This morning I loaded up my Ford Escape with 400 pounds of Potassium Chlorate, boxes of ammo, Cafepress shirts, mugs, and miscellaneous other stuff and drove out to Boomershoot Mecca. I knew the ground would be wet and soft and I knew I might not be able to make it all the way out there but worse case I could leave the stuff at my brother’s place a mile or so away until the ground dried up. The last 150 yards were the only part of concern and I stopped to check it out before attempting to traverse it. I walked about 20 yards into the field and it was surprisingly firm in the track we had packed in the ground on our previous trips last fall and winter. I decided I could make it. I made it across the field and still had a fair amount of velocity when I tried to make a left turn up the hill onto the grass and weeds of the scab patch where the shipping container is. That was an error. I probably should have kept going straight and got onto the firmer ground ahead of me. I immediately lost all velocity and spun down into the mud.
The hybrid drive train is extremely anemic in reverse. It wouldn’t even spin the tires when I tried to back up. Attempts to go forward didn’t accomplish much either. I did manage to slide sidewise a bit into the softer mud of the field.
The sun was out and things were drying up so I figured I would have a better chance of getting out if I waited a few hours. My brother Doug showed up a little later. He was clearing out the drain tiles in the nearby fields. He came over to see what I was doing. He said the forecast was for 90% chance of rain after 11:00 AM. That made it an imperative to get the vehicle out almost immediately. He didn’t think the tractors would be able to get in any better than a pickup and another pickup out there probably would mean another stuck vehicle.
I already had everything else out of the vehicle and he helped me get the Potassium Chlorate out and the rest of the way up the hill and into the shipping container.
We both had shovels and starting digging the mud out from behind the tires. After we had three or four feet of soft mud removed from all the tires he pushed on the front and I drove. I flipped the back end around and up the hill to get close to a straight shot at the “road” back out of the field. The drive out threw a lot of mud in the air but I made it back to the road without problems.
The Internet provider guy showed up shortly thereafter and he took a look at Teakean Butte from the shipping container and said it shouldn’t be a problem. He would schedule someone to come out and install the service in a week or 10 days. I was annoyed. I understood they were going to install the equipment today. I could have sent them a picture of Teakean Butte from the shipping container if that is all they were going to do. Now one of my brothers will have to come out again and open up the shipping container for them to install the equipment. Nearly every contact I have had with these people has been unsatisfactory.
I had lunch with my parents and brothers. Dad made a really nice lentil soup.
Doug and I both went back out in the afternoon and I did some cleanup and arranging of things and he rerouted some cables and oiled the squeaking (almost crunchy) things on the doors. Other than getting stuck it was a pretty productive day.
This is how we win:
The Brady Campaign has no response to this sort of thing.
We are going to have some other (I already mentioned the bloggers I knew about) high profile shooters at Boomershoot 2012.
I knew this was in the works and finally saw the entry come in this morning making it far more certain. But I didn’t want to say anything until I saw this from 30 Cal Gal:
Shelley Rae and I are a 2 woman team sponsored by ESS Eyepro. They are paying us to go shoot things that explode!
In somewhat related news I have three pair of the ESS glasses that I have been using for a few weeks. I really need to make a blog post about them (I like them!). And ESS will be donating several pair to the raffle to raise money for Project Valour-IT of Soldiers Angels at the Boomershoot Dinner Saturday night.
There are still lots of High Intensity openings left and 10 long range positions available for Boomershoot 2012. Sign up here.
It will be a blast!
I’ve written programs to securely wipe your hard disk upon your command. I wrote a prototype ‘virus’ that wiped your newly installed hard disk on the first boot even if you had removed all previous disks, CDs, DVDs, and thumb drives. I have reduced permanent storage devices to their molecular components.
But to the best of my knowledge (if I wiped my own brain would I know?) I have never wiped a human brain clean of memories before:
While sex can be forgettable or mind-blowing, for some people, it can quite literally be both at the same time. The woman, whose case was reported in the September issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine, was experiencing transient global amnesia, a rare condition in which memory suddenly, temporarily, disappears.
I guess I’ll have to just keep trying.
Happy day!
This morning I finally found the name and phone number of the supplier I last used for Ammonium Nitrate. I called them and started the process to purchase a few thousand pounds. They even remembered me as “the guy that puts on Boomershoot”. 
A couple minutes after making that call I received a call from the trucking company delivering a shipment of Potassium Chlorate. It will arrive in plenty of time for Boomershoot 2012 as well. I’m so pleased. I was a little worried that the PC would just barely make it in time. It turns out when I asked the supplier for the estimated shipping date they gave me the estimated delivery date instead.
In other news, earlier this week I made arrangements to meet the Internet provider at “Mecca” to connect up a (relatively) high speed low latency connection at the end of this month.
I’m currently on vacation in Alaska visiting our daughter Xenia and getting a little extra time to work on my exterior ballistics program for Windows Phone 7. I think I might even have it ready in time for Boomershoot 2012.
