TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
Initially I was going to just leave it at the comment I made over at Caleb’s place. Then there was this incident brought to my attention by Lyle. That gave me the inkling to do a post, then Weer’d posted the video of what exactly happened in the FPS Russia incident. After watching the video I had to pick my jaw up off the floor at this idiocy.
First a note, do not recreate anything in this video, if you survive it will be either because of blind dumb luck or because God has a soft spot for you and your idiocy.
If you want to skip to 4:46 to save yourself 4 minutes and 46 seconds of pure garbage.
Does anyone see what he did wrong there? Anyone? Bueller?
He violated the first rule of explosives. He placed something between him and the explosive. You see when you detonate an explosive inside of something it propels the surrounding material out at extremely high velocity. This is the basic principle behind a pipe bomb. The pipe itself becomes extra shrapnel in the explosion.
This is why when we Idaho Stress test an object we ALWAYS place the explosives in front of the target. We never place the object in front of the explosive, that is how you take shrapnel to the face.
This is serious and this isn’t a joke. That camera man is lucky he isn’t dead or more seriously injured right now. Just because the object is larger in size doesn’t mean that it’s safe. What is a safe distance then? Lets use the 2008 toilet as an example.
We shot that toilet from approximately 400 yards away. When I say we in this case, I mean the entire shooting line. We found pieces of that toilet well over 100 yards away. Note we found them in a field meaning they had to be big enough to be easily seen above the grass.
I know we had approximately 6 lbs inside the large pumpkin in the second video. We found chunks, not bits, 125 yards away. Many of those chunks were also relatively light in weight and had a lower B.C. In that case we were shooting from about 30 yards, however it should be noted the object was not metal or dense in nature. Metal merely rips and turns in to shrapnel which is nothing more than a knife flying through the air.
Given those above examples, I honestly wouldn’t blow anything up that had metal in it from within 200 yards, and due to my love of cushion, I’d double it to 400 for extra safety.
Joe, Ry, and I all almost made this fatal mistake by accident. That is a wonderful example of how much power and force there is behind explosives and why you really need to pay attention. So please, if you want to go out and play with explosives, pay attention and pay heed to the first rule:
Never Place Anything Between You and The Explosive.
Remember to be careful out there and use your head. Sometimes well all forget to think things through, but the more you think about it, the better off you’ll be in the long run.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I will state this up front. TMW and I received a free pair of ESS frames and lenses with no attachment to them. They were ours to keep and use. I have worn them constantly since I got them at Boomershoot this year. So while I did get free stuff, there was no request for a review, and I was not compensated for this. In other words, the following is entirely my opinion and no one paid for any of this so the FCC can go suck an egg.
My previous eyewear was no slouch however they left something to be desired, doubly so since I was spending considerably more time with ear muffs on. For those who haven’t spent all day wearing hearing protection while wearing sunglasses, let me enlighten you. There is the frame which runs back behind the ear. Your ear muffs sit around your ear attempting to create a tight seal.
Two things happen because of that frame. Extra pressure is applied from the muffs pinching your head between your frames and a decrease in noise reduction from the hearing protection. Enter ESS’s Cross Series.
I have two of the three frames, the Cross Bow and Suppressor.
The Cross Bow frames are your everyday frames and I have worn them every day since Boomershoot and they have been amazingly comfortable. The rubber pads maintain the comfort while also helping to keep them from sliding off your head. I also use these when working in the shop doing things that don’t require hearing protection. That includes cleaning the toys, I just swap out for the clear lenses.
Every part of the series in individually replaceable. Scratch or destroy the lenses order new ones. Break a frame, order a new frame. Break a nose piece, order a replacement.
Now the Suppressor frames are why I fell in love with ESS, plus a little story I’ll get to here in a minute.
Notice how thin the ear pieces are on the frame? They are unbelievably flexible and well are wide and thin to help distribute pressure. Not only do they solve the pressure problem but the fact they are thin helps hearing protection form a good seal around your head. In other words they solve the two main problems you find with most safety glasses. The visibility while shooting with the copper lenses I might add is amazing. The rear strap effectively keeps the glasses in place while you’re not wearing hearing protection.
The comfort and visibility are quite nice. With most glasses if there is a gap anywhere I can see out, I will most often find myself using that to look, completely defeating the purpose of the safety glasses. These however I just look as I normally would, my peripheral vision remains while I cannot effectively look through gaps to try to skirt around the glasses.
