Re: An effective primer composition for percussion caps?

<POWDERBURNZ@xxxxxxxxx

| Hehehe, me thinks the greater danger in dealing with mercury fulminate
| would be far more dramatic than heavy metal poisoning. "Hatters" were
| people who dealt with mercury day-in, day-out. I can't imagine any
| hobby pyro getting that much exposure to the mercury...unless he's
| eating it or something!
|
| Fire in the hole!
|
| POWDERBURNZ



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Eley Brothers, Limited, London

By 1828 the demand for these accessories gave promise of opening an almost
unlimited field for inventive ingenuity. William Eley, the founder of the present
firm was early attracted to this interesting branch, and literally devoted his life
and fortune to mechanical inventions. To him is attributed the once-famous wire
cartridge, which by delaying the dispersion of the pellets, effected the same
purpose in the guns of the period as in now produced by choke-boring. At the
age of forty-seven he fell victim to a disastrous explosion of fulminate of mercury
which simultaneously destroyed him, his laboratory, and its contents. The
business initiated by Mr. William Eley was continued by his three sons under the
style, Eley Brothers, until 1874, when it was converted into a joint stock
enterprise, with limited liability.

The Rise and Progress of the British Explosives Industry
Published under the auspices of the:-
VIIth International Congress of Applied Chemistry
E A Brayley Hodgetts editor
Whittaker and Co. London 1909


- - - - - -
Howard's Discovery of Fulminate of Mercury (1800)

When three to four grain, of fulminate were placed on a cold anvil and struck with
a cold hammer, Howard states that a very stunning disagreeable noise was
produced and the faces of the hammer and anvil were much indented. The shock
of an electric battery produced a similar effect. It seemed, in Howard's opinion,
that a strong electric shock generally acted on the fulminate like the blow of a
hammer. When two or three grains of fulminate in a capsule of leaf tin were
floated on heated oil it was found that it exploded at a temperature of 368o F. A
gunpowder proof barrel holding eleven grains of fine gunpowder was filled with
fulminate, and fired with a flint and steel. The report was sharp but not loud. The
person who held the proof barrel in his hand felt no recoil, but the explosion laid
open the upper part of the barrel nearly from touch-hole to muzzle, and struck off
the hand of the register. A gun holding 68 grains of gunpowder was charged with
34 grains of fulminate and fired from the shoulder. The breech was torn open, the
touch-hole driven out and the barrel split. Two blocks of wood of the same size
were bored to the same depth. One was charged with half an ounce of best Dart-
ford gunpowder; the other with half an ounce of fulminate. Both blocks of wood
were buried in sand and the explosives were fired by a train. The block
containing the gunpowder simply burst into three pieces, and had its parts fairly
separated. That charged with fulminate burst in every direction and the parts
immediately contiguous to the fulminate were absolutely powdered. Yet the
whole hung together; in short, fulminate acted with the greatest energy, but only
within certain limits.

He [Howard] once poured six drams of concentrated sulphuric acid on fifty grains
of fulminate. An explosion took place, almost at the instant of contact. He states
that he was wounded severely and most of his apparatus was destroyed, and
then adds, "I must confess I feel more disposed to prosecute other chemical
subjects."


Howard's Discovery of Fulminate of Mercury (1800)
In:-
George W. MacDonald
Historical Papers on Modern Explosives
Whitttaker & Co. London. 1912.


- - - - - - - - -
THE FORGOTTEN BIT OF FULMINATE

IN experimenting with high explosives and in their manufacture, a little absent-
mindedness, a very slight lack of exact caution, a seemingly insignificant
inadvertence for a moment, may cost one limb or his life. The incident that cost
me my left hand is a case in point.

On the day preceding that accident, I had a gold cap put on a tooth. In
consequence, the tooth ached and kept me awake the grater part of the night.
Next morning I rose early and went down to my factory at Maxim, New Jersey. In
order to test the dryness of some fulminate compound I took a little piece of it,
about the size of an English penny, broke off a small particle, placed it on a stand
outside the laboratory, and, lighting a match, touched it off.

Owing to my loss of sleep the night before, my mind was not so alert as usual,
and I forgot to lay aside the remaining piece of fulminate compound, but, instead,
held it in my left hand. A spark from the ignited piece entered my left hand
between my fingers, igniting the piece there, with the result that my hand was
blown off to the wrist, and the next thing I saw was the bare end of the wrist
bone. My face and clothes were bespattered with flesh and filled with slivers of
bone. . . . The following day, my thumb was found on the top of a building a
couple of hundred feet away, with a sinew attached to it, which had been pulled
out from the elbow.

A tourniquet was immediately tightened around my wrist to prevent the flow of
blood, and I and two of my assistants walked half a mile down to the railroad,
where we tried to stop an upgoing train with a red flag. But it ran the flag down
and went on, the engineering thinking, perhaps, from our wild gesticulations that
we were highwaymen.

We then walked another half-mile to a farmhouse, where a horse and wagon
were procured. Thence I was driven to Farmingdale, four and a half miles distant,
where I had to wait two hours for the next train to New York.

The only physician in the town was an invalid, ill with tuberculosis. I called on him
while waiting, and condoled with him, as he was much worse off then was I.

On arrival in New York, I was taken in a carriage to the elevated station at the
Brooklyn Bridge. On reaching my station at Eighty-fourth Street, I walked four
blocks, and then up four flights of stairs to my apartments on Eighty-second
street, where the surgeon was awaiting me. It was now evening, and the accident
has occurred at half-past ten o'clock in the morning. That was a pretty hard day!
As I had no electric lights in the apartments, only gas, the surgeon declared that
it would be dangerous to administer ether, and the must, therefore, chloroform
me. He added that there was no danger in using chloroform, if the patient had a
strong heart. Thereupon I asked him to examine my heart, since, if there should
be the least danger of my dying under the influence of the anesthetic, I wanted to
make my will.

"Heart!" exclaimed the surgeon, with emphasis. "A man who has gone through
what you have gone through today hasn't any heart!"

The next day I dictated letters to answer my correspondence as usual. The
young woman stenographer, who took my dictation, remarked with a sardonic
smile:

"You, too, have now become a shorthanded writer."

The grim jest appealed to my sense of humor.

On the third day I was genuinely ill and had no wish to do business. Within ten
days, however, I was out again, attending to my affairs.

Hudson Maxim
Dynamite Stories 1916

Hudson Maxim's "Dynamite Stories" Is now available from :-
American Fireworks News http://www.fireworksnews.com/
Search for "Maxim".




--
donald j haarmann
----------------------------
An explosion may be defined as a loud noise
accompanied by the sudden going away of
things from the places where they were before.
Joseph Needham




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