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[Old Koreelah]

Why?

 

 

[turboplanner]

......and your reason is?

 

 

[old man emu]

Ha! Ha! Got ya!

 

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Boiler stick, or copper stick as it was known in our neck of the woods because our boiler was a large copper vat over a wood fire. A cut-off broom handle. We still have one in our laundry (moved up from a wash house). Wifey doesn't want to catch her hand up in the agitator.

I'd actually be surprised of our 'Boiler' was made from copper,. . Mum and Dad bought the house in 1951, a year following my Birthday,. . .It was a damned expensive house actually,. .. I found out many years later that Dad paid over £390.00 for it on a ten year mortgage. . . . and Copper would have been in short supply just 6 years after the war. . . .My memory doesn't recall what metal our boiler was made from. . .

 

So, I will have to plead ignorance in that regard.. . .on the subject of 'Agitators'. . .I was fascinated at how the agitator in the Baby Burco washer could rotate one way, and then reverse to rotate in the opposite direction,. . .My Dad explained to me how it actually worked, which sparked my interest in engineering thingies. . .and why I got Meccano sets for several birthdays and Christmas prezzies. . .he obviously saw in me a bloke that was going to follow in his footsteps and I did. . .whilst my two male siblings followed other paths. . .I worked for his Company for five years until I achieved my engineering qualifications, whilst studying other things at night school ( aviation stuff ) in between playing in rock bands, and flying Tiger Moths on weekends . . .as you do. . .how the hell I did all this and found time to actually go to bed,. . .I cannot remember. . . I only needed around four hours sleep per night, and was off again. . doing something else. . . Which is quite possibly why I feel absolutely fecked at 67 years of age. . . . .unable to drag myself out of bed before 7.30 in the mornings, feeling like I've just done 4 rounds with Mohammed Ali. . . . .

 

 

[Phil Perry]

Boiler stick, or copper stick as it was known in our neck of the woods because our boiler was a large copper vat over a wood fire. A cut-off broom handle. We still have one in our laundry (moved up from a wash house). Wifey doesn't want to catch her hand up in the agitator.

You just 'Triggered' a memory there Peter,. . .I shall now proceed to bore you silly with it.

 

My childhood friend Johhny Porter, who was in my primary school class. . .and I used to hang out together and get up to all sorts of mischief. The street next to ours was due to be demolished, so we nicked as much of the lead, from water pipes that we could, as we had found out that you could melt it quite easily. Then we found some clay from the riverbank down the road, and made sme moulds, by pressing Sherriff badges into the clay, then heating the clay moulds in his, or My Mum's cookers until it went hard. Then we would pull the rubber hose off the boiler gas supply, . . light it with some swan vestas matches, and use the flame to melt some of our stolen lead piping into a steel bowl. . ..

 

We Poured the molten lead into our home made Sherriff's Star and Marshall badge moulds and made badges which we then sold to school friends for a tanner each.. . .we made nearly three quid doing this. . . three quid in 1956 was a bloody king's ransom. . .but we were caught and stopped by Johnnie's mum. . . the headmaster at the school said that they were the best castings he'd ever seen, but was horrified when we told him how we'd made them. . .another bloody anti-capitalist pig. . . .

 

 

[IBob]

You just 'Triggered' a memory there Peter,. . .I shall now proceed to bore you silly with it.My childhood friend Johhny Porter, who was in my primary school class. . .and I used to hang out together and get up to all sorts of mischief. The street next to ours was due to be demolished, so we nicked as much of the lead, from water pipes that we could, as we had found out that you could melt it quite easily. Then we found some clay from the riverbank down the road, and made sme moulds, by pressing Sherriff badges into the clay, then heating the clay moulds in his, or My Mum's cookers until it went hard. Then we would pull the rubber hose off the boiler gas supply, . . light it with some swan vestas matches, and use the flame to melt some of our stolen lead piping into a steel bowl. . ..

 

We Poured the molten lead into our home made Sherriff's Star and Marshall badge moulds and made badges which we then sold to school friends for a tanner each.. . .we made nearly three quid doing this. . . three quid in 1956 was a bloody king's ransom. . .but we were caught and stopped by Johnnie's mum. . . the headmaster at the school said that they were the best castings he'd ever seen, but was horrified when we told him how we'd made them. . .another bloody anti-capitalist pig. . . .

I trust you were wearing safety goggles, asbestos mittens, fireproof overalls, respiratory apparatus, safety helmet, steel capped boots, and that there had been a ceremonial Putting Out of the Orange Cones????

 

 

[onetrack]

Phil, some of your rantings are probably best easily explained, as being due to brain damage at an early age, caused by lead fume ingestion!

 

This thread turn is bringing back many memories of errant teenage behaviour, that would almost certainly see one jailed, in todays world of extreme over-reactions to errant behaviour.

 

When I was 14 and in a class with 50 other hormonal ratbags, the majority of them male, and from "lower-socio-economic" suburbs, there were a couple of ringleaders in ratbaggery - but I wasn't one of them, of course - I was just a follower!

 

A mate by the name of John Williams decided, at the end of term - when exams were over, and the teachers were past teaching for that term - and we were essentially bored out of our brains - that building a skyrocket was a brilliant idea.