These have become my go to glasses for yard and shop work where I need hearing protection. Even my father-in-law, who is a machinist, is going to be ordering a prescription set that he can use at work. My mother-in-law is getting a pair as well. I’m going to get a complete kit to toss in my range bag so I know I’ll always have a set with me when going to the range.
As a FYI for how much use these things see for those who haven’t met me, I am actually unbelievably anal when it comes to eye and hearing protection around tools and equipment. I know growing up with many 4th of July’s I’m sure I’ve done a decent amount of hearing loss. To top that off I enjoy my weekends by spending time shooting guns and blowing up explosives. I regularly wear plugs on top of wearing muffs specifically because I’m around such loud impulses.
It has become such a habit I wear hearing protection if I’m going to be around loud noises, it’s just easier to wear eye and ear protection than to buy hearing aids and hope the doc can repair my eyes… which brings us around to the story.
The Story
You see, your humble host has spent so much of his time around explosives, entertainingly close is entertaining for me. For many it’s terrifying but I’ve been around explosives enough that as long as you remember the cardinal rule I’m not that afraid. In other words a box on the ground with nothing between me and it doesn’t cause me discomfort being close.
Sometimes you just end up turning your clothes a nice shade of brown. So now you’re asking yourself, where is all this going? Well Tango got my earlier entertainingly close excursion on video.
Now, towards the end, the video doesn’t show it too well but I was easily with 10-15 feet of a bunch of those boomers. If you don’t understand how close that was, let me say, I should have been wearing my Carhartt jacket. What do you mean I hear you ask, well let me show you.
That wasn’t from the mud, that was from the ammonium nitrate prills. There were more injuries on the other side of my arm too. That peppering occurred during one of the last couple shots. So at this point I found my limit of how close I was willing to go.
But you see, your humble scribe often acts before the page fault has allowed all the necessary data to be returned to memory for the correct decision. Even more than that, often the page fault doesn’t occur until after the fact where the event itself causes the page fault.
Can you guess what happened? I’m sure you can, especially since this is a post about eyewear. Well let me set the stage for you.
It is the last day of Boomershoot. Everyone but staff has left and we are rounding up piles upon piles upon piles of explosives. There were so many explosives I said, and I quote,
You know something is horribly wrong with you when you’re finding it tedious and exhausting to set off hundreds of explosives.
If you’ve never been there for staff cleanup and haven’t worked the days preceding the event you just can’t really fully understand it. I seriously don’t know how Joe does it but I’m grateful that he does.
So I’m tired and exhausted and we’re tailing down the end of a very long week.
Continuing on though, we have to look for boxes of Boomerite that may have skipped over the berm, while walking behind the berm I discover an ant hill that is by no means small. Well to demolish said ant hill we place a couple of targets of Boomerite on it. I place them in such a manner as to give me the maximum distance without placing anything between me and it.
We start shooting explosives. We shoot more explosives. We shoot three waves of explosives most of us extremely tired and exhausted by the end. We call the range safe after the “last” boomers go off and we start cleaning up. Then as someone walks behind the berm, “TMM, we forgot the ant hill.”
Frick, Joe is already up on the hill in the direction I was originally going to shoot, well I only have one other option. I move about 120 degrees to give myself maximum distance from the target. Without realizing it though I have now inadvertently broken the cardinal rule. Parts of the anthill are between me and some of the explosive.
I squeeze off that round and immediately I’m encased in a cloud and my left hand, arm, and face feel like they’re on fire. It freaking hurts. I start falling off the top of the berm and immediately drop the muzzle and flip the safety on. Tango is behind me and I take off the rifle and hand it to him asking him to clear to make life easier. I probably could have cleared it, but at the time I was wanting to do it one-handed. One handed hand off is easier. I didn’t need to compound this with shooting myself or someone else.
Again for those who don’t know, my pain scale is screwed up compared to most people. There is a reason for that and I have done serious damage and then showed up to the doctor 2 day’s later with him saying “WTF!?”. I would take my pocket knife and dig out glass from my arm and hand when I would find it. In this case my arm felt like I had just take it to a belt sander with 120 grit on it.
I had a high number of pain exceptions and overloaded the system. It took a visual inspection to clear the faults. My brain registered a high number of impacts, thankfully only a few broke the skin, the two most notably.
You can’t really see it but the spot I’m bleeding out of on my knuckle is a ripped open scar, (it’s bigger now), and my lower arm and hand are both bright red from being peppered with smaller spots bleeding. The hit below my left eye was a solid hit, I washed some crap out of it when we got back to the hotel. Inspection of the ant hill after the fact indicated that I was also blowing up a stump. Also not visible in the picture was dirt and marks from larger debris that had obviously impacted the glasses.
