making FUCKING BOMBS until you said that. Lmfao
@@wendigo-e3m I've always wanted to make one, but I'm fairly partial to my limbs and not being in prison... So I haven't.
@@mystic_tacos As far as your limbs go, if you don't fuck it up, you'll be fine. Same as anything else right? But like seriously don't fuck it up. The consequences are severe, and immediate lmao.
As far as prison goes, your first mistake was talking about it lol
@old school honour and respect. aye bro shut the fuck up lmao, let people learn the lesson
@@wendigo-e3m LOOOOOL
So according to the comments, i missed an extremely fun childhood by about 5 years
It doesn't take long to catch back up and nobody would be the wiser.
"Things got out of hand here."
*GROAN*
Now that was a big funny. *_✓_*
Damn, beat me to it Ted 6:49
Think it deserves a round of applause from the peanut gallery......do you think they are open to any pointers? 😁
Guess Ted's comment came in handy after all
@Etb Etb nah, I'll pass. Last time someone lent him a hand, they didn't get it back 🤣
Actually, I made these as a child using match heads scraped off the stick mixed with propellant from .22 rimfire shells. They worked like a champ.
A close friend set fire to his parents house with the match head and 22 powder version of these. I am not sure what he did wrong, but we heard the bang three blocks away. He survived the blast and fire but was injured by fragments. He eventually became a ranch hand and was killed by cattle stomping him to death in a box car. Overall not a particularly lucky man. He was only 35 years old at the time of his death.
@@hodwooker5584 I used to make a lot of match head bombs and firecrackers as a kid. I bet he didn’t grind the heads into a powder. They just fly like fireballs all over the place if they are not ground
ban cows.
I used to make mine with crushed up blackcat firecrackers, reuse the green fuses tied together with bred ties and crushed up match heads. Used to blow chucks out of an old stump in the yard until it caught fire and thus letting my dad catch us.
Also probably not a good idea to set off random explosives around a combat vet after only 8 or so years after the Gulf War.
@@andu7912noted 😂
Best channel on UA-cam you guys are the best.
Yup, no bullshit, no clickbait.
I loved it when he said "Things really got out of hand here" as he's holding parts of the mannequins arm and hand. 😆
Man reminds me of my childhood. Glad I still have all my digits. County life was fun
Yeah for sure! Living just a few hours away from China Town in NYC was great, quarter and half sticks whenever we wanted made for an amazing childhood!!
Dude! Living out in the country is way better than the city. You can play with knives and throwing stars and shoot any gun you want and set crap on fire and blow stuff up and shoot coyotes and raccoons and predators and hang out anywhere you want to in the woods on your property and dig holes and make landmines and set traps and alk kinds of cool crap that in any city you'd be beaten and arrested for.
@@jackspratt44 yep, that was my exact life. Quarter mile from my neighbor and best friends farm, and a hundred miles from the city..
**We used to HATE the whiney little biych city slickers that would come up for the summers and weekends and think they could complain about our dirt bikes or anything else for that matter!!
How long did you have to do in county? 😮
I love how in the end he said arms length to set them off because you honestly don't want to be anywhere near that when you set them off. Me and my buddy set them off all the time back in the day and I still mess around and do the same thing except with empty bullet shell casings. And even as small as a .22 shell can issue a nice injury. Great video tho and informative
"OH MY GOD THAT AIN'T SCIENTIFIC!"
lol isn't that what makes it great?
Sure it is, see the blast pattern cause science and sh&t
Good nuf.
Nope its DumbAzztific Bwhhahahahaha
You don't get too many second chances in that biz. I respect the folks that do it and those that work in other risky occupations - like high amp/voltage electrical work. Hats off to ya'll.
I came up with a design for an anti-coyote mine based on these about 30 years ago. It was a pretty nasty little device. I never even built one, as I had no way to exclude non-target species. Glad I thought it through. No regrets.
Remember the cyanide guns? Almost as deadly as fauci's death medicine. 7:43
Everytime I read someone say NO REGRETS.. I THINK ABOUT THAT TATTOO THE GUY GOT SPELLED WRONG.. NO REGRATS LOL
“Mommy, where’s Fluffy?”
