propane tank targets

This has been brought up before on other boards. One person mentioned he shot a 20# propane tank at 400 yards w/ Tannerite in fron of the tank. He indicated seeing the tank flying over his head from 400 yards. I can't confirm or deny this and I must admit I've thought of it but never had the opportunity.
 
Okay t o do this right ......

Safe place, no burning hazard, distance yadda ... yadda .... Yadda.

Start a nice little camp fire. Place your small used propane or butane bottles in front of the fire. Back up a ways and shoot'em. The bullet will punch a nice safe hole in the tank, the escaping flamables will make a nice little fireball over the fire pit. No big deal. .... now .... Ya wanna scare the pants off someone, fill a balloon with a nice oxy acetelene mixture. Then float that bad boy over a fire pit. ---- Flash *** BOOOM *** ---- You probably won't hear well for about a week ..... great - stupid - fun
 
When I was seventeen (1978) I got a new 270 and needed something "exiting" to shoot. I built a little campfire in a sandwash on a hot June day then sat a full, little coleman propane bottle in front of the fire. I shot the propane cylinder from about 70 yds away and to my suprise the propane blew out the fire or froze it out. It was very disappointing no big bang!

Harvey7
 
ahh acetelene baloons. I know a guy who would attach a filled one to a helium ballon, with a cigarette taped to hit. light the cigarette, release the ballons
 
FWIW,

I've seen what a small compressed combustible-gas cylinder bottle can do when it does actually explode & frag. Took the top 1/2 of one of my old neighbors head off. He lived 1/2 city block down the street from me. The shock-wave shook my house. I went outside, heard someone yellin. I ran to see if I could help, whoever was injured. Another neighbor keep yellin,"IT'S OVER!, IT'S OVER!.

When I arrived. Yep, It was over.
 
ROFLMAO , Oxy-acetylene. Been there done that. still laugh when i think about . I cleared a whole city block. evacuated a government housing complex and was scared for two week that the authorities would find out who did it.
Set up: I worked in an oilfield pipe yard. There was a cutting torch. There was a large wasp nest about 4 ft down inside a 20 ft joint of 8-5/8 in diameter casing that was laying on a pipe rack. There was a fork lift driver trying to load the pipe on a trailer. Wasp didnt want to lose their home. There was a slight malfunction in my neuronic activity.
Solution: Bring out the cutting torch and replace the cutting tip with a heating tip(rose Bud)My limited neuronic activity think this would put out more flammable deadly gas faster. I was right.
I use a rag to stuff in one end so these soon to be torched wasps would not be able to leave for fresh air. then i stuffed a the tip of my torch(unlit) in the other end and packed a rag around it. turned on both valves. sit back and talk to the guys standing around waiting for the wasps to get drunk on this mixture of pure oxygen and acetylene. after what seemed like long enough i pull out the torch but leave the rag in place. move everyone back and light the torch. then use the torch tolight the ball of rags and wheel the cutting rig back to the confines of the warehouse.
Oh I probably forgot to mention this is in a heavly industrialized are of a town. Apartment complex across the fourlane city street. as we pull the door shut on the warehouse the rag has burned down to the gas. what happened next was deafening. the whole pipe rack shook. the windows in our warehouse broke on that side of the building. 300 apartment residents that the government was paying tolive ther emptied into the street
fire departmenst was mobilized. police cars filled the neighborhood. Utility department trucks showed up. the three of us swore that we would tell no one what had happened. this is the first timje in 15 yrs i have repeated it except to my family. but still today i laugh aboutit
 
First let me remind you hoodalams that making a "bomb" is a felony, if you get the wrong guy you might not have to worry about what to shoot at. Ok that's out of the way.

Along the lines of acetylene torches, several years ago I worked as a welder's helper on a pipeline, we were cutting a hole in a 6" casing for a vent pipe that went under the RR tracks the pit we were in was about waist deep in water they had a pump running to get the water below the casing, it was capped on both ends with rubber and duct tape around it. I clamped the beveling torch to the casing and fired it up, I got a hole cut into it and a roustabout splashed water on the torch putting it out. Being young and dumb I grabbed my wet striker and proceded to light it again, all the while the tourch was filling the casing, when my striker finaly sparked the mild explosion got rid of the water and everybody else around there. There I stood soaking wet trying to figure out what happened with a dumbfounded look I'm sure. It's funny now.
 
Safe long range targets - coffee cans filled with flour (roughly the size of an individuals head + have a visible impact = used for sniper training).
1/4 lb stick of dynamite were used for high power tukey shoots at one point in time, easy to tell who won.
 
Have done much of the above, but have one safe addition...pumpkins! During october you can get pumpkins for 7 cents a pound. A couple hundred pounds of BIG pumplins costs little, and man do they blow nice when you hit em' with the 12 gauge. My oldest boy went with us when he was seven and said "that's what I call pumpkins reaching for heaven". Oh yeah, for you environmental nuts, they're biodegradeable. Todd
 
OK for you Oxy accetelyne junkies! Had a guy here local that was filling a 20 gal trash bag full on new years eve for the big celebration. He was going to send it up a flag pole and shoot it with 223 tracer ammo(not smart either). Accetelyne is highly flammable by the way. The plastic 20 gal bag caused a static spark which sent this guy to the hospital with major burns and ruptured ear drums. Nice new years bang!
 
