Ramblings on explosives, guns, politics, and sex by a redneck Idaho farm boy who became a software engineer living near Seattle.
Category Archives: Boomershoot
Boomershoot is a long range precision rifle event with high explosives as the targets. This is about Boomershoot in general and sometimes just explosives.
I work in downtown Seattle. I don’t like cities in general because I have strong introvert tendencies and crowds of people “drain my energy”. Go to a lower, more detailed, and less personal, level and it just gets worse.
This happened January 1st in a place I walk through twice a day:
Several shots were fired inside the Westlake bus tunnel in downtown Seattle Tuesday night, according to the Seattle Police Department. But, officers were unable to turn up any suspects, witnesses or victims.
Two bike officers heard the shots while patrolling Westlake Park around 11:40 p.m.
Several people were running out of the Metro tunnel when the officers arrived. But, the man officers stopped said he only heard the shots and didn’t see the shooting.
Officers found six bullet casings and fragments on the tunnel’s mezzanine level and are reviewing surveillance video in an attempt to come up with any additional information.
Within the last few months the bank, essentially across the street from where I work and where I do most of my banking was robbed at gunpoint and there was a shooting in the hallway I traverse to get to the pizza place in the mall where I frequently get lunch.
This morning as I was riding to work the bus was stopped and could not enter the Westlake tunnel station where I usually get off. There was a fire in the tunnel and it was being evacuated.
Two years ago this happened in that tunnel where I get on and off my bus.
Had someone been kicking a 15-year old girl in the head while she was on the ground when I was around and within range they likely would have been shot (the guards just a few feet away doing nothing could have been collateral damage that I wouldn’t have been too concerned about at the moment—They have standing orders to “observe and report”). That would make for a very messed up existence for weeks and perhaps years for me.
I just want to go home to Idaho away from everyone but a few close friends and do something safe in the middle of a 100 acre field. Something like play with explosives.
Last Saturday (December 8th) I went out to the Boomershoot site to deliver 300 pounds of cardboard boxes and 400 pounds of Potassium Chlorate to our manufacturing facility.
We had a few 7″ boxes left over and combined with the new boxes we now have the boxes for a little over 600 7″ targets, a little over 1000 4″ targets, and 1000 3″ targets.
Except for needing a few more gallons of ethylene glycol we have enough chemicals to fill those boxes for Boomershoot 2013 and a few private parties.
I’ve purchased new equipment and materials to speed up the manufacturing and I hope to enable shooters to make more booms this than ever before.
I recently purchased some Potassium Chlorate for Boomershoot 2013. The delivered price per pound increased 47% from March of this year. Both the price for the chemical and the cost of shipping increased by nearly the same percentage.
It won’t really affect the next Boomershoot but if the inflation rate were to continue at 47% every nine months (approximately 65%/year) it would cause me considerable concern and change the planning for Boomershoot 2014.
I’m always searching for new ways to improve Boomershoot. I recently ordered a OXO Good Grips Food Mill from Amazon in the hopes it could speed up the processing of the potassium chlorate we use for making Boomerite.
Saturday I tried it out. I first used the smallest screen which is similar in size to the current strainers we use to remove the lump (and sometimes “rocks”) from the potassium chlorate.
A strainer used in preparing potassium chlorate.
Food mill used in preparing potassium chlorate.
The result was that I could process the chemical about 20% faster. I could get about 160 grams per minute through the mill. That was good but not great.
I next tried the medium screen. I got 310 grams/minute! That is a significant improvement and the quality of the result appeared to be just as good as what we have been using. This is probably close to the rate at which a single mixer can consume it in the production of Boomerite. We have two mixers that we sometimes put to use when have enough people.
I was running short of time but I will try the large screen the next time I get a chance.
I put it near the base of a tree and as usual it created a small “smoking” (it’s actually water vapor not smoke) crater when detonated by a .223 bullet:
Depending upon which warehouse we fulfill your order from the Ingredients may be: Ammonium Nitrate, Water or Urea, Water. Express orders will be fulfilled with Urea, Water to avoid Hazardous Materials shipping fees. Both products work well for an exceptional quality cold therapy product.
