Whew! By some weird coincidence, it's my birthday today. And it does really feel like being born again. Less than an hour ago I did something incredibly stupid. Right now I'm just unbelievably happy that I'm still alive and in one piece.

Now, I have a small collection of edged weapons and militaria. I spend a fair bit of time on that hobby of mine, which also involves cleaning and conserving antiques. So a few days ago an old family friend gave me a present, an old "deactivated" Mills hand grenade.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mills_bomb

It was all rusty, the detonator removed by an "expert" who knows how long ago. All in all, still a nice conversation piece and a symbol of WWII British war effort. It looked harmless enough, its fighting days long gone. So I dumped the old grenade into my cleaning tank, applied some DC current and behold, the wonders of electrolysis!

A few hours later most of the major rust was gone. I dried the grenade in the kitchen oven briefly. Then it's time to go to my little workshop to remove the remaining rust. There's a big screw on the Mills grenade that covers the compartment between the outer and inner shell. It's all worn, no doubt because whoever deactivated the grenade took the trouble to unscrew it and remove the explosives.

I want to unscrew it again to clean the inner compartment but it won't budge. I have no flat screwdriver big enough to fit. No big deal, I make my own out of some carbon steel flat stock. Heat treat, draw temper, voila - an expedient Mills bomb screwdriver. Still won't budge. Yeah, I know an old trick. Take a propane torch and heat the damn screw for a while. Do it until you loosen the rust on the threads.

The old cast iron pineapple thing gets pretty hot after a while, too hot to touch. At that moment I have a flashback of a kind. It's like a vision from heaven, I see a bird's eye view of myself heating up the Mills bomb with the open flame of my propane torch, then all of a sudden something happens, a little spark and KABOOM and I see my body blown to smithereens.

It's an uncomfortable feeling so I stop, put the torch away and let the grenade cool for a few minutes. It's all just a foolish thought because there's no explosives in there anyway. A little later I try unscrewing the cap again. Hell yeah, the trick worked and with some effort I remove the screw. There's black gunk at the end of the thread. Looks funny. Then I take a good look inside.

At that point I realize the explosive charge is still there! I'm looking at a good quantity of high explosives. In effect, I'm holding a live Mills bomb, probably the most powerful general issue hand grenade of all time!

A little while later I'm pouring lots of water inside and removing bits of soggy black gunk, TNT or whatever the Brits used at the time. Now I have an inert grenade that will look nice when it's cleaned. But it will also bring back intense memories every time I'll see it in my glass case.

A big thank you to God Almighty and all my guardian angels who got my back today - I promise I will never do anything that foolish again! Now enough of the rambling, I'll just get myself cleaned up and have a sip of good Cognac...

Never stop paying attention to those uncomfortable feelings, and Happy Birthday!

Wikipedia indicates Mills bombs were filled with Baratol

"Baratol is an explosive made of a mixture of TNT and barium nitrate, with a small quantity (about 1%)[1] of wax used as a binder. TNT typically makes up 25-33% of the mixture. Because of the high density of barium nitrate, Baratol has a density of at least 2.5."

Congratulations on not being blown to smithereens!

Keep listening to your gut.

Intuition is a great thing to EDC! Happy birthday and congratulations!

Your name change request to Will e. Coyote is denied.

While in university, I received several flint nodules from Grime's Graves in England.
I had read in a text some ancient knappers went so far as to heat temper flint to improve the molecular density.
So, I put a nice big fat one in my oven, cranked it up to 500 degrees and waited. I'm not sure what I waited for, it's not like a chocolate cake you start to smell or see anything turning brown.
After an hour UPS rang my doorbell. I had just stepped away from my chair in front of the oven window.
WHAM! the nodule exploded, sending a shard into the tempered oven glass and punching out a huge bulb of percussion 5" in diameter that was imbedded in my seatback.

Tom,

You immediately went out an bought a lottery ticket, right?

Glad you didn't go boom (and I don't tell that to just everyone!)

-Blast

Listening to your "gut" is always a good thing

Did you have to change your pants? LOL

Mike

mmmm Mills Bomb at zero feet. It would have won hands down. You are incredibly lucky. Brings an old EOD/Mine awareness saying out.

" If you didn't put it there, then treat it as live"

I once dug some mud out of the fuse well of an old WW2 grenade that was handed in to where I was working. Once I came face to face with the partially detonated fuse I promptly sh*t myself and put it very carefully into an old ammo box and called EOD. Lesson learned.