Anvil Firing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_firing

by lelf • 7 years ago

174 89 7 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

I hope if aliens size us up, it's by a random sample of Wikipedia pages. That would be a lot of fun.

golemotron• 7 years ago

It's nice that the 'Dangers' section of the article tells you exactly what hazards to avoid if you're going to do it.

fredland• 7 years ago

yeah that persuaded me to not try it.

Millennium2• 7 years ago

I wonder: they mention that the powder can ignite prematurely when you place the top anvil. Could you prevent that by putting a piece of paper between the anvils? It seems to me that the paper should prevent sparks by preventing direct contact between the anvils, but be weak enough that it shouldn't affect the deflagration too much.

Then again, I'm not an expert in this kind of thing. Would this somehow make things way more dangerous in a different way?

snazz• 7 years ago

I’m not an expert either but I would have guessed that the force from the top anvil acts like a hammer and detonates the gunpowder that way instead of with sparks.

larkeith• 7 years ago

They mention using a playing card between the anvils in the article, and in at least one [1] video they seem to use paper between the anvils as well, so it seems probable it would work - or at least not hurt.

[1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=S8HbhiRlgM0

mojomark• 7 years ago

Anvil firing clip from Sweet Home Alabama movie: https://youtu.be/WqAo_AJHnf4

mcguire• 7 years ago

I have been living in Alabama for 12 years and I still haven't seen any any anvil launches. I am beginning to wonder if the rumors about this state are false.

oflannabhra• 7 years ago

One of my favorite videos of anvil firing: https://youtu.be/lKjpgCraVGk

dmckeon• 7 years ago

The series of videos from Scott & Nate Wadsworth, aka "Essential Craftsman" with several featuring Cy Swan, are good example of some of the best YouTube has to offer: great content for makers and DIY folks, well produced, well shot and edited, and they have very little extraneous framing - don't start them with the sound muted, because whatever they are talking about starts right at the top. That they (probably Nate) time-lapse/fast-forward through most anything repetitive shows just how to save the viewers' time while still showing the work.

jcims3• 7 years ago

Everybody needs a Cy in their life.

yoodenvranx• 7 years ago

If you are even remotely into tools, construction work or DIY you need to binge-watch "Essential Craftsman"! It's one of the best channels for that kind of stuff.

Griever• 7 years ago

The "Spec House" series is incredibly valuable if you're even remotely interested in building your own home. I'm incredibly excited to see how that series continues!

I consider Essential Craftsman to be one of the best YouTube channels out there. If you're interested in tools, construction or history in heavy industry, definitely give it a look.

jcims3• 7 years ago

Also known as anvil shooting. Some great vids on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuQy0mqW5I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKjpgCraVGk

swayvil• 7 years ago

The sound! It's like Thor's hammer cracking a frost giant's skull. I wanna see it in irl.

_2d30• 7 years ago

Ah, yes, a sound we are all of course much more familiar with.

gaze2• 7 years ago

“On September 5, 2011, The Science Channel premiered Flying Anvils, a reality television series about anvil firing.[6]”

They really seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

chrisseaton• 7 years ago

Seems like a legitimate and interesting scientific and cultural topic. Probably fun to watch - bigger than life, noisy and exciting.

Sometimes the most interesting programs go into depth about some esoteric topic and can end up revealing a lot.

What’s your problem with it?

agency• 7 years ago

Is there really enough there to support an entire reality television _series_?

jtms3• 7 years ago

Would rather watch this than 99% of the garbage that qualifies for programming - might actually learn something about physics, chemistry, engineering, etc

Millennium2• 7 years ago

Since we're apparently all posting vids, here's what happened when the Finnish hydraulic press guy learned about anvil firing: https://youtube.com/watch?v=S8HbhiRlgM0

arxpoetica• 7 years ago

I love that YouTube channel..."and here we go!"

bitdestroyer• 7 years ago

“Lets.... deal with it.”

mikeash• 7 years ago

“Individuals may be crushed by a falling anvil.“

Life imitating art once again, I see.

raverbashing2• 7 years ago

Science(-like) projects with little regards (but not too little as to become dangerous) for safety regulations are a great way of bonding between father and son.

(Though I never did such things with my father or alone, as I did not have access to the needed equipment)

philipkglass2• 7 years ago

My father demonstrated the combustion of a mixture of potassium nitrate and sugar to me when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I was instantly hooked. The effect is spectacular: thick white smoke, hissing pink flames, a huge charred mass of fluffy carbon, and the smell of burnt sugar in the air. My interest in chemistry up to that point had centered around growing crystals. After that first smoky demonstration I wanted to make fireworks.

It's still possible to have that bonding experience today if you have some open space where there is nothing flammable. I see that Amazon has multiple sellers of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient. As recently as last year I have also seen it sold as stump remover in the gardening section of Fred Meyer (Kroger).

Potassium nitrate plus various fuels like charcoal and/or dusting sulfur, sugar, and iron filings is great fun and relatively benign. Do any grinding by hand in a porcelain mortar and pestle and there's really no risk of mechanical ignition. The mixtures don't burn fast enough to risk explosive effects unless ground very finely or strongly confined [1]. I had to photocopy the black powder and pyrotechnics sections of The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives from the library, but today you can find a full scan of that book (and much more) online.

[1] You can also make more vigorous mixtures with potassium nitrate by using powdered metal fuels, but you're not going to find those fuels just sitting on the shelves of ordinary retailers.

raverbashing2• 7 years ago

Yes, yes, though the potassium salt is restricted in some places, the sodium salt not so much (and it works almost as well, though it's hygroscopic as F)

Those were cool experiments :) though I never got much bang for the buck (more like a schwoooooo)

jancsika• 7 years ago

UK: This is a great way to test anvil quality.