I am extremely grateful I wasn’t any closer, given the few major cuts I had along with the peppering of bleeding I was on the hairy edge.
At the time I wasn’t so sure I was going to document my stupidity. I realized though now it actually is one of those things that speaks well for ESS. The glasses didn’t really end up with any pitting and they did their job. I will say I wish I had been at least wearing my flight gloves to save my hand.
So in closing a big thank you to the guys at ESS, especially Steve Dondero and Ari Drougas from ESS.
*Also I forgot to mention, there were a couple of folks shooting next to Shelly and Anette, and thus next to the ESS guys, who were shooting without eye protection. Yeah the ESS guys tried to give them free suppressors to wear but they turned them down. I’m of the mind that an extra 50 bucks in my pocket won’t make a lick if difference if the time comes my glasses have to do their job. In fact, I’ll probably wish I had sprung for the more expensive set.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
At which point I started laughing because honestly not everyone can effectively blow up a chunk of America. The good news is, I am capable and have resources to do exactly that. Not only do I have resources though, but the method of detonation provides a method of celebration endorsed by John Adams himself.
However, it must be said, please do not attempt to recreate any of this. I am trained and experienced in mixing and handling explosives. Just watch Caleb’s PSA. Where ever he says “Gun”, replace it with “Guns or Explosives”.
So without further ado, I give you the 4th of July, Boomershoot style.
I’m sure Mr. Adams would have approved.
As a note, it seems Sebastianknows this, but I still think my graphical display helps spread the joy.
*Sorry for the delayed post, Murphy hates me. YouTube was constantly quitting mid-download. I finally achieved success using IE. I left to go to a BBQ and my computer went to sleep. Thus it finally went up a day late.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
First up, we all know the identification abilities of both the press and law enforcement are how shall we say, lacking. So I have a feeling it probably was not an AK-47.
Next up is why I’m writing this post. If you’re going to play around with reactive targets, please be aware, be careful, and do it right. Doing stupid stuff can cause the powers that be to outlaw things in an effort to stop stupidity. They seem to think that laws will actually stop stupidity while those of us with functional brains know it just stops the smart and law abiding from enjoying freedom while making it a little more difficult for Darwin to do his job.
I’m not sure exactly why this fire started, there’s a couple different options. First is that the bullet itself struck something and caused a spark resulting in a fire. Not impossible, but not very likely unless they were shooting steel core surplus ammo. I find this a possibility given the expeditious fleeing.
Laughably is the idea that the explosion itself set something on fire. Combustion, and the heat that accompanies it, dissipates in milliseconds at most. For the fireballs we create at Boomershoot we actually have to have road flares to cause the fuel to ignite because there is no heat remaining as the vapor cloud expands. We have added things such as magnesium and other materials and this does help. Assuming this was Tannerite, it is possible that some of the elements were still combusting when it hit the ground, I just am a bit skeptical.
Lastly they were attempting to be Ry and recreate the following.
It is well known that creating a fireball like that can land you in an interesting position. The heat radiated after combustion begins can easily cause surrounding plant life to ignite. We do it prior to the fire season beginning as well for numerous reasons. Trying to put out a fire as it rages across the field wouldn’t exactly be fun. Think of the exploding toilet in 2008.
There is a second reason and that is Boomerite that is spread on the ground can actually cause a fire. The KClO3 breaks down exothermically under UV and can ignite surrounding material.
But seriously, if you’re going to go out into the woods and create a fireball. Be ready for some stuff to be lit on fire. It is going to happen and you better be ready to fight it. So if you’re going to do it please do the following:
Have fire extinguishers at the ready
Bring numerous friends to help extinguish the fire
Soak the surrounding area with water if it’s been dry over the previous couple days
Be ready with dirt buckets too
Have a plan to deal with fire
Seriously, it only takes one person to screw it up for the rest of us. Please, don’t be that guy.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
I still haven’t written up a couple posts from Boomershoot. It hasn’t been as much laziness as I have had other things of interest distracting me. From ideas, to projects, to wish lists(migrating the platform for the blog from Drupal)*.
There is one story from Boomershoot I do need to write up. The lesson though evidently was skipped over yesterday during some testing with Ry and Joe.
You see, after one of the boomers went boom, Ry had a new look.
I made the mistake of standing just slightly further back than Ry, not thinking about the amount of rain and how close we were. I had the same outfit afterwards.
