pressure question....

[stanfield]

The mixture in the blasting cap (I will use DDNP) has to be pressed in the blasting cap in order to be efficient... is it a dangerous step ? What are the safety equipement and procedure to use ?

thanx...

[SATANIC]

most people either don't compress it, or use a shield of some sort. i don't know about your primary in particular, (i've never tried it) but you could use a setup of sand bags around the cap, face shield (full face) and maybe welding gloves. you are right in that it is a dangerous procedure. so take care, like using non sparkig tools etc... but i'm sure you alredy know th basics.

a couple of good texts would be NBK's pdf, or KIBC, which both deal with this.

[Microtek]

This step is indeed a little dangerous ( though DDNP is not so bad; the peroxides are much worse ) but once it is done, the caps will be much safer. Not to mention that they are much better initiators. It's worth it.

[CragHack]

Make sure to invest in a pair of kevlar gloves also. Make sure the shield you use will stand up to a direct explosion of the blasting cap, and that it won't splinter in the process.

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"If you must, do it with intelligent people, at least they know how to talk to the cops."

[stanfield]

thanx !
I love the idea with sand bags around the det. http://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/smile.gif

[stanfield]

Microtek, you said "This step is indeed a little dangerous but once it is done, the caps will be much safer"

==> Why the cap will be safer when pressed ?

thanx !

[Hex]

I really wouldn't advise pressing any primary by hand. 3 or 4 bits of wood for a press have got to be worth obtaining, then you only have to handle when you're filling it and when it's done. The whole pressing part is far better done when you're 2 feet away on the end of a length of 2x4 behind a shield.
I guess compressed caps are safer as the powder inside isn't rattling around when you move. Definitely not a good thing for peroxides.

[Anthony]

Even without a shield being a couple of feet away means getting a bit cut up rather than loosing fingers. A shield is definitely a good idea as it can reduce the risk of even minor injury to near zero.

I use a wooden lever press, it wouldn;t press BP rocket motors but it's plenty enough for blasting caps.

Pressed could also be safer as for any given task they contain less explosive than an unpressed cap would need.

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"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

[EP]

An idea I had to make pressing safter is this:

Drill a hole in a solid block of wood that the cap can slid into. That way if it does accidentally detonate, it would offer some protection. Obviously it would need to be a pretty good size chunk of wood, but with only small amounts of primary it should work. Does anyone see any problems with this?

[EventHorizon]

It would use a lot of the energy but its still pretty potent. I'll get a friend to make a 1g HMTD cap and put it in a 8-10" log and detonate it. It usually splits the log in several pieces throwing them a few feet. I'll get a video of 'his' experiment. http://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

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"Chance favors a prepared mind" - Louis Pasteur
"Happiness is a large pile of links." - Me
PGP ID 0x147CEF54

[EP]

Perhaps a concrete block should be used then...

edit: looking forward to seeing your friends videohttp://theforum.virtualave.net/ubb/smilies/wink.gif

[This message has been edited by EP (edited October 26, 2001).]

[Anthony]

You could run the risk of greater inury during an accidental detonation if you try to encase the cap, by giving it shrapnel to throw at you.

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"We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe."
...Governor George W. Bush, Jr.

[nbk2000]

One should never handle detonators by hand unless absolutely neccesary. Kitchen tongs or pliers should be used to keep your hands away from the blast radius of the detonator, which is only an inch or two.

Leather gloves are good idea too.

Sure, you're hands will get cut up if the detonator explodes, but the flesh won't be blown off ala Saxon because of the blast.

I'd suggest making a cap holder by wax coating a dowel slightly larger than your detonator and placing it in the center of a large steel pipe.

The space is filled with pumice granules and then filled with bondo car repair epoxy.

The dowel is then removed.

In use, the detonator is placed in the hole, and a cap threaded on. A hole in the cap allows for the press dowel to do its thing.

If the detonator explodes, the pumice absorbs the blast, the pipe retains the fragments. The pipe would be 2" or larger in size.

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"I have begun evil, I shall end evil. That is the end that awaits me."

Go here (http://briefcase.yahoo.com/nbk2k) to download the NBK2000 files and videos.

[simply RED]

I have made more than 40 detonators with AP and HMTD and I've pressed all of them without using protective tools, i just pressed the TCAP with a pencil.
Knowing that this is not the best you can do i will advise you to be careful...

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LIFE SUCKS... DON'T LET IT BITE!!!

[a_bab]

Hey, this sound risky for me. I *also* used a pencil to press the AP in detonators. I made severals crackers containing up to 50 grams of AP, by presing AP with soft hammer hits in strong carbord tubes, using a wood dowel. Perhaps that was the maximum risk I achieved, but I'm not proud of this at all. I'm only feeling VERY lucky. I remember that Simply Red was extremly astonished of my accidents, because 'he never had an accident, even he is in the field from several years'. Than the NG accident came up... In this field, there WILL be an accident at one time. And the bad thing is that it could be the only and the last one...
I'm worried when I realizing that most of my previous accidents were caused by primers. But now I'm playing with increasingly charges, over 1 kilo, wich are able to make me meat paste and I guess that I'm not the only one in this situation. But hey, it's very cool.

The blasting caps making is the most dangerous point from our game. So the efforts to make this safer are never enough.


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Damn, I got a nitro-headache again...

http://move.to/pyromania

[This message has been edited by a_bab (edited 12-07-2001).]