Not me but....
a mate of mine (must have been, ooh, five or six years now) and I, decided one day that we were going to go and make bombs. Not knowing much about this sort of thing myself I was sort of relying on him to come up with the goods.

Anyway, we went scavenging around his house for things to make bombs with. We needed something metal to put it all in, so we nicked a full tin of baked beans out of the cupboard (we couldn't find any empty ones). We also managed to procure a whole bog roll and some lighter fluid (or something similar, I don't really remember) and went off down the field to go and make this bomb.

Now this lad is pretty good with things like this (growing up with guns, and his Dad being a loon, I think he still might be the gamekeeper at Chatsworth House, anyway) so I left it up to him to make this bomb. He happened to have a pen knife so he pierced a hole in the top of the can to tip the beans out. Then proceeding to get this toilet roll, and cram as much of it as humanly possible into the (now empty) tin, leaving a foot-long length sticking out of the top to act as a fuse.

Then comes this lighter fluid/whatever that was squirted in in copious amounts. I think we actually used a whole tin/can/bottle of this stuff.

Now the idea was that one was going to light the fuse, while the other held it, arm held back, ready to throw it as far as humanly possible. We knew it was going to go up fast, but we didn't know it would be *that* fast.

Basically, the second this thing was lit (by me), this long fuse covered in lighter fluid burst into fire and went straight into the tin. And promptly exploded. While it was still in my mate's hand. I still don't know how any of those pieces of metal didnt kill either me or him - I caught one down the side of the face, while he had half a red hot baked bean tin stuck in his hand. I got him home and he was as white as a sheet, poor lad - luckily his Dad was cool about it and took my mate to the hospital before his Mum came home (she was at work at the time).

He still has the *massive* scars in his hand, he had to have about 30 stitches. I told my Dad that we were playing and got smacked around the head - it looked like that sort of thing, cause by that point it was all swelled up with this big cut in it. Ugh. Got away scot-free an' all.

So there you have it. Kids, don't play with beans. I mean fire.

EDIT: Whoops, sorry for length of post!
(The Wigmeister, Wed 3 Mar 2004, 22:18, Reply)