(Yes it was cold).
Eventually I will write up a post on what happened at Boomershoot, one of the other reasons for the delay is it will also contain a review of the eye protection I’m wearing.
On to testing:
So Joe and Ry had a couple project ideas they were working on and I offered to go out and help. While they were working on mixing up explosives for some of the tests I worked on an idea Joe had for making primers go bang.
In this section, I verify that all that Hollywood crap is exactly that. Ry had a setup to create an arch between two wires with AC. It didn’t make the primer go boom. Joe had another idea using DC to make the primers go boom. Stuff got warm but still no joy. Then by luck I inadvertently made the circuit pass through a piece of metal in the primer construction. That turned into a light bulb filament. I attached a primer to it, rigged it up and gave that a shot. 10 seconds after connecting the battery I hear a pop. So heat, not electricity makes the primer go bang.
So they go bang, but not enough for solid computer control. Well we still have the question of will boomerite go off? Put it in the bag of boomerite, wire it all up and it was the most anti climatic thing I’ve ever seen. The pop was so faint I could hear the conversation between Ry and Joe who were further away than the primer.
So primers were a bust, what about the lift experiments for getting a good fuel air mixture? I have video for that, and everyone likes vide!
This is probably one of the more interesting stills from the testing.
You can see the water vapor form the lift, this was with ground under the targets. Ry also had some targets with bags of water underneath. I’m not sure it really made a difference, though it’s hard to tell with a sample size of one.
We have a new target type we’re seriously considering putting out for the shooters. This year things were a bit more difficult that usual. Target distribution didn’t end up in the amounts we would have preferred. This resulted in a lot more 4 and 3 inch targets on the hill than we would have liked. Believe me, I don’t like it when that goes wrong. I made a nice quote of the day that made everyone chuckle but no one remembered to actually blog it… yet another story to be told about this year.
The tubes though are 1.5 inches in diameter (inner) and 4 feet long. We figure we can put them horizontal or vertical. Either it will require precision on at least one axis to make a successful hit at distance. Personally I think they’d just be fun. Yeah you want to get a boomer, but if it was easy that wouldn’t be saying much now would it?
*I’m in the beginning stages of investigating moving from Drupal to WordPress. The latest version of Drupal is lacking a bunch of the features I want that help me with my blogging. I could write and build the features I need but I don’t blog as a forte into working on the computer. I have enough other projects that the last thing I want to do is work maintaining my website. The migration however has me a bit nervous mainly because I don’t want to break any incoming links for other sites to material I’ve written here. I think I have a solution to the issue, but even then it will probably take me about 48 hours to rip apart the databases and port the content to WordPress. I have a VM I am using as a testing area currently and I’m learning what exactly is going to have to happen and how to do it before I bite off more than I can chew.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
See, Tango had a couple issues over the Boomershoot event. On his way up his car had issues and had to go in the shop. He figured that was his issue for the trip. The answer to that question was a resounding, “NO”.
See, we got back to the hotel room to eat our dinner while waiting for a call from Phil so we could meet up and chat since we were all departing in the morning. As the wife and I finish downing food our hotel room phone rings. Odd, Phil was going to call my cell phone.
It was Tango informing us he was on the grade and his vehicle had just died. He was in search of a tow truck and currently stranded. Immediately I ask where he is because there’s a secondary problem. He has a trailer behind him so depending on the tow truck that could be a problem. New problem for me, I didn’t drive either truck. I promptly call Phil and say, “We have a blogger in need of assistance. Tango’s rig broke down coming down the grade. He’s currently pulled off at the turn to the dam.”
Immediately he say’s he’s departing the restaurant and he’ll pick me up on the way out.
Yes that’s Tango in the back right as the tow truck driver starts hooking up his rig. Tango was quite pleased that the tow truck showed up. Phil and the rest of us were actually planning on pulling his trailer back up to the Boomershoot site if necessary.
Luckily the tow truck was flat bed. He loaded Tango right up and then hitched up his trailer.
So at that point us bloggers needed to remain no more. Se we left his ass on the curb after taking this parting photo.
After all was said and done and we were relaxing back at the place where RNS was staying Phil stated the following: “Tango is no longer known as Tango, he shall be known as Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.”
TMM is the owner, editor, and principal author at The Minuteman, a competitive shooter, and staff member for Boomershoot. Even in his free time he’s merging his love and knowledge of computers and technology with his love of firearms.
Many know his private name and information however due to the current political climate, many are distancing themselves due to the abandonment of Due Process.
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