A truly dumb thing to do on one's birthday

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.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=D1xqrdtJs8w

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.

Tom, Glad it didn't go off. Lesson #1 never ever ever trust what someone tells you regarding munitions or firearms. Way too many have been killed by deactivated explosives or unloaded firearms.
Stu

Tom, does this person owe you money?

You got lucky. I'd need more than a sip of cognac.

Happy Birthday!!--i hope you have lots-lots-lots more..

Well, at least you have a dinner party anecdote that no-one can top. Happy many-more birthdays!

Always trust your spidey-sense. If something 'feels' wrong, it quite often is.

You were |-| this close to being a Darwin award! Hmm... now, does posession of that much high explosive make you a "person of interest" to the government?

Sounds like clean shorts were in order. One of my soldiers brought me a dummy TOW rocket warhead. Carried it up to my HMMWV, whereupon I informed him it was a 4.2 inch mortar round UXO. I then helped him to calm down while waiting for EOD to show up.

About a week later we were driving down an EOD "cleared" road thru an artillery impact zone. Got out to answer nature's call and discovered I was "watering" a UXO 8 inch artillery round. That was the day clean boxers almost became EDC. EOD said I was lucky. Fuse was already removed, but the filler was decomposing and leaking out. I guess it decomp's to something close to nitroglycerin. EOD tech said that was one burning feeling while uriniating that penicillian would not have fixed.

My dad had a similar experience about 25 years ago. Was going through a firing range, stumbled upon an UXO 500-lbs bomb. Anyway, EOD made them keep back 1/2 mile when it went off. And then my dad had some of the shrapnel in the house for a few years, until mom worried that my brother or I would cut ourselves on it. Probably had a valid point.

When I was in grad school back in the '80's I got a job at the local county museum - it helped being a history major and willing to work weekends! They had me cleaning out the basement and some old storage which included a box of stuff from a local that was from WWII. Neat photos, uniforms, some small arms and...

You guessed it - there were some old artillery shells in a big box and they were all fused and at least 35 years old. We closed early that day... I got a friend from the local guard unit with EOD training and some cops he knew in town that had EOD backgrounds to get the stuff out. They took it to the dump and blew the box which went up very well. Our guess is it would have taken out most of the block had it ever gone off in the museum basement.

The boss reimbursed me for the drinks I bought one and all that night for 'helping' out and he never did tell the county board and I had a great easy job the rest of grad school!

Paul -

LOL yeah, that Bugs Bunny episode sums it up pretty well. "These blockbuster bombs don't blow up unless you hit them just right."

It's all just an amusing story now and I actually got a good laugh reading all the responses and personal anecdotes. I guess nobody is immune to at least an occasional lapse of judgement.

Technically, the situation may not have been THAT critical. I don't know much about Baratol but TNT is very insensitive to shock and friction and basically a pain to detonate. I think it only ignites at something like 780°F if my old manual was right. Of course, that does not make me any less of an idiot!

The bottom line is, I'm really mad at myself. I should've known better. I've always been very careful around firearms and explosives but this time, I made a big mistake. I assumed the grenade was empty and I assumed the previous owner had made sure it was deactivated. Never again!

A bit belated, but Happy Birthday!

Had a not so different, but somewhat less hazardous thing like this myself. Very glad I will never have to explain how I removed a finger through pure stupidity while changing blades on a circular saw.

Wow! But yeah, never trust anything. Treat every gun as if it is loaded. Ditto goes for munitions! ;-)

Glad that you didn't go *BOOM*!

Probably the only time you're glad your birthday wasn't a blast.

Be careful, the BATFE isn't going to be happy with you possessing what might be considered by them to be an unregistered destructive device. How do you get something like this thing safely (and legally) deactivated?

I didn't even think about that at the time. You're right, of course - owning an explosive device is illegal. When I discovered the grenade was live my first thought was to get rid of the explosives. I'd done so many dangerous things already that carefully pouring and washing out the main charge seemed like a piece of cake. Then I disposed of the explosives as safely as I could think of. The dangerous stuff is all gone now and the grenade is absolutely empty. Just an inert piece of cast iron. So I'm not really a person of interest to anyone unless you're interested in some scrap iron.

In hindsight, I should've called the EOD and they'd probably end up destroying the thing. I don't think any EOD guy would even attempt to deactivate an old hand grenade. Not worth the trouble, I guess - not that I blame them. They just tend to take away the stuff and blow it up some place safe so that nobody gets hurt.

Maybe, maybe not. They may think even though it's empty, it can be refilled at a later date. It would be like me saying that Browning M2 .50 caliber I had shipped home in pieces is perfectly legal because it's 'not loaded.' There's a difference between 'empty' and 'deactivated,' milled in such a way to make it useless for it's intended purpose. Unfortunately, that's a decision that they will make, not you. Let's face it, the BATFE boys aren't exactly known for their sense of humor.

How do you mill an empty hand grenade?

Inert hand grenades can be bought legally. I have no explosives, no detonator, even the grenade itself is heavily corroded. I don't really see any similarity between an inert grenade (which in fact qualifies as an antique/collector's item) and a .50 caliber MG (supposing you mean the machine gun, not just an inert .50 cal. round).

I guess it could still be refilled if somebody wanted to. I think you could make a much more effective device with a stick of dynamite placed in a metal can filled with scrap iron, though.

I know collectors who own literally hundreds of inert rounds, grenades and shells. If the BATFA arrest me for that lousy empty Mills bomb I wonder what they're going to do to all those collectors?

I was thinking similar thoughts. I own a couple inert hand grenades. I'm sure with the right materials I could make them, no so inert.

Hey Blast, weekend project? Kidding... just kidding...

I wouldn't worry about it. The casing is just that, a casing, the same as a steel pipe would be. The detonator is dead and that cannot be re-manufactured unless you are a pro. If you are, the BATFE is already at your door anyway. My son has a demilled baseball grenade. No problems although I did not let him put it in his luggage on his last flight to see grandma.

Regards,
Bill