US: This is a great way to shoot heavy shit really high.

jtms3• 7 years ago

UK: let’s shoot heavy shit really high but pretend we aren’t at all amused by it

village-idiot• 7 years ago

This is serious business chaps, I don’t know why you’re grinning so much.

cs702• 7 years ago

"Dangers: Individuals may be crushed by a falling anvil. The black powder can also prematurely ignite when the top anvil is placed. As in any case where an explosive is confined on all sides by metal, shrapnel presents a hazard. If a damaged or structurally weak anvil is used, the anvil base may shatter upon ignition."

YjSe2GMQ• 7 years ago

If there's one thing anyone that plays with explosives should know is the lethality of flying shrapnel. A simple mix of KNO3 with sugar, when ignited inside a metal pipe, is a very effective killing device. Please take hard cover (hill, thick wall; with distance) when exploding anything that's not paper.

noahl• 7 years ago

Hi! I enjoyed reading your comment, but please be careful before posting working explosive recipes on the internet nowadays. It's sad that we have to think about it, but we do.

(Unless you deliberately posted one that doesn't work, in which case, you got me :) )

emptybits• 7 years ago

"Anvils were also traditionally fired on St. Clement's Day, honoring Pope Clement I, the patron saint of blacksmiths and metalworkers."

Hm. Obscure. Intriguing. Okay. Then briefly down a rabbit hole I learn that Saint Isidore of Seville is the patron saint of "the Internet, computer users, computer technicians, programmers, students"[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville

rixrax• 7 years ago

Does this mean that some hundred years from now, we’ll be blowing MacBooks up to the sky?

crikli• 7 years ago

Sure, pre 2016 MPBs anyway! ;)

jcims3• 7 years ago

I mean we’re kinda there already - https://youtu.be/Tv1EVfENcjs

legohead• 7 years ago

from reddit [1]:

* Saint Bartholomew was skinned alive - he is the patron saint of butcher, tanners, book binders etc.

* John the Apostle was boiled alive - he is the patron saint of burn victims

* Simon the Zealot was sawed in half - he is the patron saint of sawyers, lumberjacks and curriers (leather tanners who specialize in shaping and stretching leather)

* St Sebastian was shot full of arrows, recovered, an beaten to death by a bunch of clubs by the emperor's soldiers - he's the saint of archers and soldiers

* St Barbara was tortured and then beheaded, when they were carting her body off, the cart was struck by lighting, catching fire - she's the patron saint of firefighters, artillerymen, and those who work with explosives

* St Lawrence got cooked to death over hot coals. After being roasted for a while, he told his executioner "I'm done on this side, turn me over" - patron saint of cooks and barbeque and comedians

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/b9u3d8/statue_of_sain...

jcoffland2• 7 years ago

Here's the Wikipedia on St. Lawrence: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Lawrence

pm90• 7 years ago

This seems like Polytheism to me.

I find it deeply amusing how much Mankind loves polytheism and yet most of today's major religions are monotheistic.

askvictor• 7 years ago

So what did Saint Isidore suffer to become the patron saint of the Internet? Get trolled?

andrepd• 7 years ago

St Lawrence

According to Wikipedia his story is apocryphal.

TomMckenny• 7 years ago

St Sebastian is also the gay saint, boyfriend of Maximian or Diocletian or both. And while I imagine this is not the canonical myth, it is certainly more fabulous.

AdmiralAsshat• 7 years ago

Saint Nicolas (the historical Turkish man, not Santa) gave money to poor families that would have otherwise been forced to sell their daughters into prostitution. He is thus the patron saint of prostitutes.

simonw• 7 years ago

My favourite resource for patron saints is https://www.catholic.org/saints/patron.php

HankB99• 7 years ago

This is done (or was done) every year at the Falling Leaf BMW Motorcycle rally in Potosi Missouri. It's pretty impressive to see how high the anvvil goes.

rhn_mk1• 7 years ago

That explains the cartoon gag.

Endy• 7 years ago

I am suddenly reminded of the one Animaniacs skit - "Let the anvils ring!"

jtms3• 7 years ago

I love that “Dangers” gets its own subheading, though it probably could fill its own dedicated page

haihaibye• 7 years ago

[Roadrunner citation missing]

JustSomeNobody• 7 years ago

I honestly thought this was going to be a new business slang for reducing workforce numbers.

OneWordSoln• 7 years ago

You're not the only one.

userbinator• 7 years ago

Try to lift an anvil by hand, then watch it get rapidly thrust dozens of feet into the air by a really small quantity of explosive. Demonstrations like this really put the power density involved into perspective.

mikece• 7 years ago

My high school chemistry teacher told our class that in the very-old times at the county rodeo the trick was to coat the top of one anvil with nitroglycerine then VERY carefully place another anvil on top... then a sharp-shooter would shoot the anvil stack, igniting the nitro and shooting the upper anvil "at least 150 feet into the air."

The dude seemed old enough to have seen this done in antebellum days so we believed him.

rkagerer• 7 years ago

Wile E. Coyote approves.

honksillet• 7 years ago

Why doesn't th eycombinator link actually take you to wikipedia?

PopeDotNinja• 7 years ago

"The private citizen who carried out the order to fire the anvil was seriously injured."

warp_factor• 7 years ago

I thought this was a joke. Seems to be real though.

angry_octet• 7 years ago

A similar experiment, called a plate test, is used to evaluate explosives. A small charge is detonated under a very heavy steel plate, often 100mm thick. The height the plate is blasted gives a comparitive measure of power, and the size of the dent tells you about brisance, related to the speed of detonation.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370652.2016.11...

Anvil Firing

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