 

John had apparently spotted a used Sparklets Soda Syphon canister, that would be ideal for making a skyrocket.

 

No doubt, John ended up being employed by NASA, such was his interest in rocketry (actually, I really don't know where he ended up, I haven't seen him since I left high school).

 

Firecrackers were easy to acquire back then, and it was nearing Guy Fawkes day, so we set off during lunch hour, into town, and bought a huge pile of firecrackers.

 

Several of us unrolled these firecrackers to obtain all the gunpowder, and proceeded to pack the soda syphon canister with it (totally unaware of the dangers of packing gunpowder tightly into containers, of course!).

 

This was all done in the secrecy of the classroom, behind raised desk lids, of course - and right under the eyes of our hopeless and helpless spinster teacher, who had little control over a bunch of borderline juvenile delinquent 14 yr olds.

 

When the skyrocket was finished, it was off down to the river embankment below the school, where it was duly attached to a stick, inserted in a small Coke bottle, and the fuse lit.

 

Fortunately, there was a suitable brick toilet block about 120 metres away from the ignition pad in the river bank, that we all decided was a suitable place to hide behind, to watch the "launch" of our space project.

 

I have no idea how we developed the caution that saw us retire to a safe distance from the launch pad. I guess at least one of us had half a working brain - perhaps it was at my suggestion, who knows?

 

We peered around the corner of the toilet block, with excitement levels at fever pitch - only to see the rocket explode with a huge BA-A-NG!, in a massive sheet of flame, and with a concussion that nearly broke windows in the school!

 

We raced back up to the school and put on nonchalant airs - but at least 6 or 8 of the girls fronted us with horrified looks, and questions about, "what was that huge EXPLOSION??".

 

Of course, we all feigned total ignorance of any explosion - let alone any bomb manufacturing - while we waited anxiously for interrogation by some of the more aggressive teachers.

 

Fortunately, nothing eventuated that day, or in following days, by way of enquiries from teachers, authorities, police, or anyone of importance - so our fears gradually eased.

 

What we did do, was return to the launch pad site, a day later, to examine in awe, the sizeable hole in the riverbank clay, caused by just a small container of packed gunpowder.

 

The Coke bottle had ceased to exist, it had been blasted into millions of tiny fragments, and some are probably still in low Earth orbit, fully 54 years later.

 

The whole dangerous exercise was probably a very good lesson - even though it was all carried out with no explosives knowledge, no education, and no overseeing authority.

 

It wasn't until several years later, when I was taught military engineering, and explosives handling, and mine warfare and demolition, that I realised just how lucky we were, with our amateurish explosive venture.

 

As has been noted - it's what you don't know, and haven't been taught, that will kill you - when it comes to adventuring outside your normal range of day-to-day activities.

 

 

[nomadpete]

I'm confused, Phil. Were you saying that your lovely mum or Beatrice was a "good old stick", or a old boiler? Such disparaging use of our language is the sort of stuff, up with which I will not put! (Note that the comma is used carefully)

 

Reference to a boiler stick has brought forth a flood of lost memories from my distant childhood

 

Thank-you

 

 

[IBob]

Yep, ours was a copper-stick. It was bleached white and sort of fluffy where the grain lifted.

 

And it had another function: you laid it across the top of the copper, and hung the pudding bag from it when making serious steamy puds & Christmas puds.

 

Likewise, when you went on holiday (one week, gritty beach on heaving grey Atlantic, cowering behind beach groynes to avoid exposure (not those sort of groins....or that sort of exposure!)) and forgot to tell the milkman: you laid it across the top of the bath and hung the muslin cottage cheese bag from it while it drained...

 

Folks wos nothing if not handy...back then...

 

 

[Bryon]

Spent some of my miss spent yoof making gunpowder with a friend of mine (he still is)

 

First year high school, serious case of boredom and Wow.....off to the hardware store, buy sulphur and saltpeter in 1 pound bags, grab all the charcoal out of the fireplace, mix it together, spread on a baking tray and dry it in his Nan's oven (luckily his Nan had an electric oven) and then use it to launch marbles out of various size pipes just to see how much damage they would do or how far they would go.

 

We spent quite a few weekends engaged in this activity

 

PS. Mum had a copper copper when we first came back to Melbourne in the sixties. Heated by a gas burner

 

And yes, she had a copper stick as well (ex broom handle)

 

 

[old man emu]

Youse is all wimps!

 

When I was 12, my mate's dad had an earth-moving company. We blew up Coke cans with electric detonators.

 

Then we got a box of matches and scrapped the phosphorus off the heads. We got two thick bolts and one nut. Partially screwed the bolt onto one nut, and filled the space above it with the phosphorus. Then we screwed the other bolt in and compressed the phosphorus. Thrown against a brick wall, the ensuing explosion sent the bolts God knows where.

 

You either survive adolescence, or get killed on the journey through it.

 

 

[Bryon]

Who are you calling a wimp?

 

My bolt and nuts were bigger than yours......

 

 

[IBob]

Who are you calling a wimp?My bolt and nuts were bigger than yours......

Questioning his manhood......good......good.............OME you could drop in something like 'yer Muvver wears Army boots'..........

 

 

[Admin]

To much trolling...thread closed