Post
by timmy » Wed Aug 11, 2010 5:07 am
I like that idea!
Many folks often say that they wish the smell of a new car could be bottled and sold as a fragrance. I've always been partial to the smell of burning gunpowder, myself. However, there was once a day that I got more of the smell of burning gunpowder than I bargained for!
For most of our married life, Gail and I have heated our homes with wood. For years at first, I would take the truck up into the mountains and cut my own wood. There is a saying that "Good wood warms twice," meaning when you burn it, but also when you cut and split it, and that is true. It can be backbreaking work to harvest firewood up in the mountains.
Then, later on, we began to buy wood. Burning firewood makes quite a mess in the house: There are ashes to haul out and there's always a certain amount of smoke that gets out when you charge the stove, which soots up everything light-colored and gets on the windows. Insects and spiders hide under the bark and also make a mess when the wood is brought in.
Finally, later on yet, we had a house with a pellet stove, which burned compressed sawdust.
In all these cases, there was the task of getting the wood and bringing it into the house on a cold winter's day, which wasn't always so pleasant. It was common to get at least one cold snap where the temperature dropped to -50º C or so for a week or two. The doors would freeze closed at this temperature!
Anyway, back to gunpowder, keeping the woodpile dry was always a concern, because it is hard to light a fire when the wood is wet. Once, when out hunting with a friend, I noted a can of IMR3031 in the door pouch of his truck. I asked whether he was reloading in the field, and he told me that the can was full of miscellaneous powder he'd gotten from ammunition he broke down. He used this powder to help start fires when wood was wet, as the powder burned quite hot and helped to get the wood burning.
Always dealing with the issue of wet wood made me alert to such solutions, and it wasn't long after this that I bought about 10 boxes of reloaded .45 ACP from the local gun shop. The owner, a friend, allowed me to buy the ammunition if I promised to break it down and reload it. (It is illegal to sell reloaded ammunition here without a permit.)
I did pull the bullets and break down the 500 rounds. It looked to me as if the powder was Bullseye, but of course only a fool would reuse powder that he couldn't positively identify, especially fast burning powder, as this clearly was. I had a large plastic tub of the stuff and saved it for that snowy day when the wood would be wet and hard to ignite.
One day, in the middle of winter, such a day arrived. My Wife was reading to the younger two kids on the couch and the older two were on the floor in front of her. I filled the stove with some wet wood, cardboard, and newspaper, and then got my gunpowder fire starter and sprinkled an ample amount on the cardboard. Thinking that if some was good, more was better, and too much would be just enough, and considering the wetness of the wood, I poured more on. And then, a little more.
I touched off the whole business with a match and sat back to watch the results. Soon a huge "WHOOOSH" ensued, followed by a huge tongue of flame about 6 feet long, looking like something from a dragon on a Chinese silk robe.
The room immediately filled with smoke as I kicked the stove door shut with my foot, having rolled backward to avoid the flame. The stove was roaring and actually pulsing, trying to find enough air to feed the inferno that was roaring inside. I was very worried that the stove pipe would come undone and leave us with a real problem...
Thankfully, this didn't happen, and soon the fire died down a bit. I looked at my Wife and kids, who were all staring wide-eyed at my "science experiment." All over the room, little flakes of powder were slowly settling, followed by a creamy thin thread of smoke. The room smelled like an army had been shooting .22 LR in there all day.
"What on earth are you doing?!" my Wife yelled at me. She was ANGRY!!!
Needless to say, the explanation of my intention and the small diversion from the planned results did nothing to assuage my Wife's fury. I was strictly informed that such experiments would NOT be repeated.
That was the most extreme incident of "gun smell" in the house that I've experienced, and it was the only time, by command of the Maharani. Yikes!
“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”
saying in the British Royal Navy