I'm never messn with these things. Idk what I'd do without palmala. She makes me happy every morning
We did these as kids back in the 70's. I was 12 years old and had no problem buying the powder at Gibsons. We blew up tool boxes and all sorts of stuff. Thank God I have all my limbs intact.
It's December 2024 now, and my favorite podcast did an episode on Columbine. They were talking about all the explosives that they brought with them, and they mentioned cricket bombs, which is why I'm here. I didn't really know what they were, but I knew Ordnance Lab would have some information about them, and you guys did not disappoint 😊
I never heard that name before. I used to make these when I was a teenager. I always called them CO2 bombs. Another cool thing I did was to fill up a piece of aluminum arrow with black powder and put a shotgun shell primer on the end. Then tape a bb on so it will push the primer. Then just stick the piece of aluminum arrow onto a regular arrow shaft to make an explosive tipped arrow.
We made these in the 70's. Pipe cutter to remove the rounded end, pull the crimp off. Our powder of choice was "D" engines for model rockets. There are three types of powder and three burn rates. Test them for the one you want. One wrap of duct tape around the fuse is a perfect fit in the nozzle. Insert the fuse, invert so open end faces up and add powder. Usually a tablespoon was enough. Stuff the interior with old newspaper almost to the end then seal it with JB Weld and let cure for 24 hrs. Light and take cover, these will create shrapnel.
Wait, not everybody made napalm as kids? Oh wait, everyone here did, the rest of the normal people didn't, my bad.
I learned the same way as everyone else... Older brother taught me from some rando book from the library.
@@SlavicCelery i learned it one day after throwing a bunch of styrofoam into some gasoline and playing around with the goopy result for a while, before deciding to light it on fire and throwin it like a catapult. Was like when i was 12 or something.
@@timourmarimuntz5294 the fun way
@Deez Nuts yes! I couldn't remember the name.
@Deez Nuts Best way to learn about OSS tips and tricks from a non-military source.
Dude. I made those 25yrs ago. They are dangerous but fun. Bury one just to the top and put a 1gallon zip lock filled with gasoline on top. Awesome ending of a fireworks show.
I actually like the butcher paper idea for this use case. It does well enough to show the spread pattern, unless it’s an actual directed explosion or shaped charge it’s not likely to be much different in the open area direction than the other 3 sides. Plus it’s reusable, so it’s environmentally friendly too lol
Interesting channel, pretty sure UA-cam would have been much more interesting in the early 90s, we woulda really gotten in trouble. Glad you guys are doing things safe and legal, enjoyed it!
Long ago an uncle told me how he used to make these in the 60's when he was a teenager. He and his friends got into all sorts of stuff growing up in san francisco, which is a big reason my mom made sure to get us out of there back then.
I can’t believe how many other people here made these as a kid!
and this man earned him a spot on a watchlist, like everyone else watching these types of videos.
I was looking for a quick and easy way to build something and I had a pellet gun so I had MANY of empty containers laying around.
I still can't hear right and that was 10 years ago lol. We always had more fun with the pill bottle bombs tho. Sometimes it just flared up, but one time it turned a 1/16 scale ford explorer into a memory. Plus you didn't have to check and make sure everyone was alive afterwards 😂😂😂
I'm not confessing to anything....I'm an innocent bystander who witnessed nothing, didn't see nothing, didn't hear nothing, don't remember nothing or anybody.....that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
No internet back in the day, so, we had to make our own fun using different sources of sketchy information. A friend of mine would have done less if he had been able to see it on UA-cam.
The reason the black powder mixed with smokeless powder worked so well is because of the nitroglycerin and the overall larger gas’s volume that the smokeless powder creates, the black powder speeds up the reaction instead of making it just hiss or something
tried mixing them together a bunch of times and it only hissed. any idea of what the optimal ratio would look like?
I've got a pound of old Pyrodex and a half pound of old smokeless leftovers of many different flavors, I'll try and mix them together and try in cardboard tubes. Not expecting much tho..
@@TrashPanda71a big issue with that is the pressure that cardboard can build up
@@BoredAmerican
Worked better than expected.
Nitrocellulose*
I used to put these into model rockets. The fuse of the cricket bomb touched the back of the rocket motor (clay removed), causing it to detonate mid-aid. One time the weight was off balance, causing the rocket to fly sideways. Detonated on someone's roof.
