The gudwife and I threw an Independence Day BBQ for about half the clan at my Yacht Club yesterday. It was very quiet there, because the yachties don't much cotton to fireworks around expensive plastic or wooden boats.
The nurse daughter decided to celebrate with some non-noisy, non-explosive equipment, so they brought the fixings for Mentos/Diet Coke "fountains", and set them off on the Club's main deck. I have videos, buy my HD camera makes them too huge to stream. It was a smaller version of the fountains in this music video.
The trigger is important because the reaction of the Mentos and Diet Coke is instantaneous, and so a simple pepper-popper arrangement is used, with a spring paperclip holding the Mentos by a short piece of fishing line. The paperclip sits on top of the perforated Coke bottle cap, and the mentos dangle inside, threaded on the short line. A second, longer piece of line is attached to the clip so that it may be pulled loose, dropping the Mentos into the Coke. Fine control of the timing of the bottles' eruptions can be attained. Experimentation give you the correct size of fishing line, the correct size of cap hole, etc.
Of course, then we had to man the hoses and flush down the entire 30X60' deck we had just soaked with sticky pop, but fun was had by all, including the grand-daughter, who thought it was great fun.
About sunset, we got the BBQ and boat cleaned up and headed home. It was a war zone. Driving the freeway seemed like something out of a surreal movie, except the explosions never penetrated the vehicle. Back at my place by about 2215, the local fireworks shoots were in full force and it was plenty LOUD! My front-porch robin family sat in their top-of-the-column nest and suffered through it, though. It was mostly done by 2300, so I had a snack and hit the hay.
The best way I have found to keep shells from sticking in a revolver, and to make them slide better in autoloaders is to first swab with a patch the inside of all chambers with Maa's or Flitz polish then next the run a tight dry patch thru them until clean, more than once if neccessary. This will smooth the chambers more each time and the shells will begin to come out much easier. For barrel leading, take either fine or extra fine steel wool tightly wrapped around a used bore brush or use a brush of a slightly smaller caliber bore, and push it tightly back and forth down the bore, even the cylinder chambers if required, and the lead will disappear quickly. The more lead the more brushing will be required. Steel wool is also great for cleaning all lead and powder residue from all areas of any firearm.
Posted by: TAD | July 06, 2012 at 18:06