Urea requires processing with some hazardous chemicals (strong acid IIRC) to be made into something that will go boom.
A few years ago almost exactly the same thing happened. A T.V. station (WSBTV) made a video whining about, as Roberta said, “Scary–Go-BOOM!” They got a politician to talk about how terrible it was and how he was “going to do something” about it.
I sent them an email and within 24 hours the video was taken down and we didn’t hear anything more about it. Not even from the politician.
This is a little different case in that they didn’t use any of my video for their whine piece but the same principles apply. Here is a starting point for your letter to the T.V. station. Modify it a bit and you have one for your legislator:
You recently produced a video about a legal product used by thousands of people every year and found people willing to say it scared them and you. For you to engage in a such a biased and even bigoted attack on a legal product used in a legal manner is exceedingly offensive to me and thousands of other people.
I can’t imagine what you were thinking. Would you show video of people using guns to legally hunt, shoot tin cans, or put holes in paper targets and then contact the opportunist politicians because you were worried someone might use their guns to commit a terrorist act? Or how about showing someone having a glass of wine with dinner or drinking a beer in their backyard? Would you demand the government do something about this because of your concerns about drunk driving?
When I was growing up my family was able to, and did, buy dynamite, blasting caps, at the local hardware store with no special license or transportation requirements. We paid for it, picked it up out back, put in it in the trunk of the car and drove home with it. That the average person can still acquire explosives easily, legally, and safely is a testament to what a great country we have. It shows that not only the government is subservient to its citizens but that its citizens are responsible and can be trusted.
If you had demonstrated these explosives were used in thousands of crimes each year I might think you had reason to be concerned. But you did not do this. You could have used that same product and those same video to show what a great country we have. You could have shown what unique freedoms we have and how those freedoms are not being abused. Seattle King 5 Evening Magazine did that with this video: http://www.boomershoot.org/2005/KING5.wmv. But you didn’t do that. You merely demonstrated you are a Puritan–afraid that someone, someplace, is having fun.
I agree with Ari in this video. The design of their “suppressor” eye protection is a great improvement in comfort and getting a good seal around your ears when wearing hearing protection. They gave me a pair and I am very pleased with them.
Josh Horwitz went on a rant about gun bloggers who might download and read a book on making explosives. He named a number of gun bloggers and there was no mention of me! And I probably have a dozen books on explosives on my shelf already.
What do I have to do to get some attention from him? I publish instructions, testresults, and teach others how to make explosives on a fairly regular basis. I even describe how to take down an airplane with explosives made from common household materials. What more do I have to do to make the cut?
I think there is some sort of discrimination going on here and there should be a law against that. He shouldn’t be allowed to exercise his First Amendment privileges unless he can pass a competency test. If he is going to rant about gun bloggers and explosives then it is clear I should be number one on anyone’s list. He should forfeit his license to write or speak in public. It’s only common sense. We can do better than to allow people that incompetent to spout their lies of omission in public.
Update: As pointed out in the comment by fast richard, Horwitz has corrected his error. But he did not apologize for or acknowledge his lie of omission. I have not yet forgiven him. I still have a lot of crying to do before I’m going to feel better about this. And there ought to be a law to help prevent others from ever going through what I have gone through.
I took a bunch of psychology classes in college. They were easy and fun for me. In one class I got extra credit for participating in grad student psych experiments. One such experiment required I take some sort of standard psychological test. I tested as pretty normal except for two characteristics. One was something like “logical versus emotional”. I was way out of the normal range in the direction of “logical”. The other characteristic was “psychological mindedness” or some such thing. On that “axis” I again scored way out of the normal range in direction of being very “psychologically minded”. The grad student that went over my test results with me said the logical was consistent with being an engineering major. But the level of psychological mindedness was usually only found in psych grad students or professional psychologists. I guess that explained why I enjoyed the classes and did well.
With that in mind I find some parts of political campaigns extremely interesting and at the same time disturbing.