Everything is falling into place quite nicely.
Boomershoot 2012 still has openings available. The following positions are available:
Author Paul Barrett will be our dinner speaker on Saturday night plus there will be a dozen gun bloggers attending:
There will be over 1000 exploding targets available. Each detonation will pack enough of a “punch” for you to feel it hundreds of yards away.
Have a blast by getting your share of those targets and make anti-gun people cry by signing up here and attending Boomershoot 2012.
Share with your media contacts:
Boomershoot.org Media Invite: Intro to Explosives Magazine
by: robosapien1010
For more information see Boomershoot.
If you are going to be making explosives PLEASE don’t do it some place stupid—like your office at work:
A 50-year-old Lorain County man was jailed for arson on Saturday for an explosion that injured him in his Elyria office on Friday.
Police said Robert Shaw of LaGrange was mixing chemicals to build exploding targets for firearm target practice when one blew up around 9 a.m. in the office at Diamond Products on Prospect Avenue.
Go to some open space where an accident doesn’t injure others or their property. If you don’t you can spoil the fun for the rest of us who don’t have an interest in acquiring Darwin Awards.
Via email from Bubblehead Les.
Potassium Chlorate is one of the ingredients in Boomerite. I’ve often fantasized about making it myself because it’s the most expensive component, it requires an ATF explosives license to purchase in the quantities I need, and my sole supplier is in New Jersey.
Here is how to make it in your garage/kitchen/basement:
I think I will continue to purchase it. We use about 350 pounds per year and scaling up the process above to meet our needs just doesn’t look worthwhile.
Now that my ATF license to manufacture explosives has been successfully renewed I’m going to take a chance and poke a little fun at them.
First off let me say that the people I dealt with were all very professional and went out of their way to help resolve the problem with far less hassle than they could have had they just wanted to be bureaucratic jerks. I find no fault whatsoever with the ATF people I dealt with. The problem is with the regulations. Regulations sometimes aren’t really applicable to every situation. But that doesn’t mean that the bureaucrats enforcing the regulations or the peons subject to those regulations can decide to ignore them. We are mostly just stuck with them.
With those caveats imagine my surprise when after several years of using the Taj Mahal for storage of explosives as a “Type 1” explosives magazine I was told it was actually an “indoor magazine” and hence a “Type 2” magazine. See the applicable regulations here.
The Taj Mahal looks like this:
The door you see inside the metal shed is the theft and bullet resistant portion of the magazine and is 3’x6’x6′. The metal shed is 10’x14’xHeadScalpingHeight. I considered the shed part of the magazine. The shed provides protection from the rain and snow and the heavy steel and locks provides the theft and bullet resistance. For several years the ATF inspectors apparently saw it the same way.
The new inspector and her supervisor didn’t see it that way:
It is not considered a permanent structure because it is a shed that can be moved. Am I correct in the fact that the building is not attached to the ground (with cement, etc)?
It is attached to the concrete with bolts. But that wasn’t good enough:
I have reviewed the report and photographs of the magazine and have determined it to be an indoor Type II magazine. Even though the magazine is bolted into the concrete, does not make it permanent and the shed is not incidental. For purposes of establishing an indoor magazine, ATF has determined that the building or structure in which the magazine is placed:
1. Is of suitable, stable construction to provide protection from wind and other inclement weather conditions.
2. The structure’s walls and roof are constructed of metal, wood, brick, cement or concrete and makes the structure unsusceptible to mobility or intrusion.
3. The base or floor of the structure consists of earth or other flat, level material which can sustain the weight of the magazine.
4. The doors are secured to provide additional security and theft-resistance to the magazine.In my review, I have determined that the shed meets the requirements, as stated above, for a building or structure. Even though the magazine may weigh 3000 lbs and is bolted to the concrete it still does not meet the definition of a Type 01 magazine. As it is currently constructed, this magazine is classified as a Type 2 indoor magazine. Thus it can only hold a maximum of 50 lbs of explosives materials.
Okay, so what?
The issue is that the maximum amount of explosives you can store in an “Type 2 Indoor Magazine” is 50 pounds. For a “Type 1” magazine it is determined by the distance to the nearest inhabited building or public road or railway. With a distance of 1950 feet to the nearest inhabited building I was previously allowed to store up to 18,000 pounds of high explosives at that site (sorry Barron, I was mistaken, it has to be 2000 feet before we could store 180,000 pounds). The Taj couldn’t hold that much because it was too small but it was nice to know I could pack it full without worrying about getting in trouble with the ATF.
A 50 pound limit just doesn’t work for our situation. We store about 1600 pounds at the Taj on the Saturday night before Boomershoot.
After getting the bad news from the ATF I started asking questions:
Would it become a Type I magazine, and hence be allowed more than 50 pounds of explosives material, if the shed were removed and the magazine were exposed?
I didn’t get a reply so some time later I sent another email:
I would like to know if a solution to Type I/Type II problem is for me to remove the metal shed.
