JSM
Coarse Black Powder
Friday, July 09, 2021, 08:33

Wonderful stories!! A friend of mine's grandfather was a foreman on several WPA projects in the 1930's. He had a 3 gallon coffee can about two thirds full of coarse black powder used for blasting. Dan's grandpa was afraid the other, less mature grandkids might hurt themselves with this stuff so he gave it to Dan for safekeeping. Dan promptly put the coffee can under his work bench in his new garage and forgot about it.

Several years later Dan had bought a bench grinder and had mounted it on this work bench. Dan was in the process of shaping a large piece of steel down to a smaller piece. This new grinder was working great!! It created a huge plume of sparks. Dan followed this mass of sparks from the grinder to his leg where the sparks were bouncing off his jeans and into the coffee can of black powder.

That's when the black powder ignited. Every ounce of dust in the now several years old garage was in the air along with prodigious amounts of smoke.

Dan was unhurt through this. He walked out of the garage, away from the smoke as his neighbor, an RN at the local hospital, asked if he was hurt and did he need assistance? Dan said without thinking that he needed about 10 pounds of shit removed from his pants. The nurse said that Dan was on his own with that problem and promptly left the scene.

The only damage we saw was one wall was pushed out about 18 inches. We pushed it closed and returned the garage to normal again.

Dan later told his grandpa that he had "properly disposed" of the black powder but had never discussed how that disposal actually took place.