As a kid in the 60's I remember using match heads as a filler
@Benjamin Muller Yeah, we had a hard time getting fuses, so we'd use a flash bulb for a brownie camera, a long wire set and a D cell for a detonator.
Same here but we never had them explode we used them as mortar's and rockets.. We could launch using a metal pipe and hit a 6' square at about 150 yds We fired over water and beach so we knew what was down range all of the time.
Yes....I used them too. Used to get a box of 50 matches for 50 cents. Used wire cutters to chop them off
@@shannondove9029 did you just try to brag about your match prices? Also that's not cheap at all
@@boratsagdiyev5679 what are you talking about?
I'll never forget when the Newark police came my house at 5:00pm, there to show my parents remnants/shrapnel from by first pipe bomb, clean bust and I didn't even get in trouble. It was 1969, I was 14.
Hehe, good times.
I never knew these had a name....used to make em all the time as a kid. It's sad to think that I was probably the last generation of kids who will be able to enjoy fun like this (late 90's and early 00's). Although I doubt much will ever change for kids out in the really rural areas thankfully. Anymore it seems like the rural areas are the last decent and free places in America
We called them crater makers.
In 1980 our school mate Michael Bealey, age 12, was killed by one of these. He brought the recipe with him when they moved from Ontario to Saskatchewan. We all started making them in the summer of 1980. In November or December of that year he lit one off in his basement while he was alone. Fragments cut into his chest and he bled out. His grandmother heard the noise and went to the top of the stairs to yell down to the basement if he was okay and Michael said yes Grandma, I'm okay. But he wasn't. It was the first time I was at an open casket funeral. Don't f*** around with explosives. Michael was his father's only child. Imagine how devastating that must have been on his father and his grandmother.
I like the friend you acquired at 4:47. You could say that you got stick bugged.
Good catch! The friendly bug was placed safely away from the explosions.
for those who couldn't see it its on his left arm on the right
I just came to see if anyone else noticed
I used to sit and smoke the whole time I was reloading for pistol or rifle shells, But when the black powder came out it was ALL serious business making these. One spark, even a static spark can cause a serious explosion. These co2 devices were equal to or stronger than 1/4 stick loads. They could throw shrapnel up to 50 yards or more. If sealed with candle wax, they would even work under water. Glad I survived the 70's lol.
I know two different kids when I was younger who made these. Both used firecracker fuses. They both have pincers for left hands. Other than that they are OK except for the brother who had to pick up the fingers of one
I knew there was a good reason I was saving all my empty CO2 canisters
Dangerous little bundles of joy...
I'm not real surprised that the black powder-only bomb had low fragmentation; black powder has pretty low brissance.
@@lairdcummings9092 Yeah it's a sub-sonic reaction, likely why most black powder guns used .50 cal sized rounds. They just used the shear weight and size of the lead round instead of modern rounds which rely more on the shock effect.
When I was a teenager, 14-16 my friends and I would buy whole boxes of matches, 50 books to a box and man, would we have fun.
Never made a cricket bomb, flash powder in spent .308 casings always made a good bang
@old school honour and respect. and the possibility of increasing the danger/dumb factor by replacing the primer :D
ATF would like to know your dog's location.
When i was a kid my parents got my brother and into model rockets... Used to break up the solid fuel packs and stuff it into .308 and -06 shells, put in the igniter, crimp it, and use them with the electric firing device to blast ground squirrels... Ah the joys of growing up in rural Arizona.
I enjoy the respectable boom you get when I used to put foil and muriatic acid in a plastic pepsi or coke bottle. Oh man! I remember when I was in middle school, my best friend and I lived on opposite sides of a old gravel pit, used for a concrete company. Anyway... the plastic ketchup bottles ( the kind with the no leak, squeeze top), those things would stretch and stretch and stretch to double its size and the boom was always epic! Especially since it was down in this bowl shaped pit with 360° of sound reverberating walls. Shooodang those were the days. Anybody ever make your own bottle rockets outta shotgun shells, some balsa wood and a basic chemistry set from a local hobby store etc? Got pretty good at it, to the point where we engineered a secondary charge to go off and deploy a parachute. Cant wait to tinker around and share my childhood joys with my kid. Safety first of course.
@@chrish5224 I would suggest you leave out / save for later those that involve hot acid spraying around... Getting burns or "tatoos" from flash powder explosions is one thing, hot acid in your face is something else.