The disturbing part has nothing to do with the actual policies of the candidates or that they are exploiting, probably intentionally, certain psychological characteristics that have nothing to do with sound policy. And in fact have been exploited by leaders throughout history to lead their people to disaster and massive genocide against innocent people. Of course those same psychological tools have been used for good as well as evil.
In the following two videos one of the more interesting irrational characteristics is being exploited:
That characteristics is that people tend to go along with the crowd. If large numbers of other people are doing something then there is a strong tendency for others to follow along. People attend political events, sporting events, rock concerts, and many religious events and talk about “the energy” of the crowd. Most people crave this mass excitement and want to be a part of it. In politics the words and the intonation of the speeches are specifically designed (intentionally or not) to stimulate this excitement, to encourage you to participate, and for you to “belong”.
If you remember the 2008 election the media made a big deal about the large number of Obama supporters at the Obama political events. I haven’t noticed that this year. And because I donated some money to the Romney campaign this year I get frequent emails from them. Many of them include pictures of large crowds in support of his campaign. The videos above were just a sample.
I find political events boring. I can sense the “energy” people talk about but the “bandwidth” of the communication is so low that I’m bored. I’d much rather read the politicians policy statements than hear vague words expressed with great excitement interrupted by yelling and applause every few seconds. The “energy” is a source of irritation to me. I get excited by seeing things that work rather than things that excite other people.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t “exploit” this psychological characteristic as well. Besides my personal love of explosives and long range shooting Boomershoot is a means of generating excitement to encourage gun ownership and long range rifle skills. When in front of the camera for Boomershoot I try to emote the enthusiasm that will encourage more participants. I’m not interested in the Boomershoot dinner with a crowd of people but I make it happen, attend, talk to people, and usually say a few things to the crowd because that socialization is extremely important to some people.
This psychological characteristic is just one more reason why we need strict limits on governmental powers. It is not the politician with the best policies that necessarily get chosen. There is some component of policy into the final vote tally but to a large extent it is the politician with the best team of psychologists (whether they realize they are psychologists or not) that can exploit weakness in the human mind for votes, money, and volunteers that will win. And there is a high correlation between those with natural ability in this area and the people who should be kept the greatest distance from political power. Limited government is a means of minimizing the damage done by these people. Both because it reduces the ability of them to do damage and because limited power is less attractive to them in the first place.
As I said in email to Kevin, “What isn’t said is that you can do the same thing to a room, building or airplane.” I know people who have taken down a house with a few cups of flour.
And how do you think it would work out if TSA were to test for flour, powdered sugar, and non-dairy creamer? Those powdered donuts you had for a quick snack before running to the security line would get you the full blue glove treatment. And as long as they don’t do those tests testing for conventional explosives and searching for knives, guns, and throwing away your shampoo is nothing but security theater.
Think about this… The Brady Campaign wants to, and has tried for decades, to get various types of guns banned. Handguns were their first target back in the 1970’s. They were originally the National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH), then the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence (CPHV), then Handgun Control, Inc. (HCI) in 1980 and finally The Brady Campaign in 2001. And as recently as the brief they filed for the DC v. Heller case in 2008 they claimed the Second Amendment did not protect an individual right and even if it did it did not extend to handguns. Not only have they failed in their decades long mission the U.S. Supreme Court has explicitly said handguns are protected. And using the phrase “in common use” the court strongly implied that the secondary target of the Brady’s, “assault weapons”, are also protected. They have some extremely high hurdles to overcome to even get back to the position they were in as late as 2008, let along where they were when they were founded in 1974. And today on our side we use not only “assault weapons” but explosives to mock them.
When guns and bullets just aren’t enough aren’t you glad we have Boomershoot?
This one features me doing a lot of talking. I’m so pleased they edited out all the “umm”s and “ahhh”s.
There is also Rolf juggling the targets, scenes from our target/explosives production facility (Mecca), bowling ball mortars, anvil launch, Ry‘s fireball, both long range and High Intensity events, and people pounding stakes and putting targets on the stakes.
As I have said before ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.
I expect Barron will have something up with this video soon as well.
There are still 16 Boomershoot positions open. Sign up and be a part of Boomershoot 2013 here.