REM. SHOOTER, Glad you posted about the static shock. I was fixing to give the same warning. Watched a buddy one day fill a balloon with Acetelyne. He put the ballon down near his waste to tie it closed. It was winter and cold and produced a static shock and WHAM. The next scene is my buddy standing there with his carhart chore jacket up over his head(kinda resembled a half skinned coyote) We laughed our tails off (you know the kind of laughing when you are too scared to do anything else) Anyway, watch the sparks.
 
I can add a bit to this. Many years ago my younger brother and one of his crazier friends got to wondering what would happen if they shot a full 100 pound propane bottle with a 30-06. They were both working in Yellowknife at the time, his friend was local. They loaded the tank into a fishing boat, and took it to a sandy shoreline on Great Slave Lake. That's pretty much in the middle of no-where, with an abundant supply of water to put out any fire that they might start. After starting a small campfire on the beach, then setting the tank beside it, they ran back and shot it with a 180 SP. They were very disappointed! 2 little halfhearted jets of flame burned out of the entrance and exit holes, and that was it! It turns out that there is not enough air to get the huge fire-ball that they had been hoping for, just like in the movies. Pretty much a waste of time, not to mention a perfectly good propane bottle. Now I'm sure not suggesting that this was the smartest mission that he ever went on, and I sure am not suggesting that anyone try this at home. However, if anyone was ever wondering what would happen, the answer is not very much! Before someone asks, if you just put the tank in a hot fire and wait, the release valve will pop and you get one little jet of flame. And now you know.
Dogleg
 
If a sealed tank is heated, and the relief valve doesn't work fast enough. Or doesn't relieve the tanks internal pressure quick enough. You will then have a rupture & possible explosion w/frags.

Now if that same tank has combustible gas in it. You wil have a "B.L.E.V.E". Boiling, Liquid, Expanding, Vapor, Explosion. "Not good".

Go to your local firehouse, & ask if they have a training video on "BLEAVE" You will then be enlightened.
 
Dogleg is right, without oxygen (air) no flammable gas wiil explode/burn. This is why "empty" tanks can be so dangerous. They have residual gases that have been mixed with air and so become explosive. The fittings on gas bottles are brass (no sparks). It's for safety when the bottle is EMPTY not full.

A few years ago I was a captain and the training officer on our fire department, we had an explosion/fire at our local propane company that killed one man and took out half of the warehouse.

In the investigation afterward we found he had been welding on a 500gal propane tank. The tank was empty, all fittings removed and had been steam cleaned inside (propane will infiltrate steel). It still blew him to kingdom come!

I worked as a blasting engineer as a younger man and have "played" with many types of commercial explosives. I can tell you from experience that many "accidents" are not caused by mistakes but by outside forces beyond your control, spark, stray electical signal, radio broadcast wave, etc.

Amost 100% of the injuries and fatalities in explosives work happen to the experts. A novice should think about that fact before messing with dangerous materials.

Experiments with dangerous materials can be fun but are by definition dangerous! If you feel you must play, please put no one else at risk and BE CAREFUL!
 
Tom64, I have one more pipeline story for ya. My uncle. a pipeline welder all his life, pull the following stunt. For all you readers out there. The story I posted earlier was a direct result of what i am about to tell. I can remember hearing this as a young boy and when the wasp ordeal came up i used the wisdom reaped from this story to kill the wasp. now the story.
Setup. Uncle had a clogged sewer line. Lived back down a one lane dirt road. when he built the house, back in the 50s rather than running a septic line he had a pit dug about 100 yds behind the house and used 4" steel pipe run across the ground to the pit. unsanatary sure but back in the 50s it was common. any way he wanted to unplug the line. took his torch and cut into the pipe. Does anyone know that sewer gas is METHANE.
He didnt. the explosion took the toilet off the floor in his house and emptied the line into his batthroom. we were all gratefull that auntie wasnt sitting there .
 
One Branch of the U.S Military used to do this same thing with 1000+ gallon tanks that they found floating on the ocean. That was until some was video taping one day and when they hit it with the 50 cal the explosion broke the windows in the superstructure and proceded to scorch the electronics on top. This was from quite a bit further out than 200 yards. I think with proper precautions it can be very safe and fun.

Just remember to explain the safety steps taken to any one who may be watching (kids or adult imbeciles) and might want to try it themselves.
 
When my boss here at work was younger took a gallon or so of gas and poored it down an old well. His grandfather was with him and they both proceeded to throw a match down the well. The explosion shook the ground a couple miles away and from what he said everyone was quite mad. The well water was very muddy and tasted like gas for almost a year afterwards. He said he and and his grandfather swore to never tell a soul so noone would know they had done it. It cracks me up everytime he tells me the story.

He has so many stories of stuff like that he did as a youngin but pays the price for it these days. he is 100% deaf in one ear and about 70% in the other due to being to close to some of his "experiments" with explosives.
 
dogleg, some how I think you where the crazier friend. Now what would have happened if that tank would have been filled with pressureized oxy/cetelen mix and then shot with a traser. That static electricity deal is spooky when it involves the balloons or trashbags. I know a guy who made a potato/garbage launcher that is powered by oxy/acetelene
 
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