I used to make these things the early 90's using 4F flash powder. I put one in a model rocket and the longest burning jet I could find. Could barely hear the report when it went off. Used to have a lot of fun with these things.
"Things got out of hand here" that's classic!
At this point the algorithm is combined with mind reading technology
No fukn way! These things actually have a name! "Someone" used to make these lil things thinking he invented them🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Finally someone invented a use for cheap drones.
Here I was thinking I was a genius 25 years ago when I made these as a kid... I didn't know they were called cricket bombs, never knew anyone else made them.
I used to fill them with smokeless powder. I knew it was sketchy as hell, even at 13 or 14. Always made sure me and the boys were behind cover, lol.
I got tired of being so paranoid about when and where I could set them off, so instead, I started filling ping pong balls with smokeless, and wrapping them with an absurd amount of electrical tape. They were decent, we called them "black thunders," lol.
Couple years later I'd discover traditional salutes, and that ended my experiments with sketchy ass homemade crap. I still think kids that age would be better served with salute cannons, or those mug-type devices. All the bang with hardly any of the risk. Big harm reduction, imo.
If I had made these 25 years ago in the UK, I would have had to have used homemade black powder. Obviously I didn't :o)
The look on my metal shop teachers face when he realized the "lamp" I was making was a percussion cap fired salute cannon.
I used black powder and green waterproof fuze. I thought "if these are designed to hold a huge amount pf pressure, then these should make a great grenade" I once found one with an inverted bottom.
Back then I was also taping a pack of morning glories to cans of butane.
That all abruptly stopped once jail time was mentioned.
I had know idea they had a name I made a few in 1985-86 I thought I was a genius.
@@richardhenry1969 EXACTLY my story too. Roughly .same years.
One time we stuffed a Co2 full of match heads, pinched it and threw it in a campfire. It nearly put it out. Another time we were throwing aerosol cans in the campfire. The best was the can of rug shampoo. It left a momentary horizontal trail of white foam 20' long and the diameter of the can that fell across logs etc. and held it's shape then melted.
I learned enough to get myself arrested. I was making blackpower when I was a teenager in the mid 60s
Yeah, I wanted to learn about explosives, but what I really learned is that holding cells suck.
I subscribed. It seems your channel is all about blowing things to pieces. This is content I can enjoy.
These little guys used to really piss off some woodchucks. Allegedly
First learned about these when I was 12. My good friend Jon watched his buddy lose 4 of his fingers on his right hand and had to help find his fingers in a field in the middle of the night.
After hearing that story is when I decided to give it a try. The trick: ALWAYS use cannon wick that fits snugly and you'll probably be keeping all your fingers. Probably
Next, let's see a hybrid flash powder/nitrocellulose mix. I can tell you from experience, adding smokeless to a faster explosive like flash powder or HMTD, massively increases power over either one by themselves.
When I was younger I dissolved one ounce of Acetone Peroxide (I know, but everyone starts somewhere😉) into three ounces of smokeless powder with acetone, then formed it into small cylinders with cardboard tubing and let them dry. Those were terrifying little cylinders for their size. I also formed some into small balls (1/4"-3/8") and shot them from a slingshot rifle, (it used a piece of cord behind the pouch for a trigger so nothing was pinched inside the pouch). The balls were impact sensitive with the acetone peroxide above 200 FPS, but the nitrocellulose decreased it's sensitivity enough to handle safely and shoot from a slingshot safely. That was a fun little thing, I was shooting moths on the walls of my dad's shop with them, I only had to hit within a few inches of them and the shockwave would strip the wings off them lol. Man I did sketchy stuff when I was a kid lol.
Where do American kids get those ideas from??? For sure not from basic school education!
@@pebo8306 shit just randomly pops into your head. We built different
@@skrimper 🤣😂🤣-LOL:Best possible answer!
You should do a video series on that stuff
@@321aquaponics4 I would love to do so but I keep energetic materials off my channel for safety reasons (safety from the law), APCP rocket fuel is as far as I will go with energetics on my channel. Despite that I'm an avid follower of channels like Labratory of Liptakov and other similar like-minded channels, I do wish I could pursue some of my "other" interests more freely.