As per request from my previous post on this topic we now have video of the pumpkins we blew up for Joan Peterson, board member of the Brady Campaign:
Joan Peterson, and the entire Brady Campaign organization, should just get used to the idea that they cannot win this fight. We outnumber them by hundreds to one. We make people happy. They wallow in the pain, misery, and suffering of victims. We will spend hundreds of dollars, and countless hours mocking her and her kind.
You are on the wrong side of history Joan, give it up.
Barron made another video for Brady Campaign board member Joan Peterson. Read his blog post for the complete story with this as the dessert. It’s dessert because it is sweet (even if Barb L. says it can’t be dessert because there is no chocolate):
I’m working on a video of my own from last weekend. It will have a different focus but it still should give Peterson heartburn. Some people don’t like just desserts.
This is the third in the series of ESSBoomershoot videos. At about 1:30 in the video watch the trace from the bullet arc into the boomer for a detonation. Very cool.
Boomershoot: In the high Palouse of northern Idaho for one long weekend in April, the ground heaves with explosions and precision rifle and AR enthusiasts put their aim to the test.
That’s a good description. Perhaps “rumbles with explosions” or “vibrates with explosions” would be better than “heaves” but there is some ground heaving too.
As I have said before ESS makes good stuff. They gave me a couple pair of their glasses and I use them whenever I need eye protection or even sunglasses.
Of all the things I have been able to do while in the United States of America, celebrating Halloween by shooting a pumpkin filled with Joe’s special blend is one of the things I will treasure the most.
Then we mixed them. Yes, she was a little apprehensive at first. This whole Kitchen Aid mixer making Boomerite is a little “different”. Six weeks ago had you told her she was going to be traveling to Idaho, making explosives to “carve” pumpkins, and shooting a rifle before Halloween she would have said, “No way!”
Here are some sample pictures of the pumpkins being “carved” (thanks to Barron for bringing them to the party):
The picture below was taken a fraction of a second after the picture above. Notice that the pumpkin pieces have slowed and are further from the origin. I wonder what the BC of a pumpkin seed is. The picture above almost duplicates a picture Ry took a few years ago. Here is a cropped version of the same picture:
There are hazards to pumpkin “carving” with Boomerite. Max wasn’t really “entertainingly close” by some peoples standards but it was close enough that he sometimes turned away to avoid getting hit in the face with pieces of pumpkin. I was extremely pleased that his finger came off the trigger and he kept the gun pointed in a safe direction:
I’m sure Ms. Peterson will be pleased to know we didn’t use guns as our primary tool for carving the pumpkins. It was just the remote detonator for the explosives. And these new shooters will share their experience and pictures with friends and family which will add to the set of people who recognize modern sporting rifles in common use are not “assault weapons” which should be banned. But instead many of them will desire their own and to share in the fun of the gun and Boomershoot culture. And what does Ms. Peterson and the Brady Campaign have to counter this?
Barb L. October 20, 2012 [This was in regard to first hand exposure to her first Boomershoot fireball.
I find her choice of words interesting. About 90% of time a persons first response is “Holy s**t!”. Barb, today in another context, told me she almost never uses foul language so I suppose that could account for the somewhat moderated response.
And yes, this is in regard to the event described by Barron. And yes, she was the woman involved who may have affected someone’s judgment.
I will say that I don’t remember all the conversation related by Barron but it’s close enough that it doesn’t matter. And even after the event I didn’t see it as all that big of a deal. But Barron tells the story in such a way that Barb and I were laughing uncontrollably as she tried to read it to me as I was driving back to the Seattle area.
I was concerned about the fire getting into the stubble field but the fire had dramatically slowed down by the time the gasoline had been consumed. And it was the easiest to extinguish of any of the five fireball fires that have needed to be fought. My shoelaces didn’t even get melted this time. Barb did find a piece of melted milk jug stuck in the sole of her shoe and her son Max brought home a “piece of art” that was created by the fireball out of a milk jug remnant.—Joe]
Did you see the smiles after connecting with the 650 yard boomer? I am of the opinion Boomershoot is a valid treatment for depression and should be covered by most health insurance.