You should cut grooves into the canister with a Dremel tool or something to produce more fragmentation. That would be an awesome video comparing cut vs not cut canisters and diffrent paterns to see how it changes the fragmentation.
There's just something so beautiful about blowing shit up. I love your channel keep up the great work guys.
I used to build these all the time with fine black powder I got from the local gun store. My friends showed me the genius of them. They’re pretty powerful. I’d blow giant old TVs to tiny pieces. I never had a problem with shrapnel, the CO2 container usually just peeled open.
The difference between screwing around and "being scientific" is recording data. This definitely counts.
Yup.. Evidence... that's just what we need..
I made the combination black/smokeless powder CO2 bomb in the 80's. I lost 2 two fingers not counting other scars. I did it when I was 14 and got a thumb ( toe to hand transplant) for my 15th birthday. It could have been worse. Good video, thank you.
How did it go wrong? Did you ignite it in your hand?
Lost my left hand to it
Dude! I made sparklers bombs for years. The last one was the LAST one. I blew away a refrigerator. The blast radius was 150 feet. I won't make another one.
ATF would like to know your location
Crazy what sparklers, aluminum foil and black tape will do.
I am not Impersonating a law enforcement agent!! I am a real FBI Informant.
“We don’t have the budget to be scientific”
Probably because everything you do costs $200 at minimum
Except these bombs cost, at the most, $100. If that
Black powder is cheap and if you make you’re own. Fuse is about 10-20$ and black powder is 20$
@@kracksquatch512 he’s talking about the tax stamp
@@MarcusToroian That was Obviously factored into my count too. I went out and Bought everything he listed with the Total *After Tax* being *$97*
That was the *"Minimum"*
@@kracksquatch512 in order to register a destructive device, you have to buy a $200 tax stamp for each device.
Co2 grenade, that brings back memories. To be honest, surprised I still have all my fingers and toes
I had no idea there were called “cricket bombs” or that they were destructive devices. Me and my friend used to make these as kids using powder and fuses from arial fireworks as a kid. Guess I’ve been a “felon” for longer than knew.
Yep. As a kid I made some by grinding down Estes rocket motor propellant. I played around with all kinds of stuff making smoke bombs, cannons, rockets, etc. Needless to say things were much different in the 80's and 90's.
@@justme-ij2qy And things were equally as different from the 80's and 90's in the 50's and 60's and so on. Go back to the late 1800's early 1900's and you could buy opium over the counter and a mixture of opium and alcohol was used instead of a pacifier to prevent teething children from whining (it worked, but sometimes they got a bit too quiet...). Any random fool could buy dynamite at a random farming supply store. You could mail order submachine guns at least into the 1930's. It was common for children to bring a knife to school; how else could you make bark-boats and play mumblety-peg (which usually involved throwing pocket knives so they stick into the ground close to your own foot).
@@soylentgreenbthe early 1900s is when this country started going down the toilet
Haters usually never learn beyond their knowledge barriers because they are too sensitivite about certain topics. This simulation is very scientific and very interesting!
The ones I definitely didn't make as a kid just went off like rocket engines.
That definitely didn't happen to me, and I definitely didn't fix that with hot glue.
@@Colonel_Flanders sexy Flanders.
The jb weld putty worked great too... supposedly.
Totally amazing that YT is allowing this content
Me too
I made dozens of these in my late teen years. I never knew they had a real name. Also didn't know they were a felony until years later. I destroyed many things with them.
I made these as a kid in the 70s. I epoxied carpet nails to the outside of the co2 cylinder. Set one off in the inside of my dads aluminum shed. The nails were imbedded in a great circular pattern in the shed . The shed leaked in the rain from that day on ! Sorry dad !!
"Things got out of hand" hahahaha i see what you did there. 🤣🤣
Great PSA. Protestors in France could have learned a thing or two. "Things go wrong" is a mantra.
Good example why not to put smokeless powder in a black powder riffle. It is powerful.
I worked a crime scene where an adult bully in the neighborhood was targeted with one of these that was used as a boobytrap. It basically blew three of his fingers off. We followed ant trails to locate chunks of the guys fingers.
any pictures perchance?
@@thatrandomscientist1704 I have no images in my possession. Sorry!
Back of that shirt is almost as good as:
" I am a bomb disposal technician.
If I am running, try to keep up."
we used to grind match stick heads into a fine powder and cap with bluetack when I was a kid
I made one of these when I was 9yrs old and it went off while I was holding it in my hand. I spent many days in the hospital and needed a blood transfusion. It took off two fingers and a thumb. They were able to reattach one finger and my thumb with about 240 stitches and I have to say this brought back horrible memories I remember every day. I'm seriously lucky to be alive I'm sure . please be careful people and don't end up like me.
You don't need powder at all. Take a full co2 cart and 2.5 feet of fuse wrap it tightly around the cart leave 10 or so inch tail for lighting and enjoy
That works?????
Yup
You can hold it with some tape or even tinfoil it must be tightly wraped. For the gas to expand and cause the destruction you desire. Please move far away and use proper safety gear
45 years ago we would take the bearings out of paint spray can, find a pipe that they would fit tight in, and use a black jack firecracker to propel them.
Also we would cut the bottom and andtops off of beer cans. Stack around 5 with duct tabe and the bottom can with a small cut in the side with the bottom on.
Dropped a pensy pinkie rubber ball on and use lighter fluid as a propelmen
You should try power augering a small (2 - 3 feet deep) hole in the dirt (minimizes shrapnel effects), dropping the cricket bomb in under a water filled (to add weight, use a syringe) tennis ball. Usually goes pretty high. Angle the hole for a mortar effect. Use water color paint for a splash effect.
4:47 I love the stick bug just hanging out on your arm.
Wonder what would happen if you scored the cO2 cartridge in a waffle pattern, would it produce consistent fragments or still open like a banana
OOOOOoooooo I want my childhood back so we can try that! DAMN it never ocurred to us to try that! We would just tape nails or pennies to ours.
reminds me of making homemade .22 "hollow points" by scoring an X on them.
@@eclipsegst9419 used to do the same, it was super effective
Ooh, knurling a co2 canister might work
These things are fun to go fishing with.
Those are called ground pounders. You bury them 4 inches down
One of the first things my wife did when we first moved in together was throw out all my home-made device shells and fuses. It was my favorite way to get rid of fire ants.
As you can see things got out of hand here hahaha, just mint!
I made those when I was a teenager, but I used powder out of constructions pin gun cartridges which is laced with nitroglycerin. As a fuse I used match heads stuffed in the neck of the cartridge with one glued at the very top, so you can strike it like a match. Thank goodness that never got in trouble for this.
Would have been cool to see a slow mo of one in some ballistic gel.
Yes, I agree. That would look great.
No budget to be scientific, just slow down the playback speed that's provided by this platform. Spoiler alert, an explosion is just an extremely fast fire.
I found that if you only fill the CO tube 2/3 full with Black Powder, you get a better bang.
You must have some badass crickets where you are for them to have a bomb made especially for them.
They got the name cricket bomb from the noisy cricket from MIB because of how strong they are for how small they are.
I’ve seen Texas crickets takeoff with small children and pets!
These videos remind me of my wild childhood and the many paddlings on my behind at the behest of my crying & terrified mother.
what if you took a dremel and grooved a pineapple shape into it, or checker board pattern, would you get better fragmentation?
Yes of course.
“keep it at arms length”. Good one.
Made it here from Mrgunsngear and just subbed. This looks like a fun channel.
These are good as blasting caps as well.
Lmmfao! "Eerrr meh geerd that ain't scientific" 😂🤣🇺🇸
I had a friend in high school that made these. Except he bought the little hundred packs of paper matches and pack them in after cutting the heads off and matches to make the fuel for the explosion. Needless to say one day he was making them in his room and was using a screwdriver to pack the cutoff match heads into the small neck of the CO2 cartridge as he usually did.
The friction ignited the match heads while he was packing them and holding it in his hand.
It exploded and tore the meat off of a few of his fingers. Shattered the glass that he had put on top of his desk and his brother was in the room at the time watching. His brother was knocked over they were both temporarily deaf. They both suffered glass shrapnel wounds as well.
They got a visit from the ATF. I think we were like 15 at the time maybe 16
I love this channel, but given my viewing habits on youtube I'm probably on some watchlist by now lol xD
I used to make these and they were pretty powerful. Years later I made some and they were far less potent. I believe the cartridges were cheapened up "thinner".
Someone has to keep those prosthetics companies in business!