It would also be useful for me to find out the definition you are using for the word “permanent” in this sentence:
Even though the magazine is bolted into the concrete, does not make it permanent and the shed is not incidental.
According to the American Heritage Dictionary (used by the ATF in ATF Ruling 2005-3) permanent means:
1. Lasting or remaining without essential change: “the universal human yearning for something permanent, enduring, without shadow of change” (Willa Cather).
2. Not expected to change in status, condition, or place: a permanent address; permanent secretary to the president.By that definition the shed and magazine are permanent. I am having difficulty in imaging how it can be considered a Type II magazine because according to 555.208, “A Type II magazine is a box, trailer, semitrailer, or other mobile facility”. Below is a picture of the base of the magazine and shed while it was under construction:
Four inches of concrete were poured into the forms above and the shed and magazine was bolted to it. I am unable to find any definition of “mobile” for which the concrete slab and attached structures qualifies. If it would make a difference I would be glad to weld the magazine to the slab instead of just bolting it.
If necessary what I can also do is only use it to store materials “In the process of manufacture” as per 555.205 since if it is “In the process of manufacture” the materials don’t need to be kept in a locked magazine.
Please advise.
In response the story changed just a little bit:
Just to make sure that I have classified this magazine correctly, I am forwarding your e-mail to our Explosives Industry Programs Branch for review. They will make a classification of your magazine.
I have one question, I agree that the shed would be permanent but it is not part of the magazine. The shed is what makes it an indoor magazine. Since the regulations do not have a description of an indoor Type 1 we must classify this as a Type II. Even though difficult, can the bolts be removed and thus making the magazine mobile?
Less than hour later (I’m impressed the bureaucracy could move this fast) I received the following email:
The Explosives Industry Programs Branch (EIPB) also has classified this as an indoor magazine. Since there is no definition for a Type I indoor magazine, it must be classified as a Type II. EIPB stated that you can remove the shed and that would resolve the 50 lb limitation. The limitation for the magazine would be 18,000 lbs. The other possible solution is that you can apply for a variance to store in excess of 50 lbs in an indoor magazine. The magazine must meet the Tables of Distance and construction requirements. I am not sure it will be approved but you may want to make that request before taking down the shed.
So it’s the existence of the shed and not the “mobility” of the shed that makes it a Type 2! That give me an opening for more questions:
Assumi
ng I remove the shed I would then need to cover the magazine with a more weather resistant covering such as the metal from the shed. What would the maximum spacing between the magazine and the metal covering before it would become an indoor magazine again?
You can see where I’m going with this, right? Apparently so could the ATF because they responded with:
I am trying to find a simpler solution to the problem. I have a few suggestions into our EIPB that may not be an extensive as building a new structure but changing the old one. I should have an answer in the morning.
Early the next morning I received the following email:
Here is the easiest solution that we could come up with. Empty the shed of all materials except the magazine, remove the doors or a wall of the shed. Since the magazine is not totally enclosed in the shed it would no longer be an indoor magazine. I think that would resolve all of the issues. Let me know what you think.
So the bottom line is that if I remove the doors from the shed I can store 18,000 pounds of explosives. If I put the doors on I can only store 50 pounds.
It doesn’t have to make sense. It’s just a government rule.
Barron and I went out to the Boomershoot site today. Barron has the full report, with video but the bottom line is that Boomerite stored via a new packaging technique appears work well even after being stored for 13 days.
We put the Boomerite directly in the cardboard boxes then wrapped the cardboard boxes with plastic wrap. They way we have done it for years was to put the Boomerite in zip lock bags and put the bags in the cardboard boxes. This new method is faster, cheaper, allows us to put more Boomerite in each box, and it fills the box all the way to three edges. There is still a bit of a gap at the top edge but less so that before.
I’m very pleased to report that after running a sample of our existing stock of potassium chlorate through a blender the problems appear to be solved:
Barron has his own report of our tests.
Also of interest is that I talked to our supplier on Friday and discovered that we can order whatever grade and class of potassium chlorate we want. That probably means we won’t have this problem again and can use our existing stock for private parties and miscellaneous testing when we have the more time to run it through a blender.
Barron and I drove out to the Boomershoot site today for some more testing of the potassium chlorate. There was a large snow berm blocking the road out to Mecca and the snow was too deep to drive across anyway. We parked at my cousin Dennis’ place, packed up our stuff and started to walk. It is only 789 yards (I wrote an app for that!) but the crust on the snow was weak enough that I broke through about every other step and Barron broke through almost up to his knees with each step.
The wind was coming up and it was starting to snow and I decided (after getting confirmation from Barron) that this wasn’t a good idea. It was going to be a lot of work getting out there and back. So much work that it was bordering stupid to even try. We drove back to Moscow without doing the testing.
I’ll be back in town in two weeks. Maybe the weather will be more cooperative and if not we’ll bring snowshoes and we will win the battle with the snow.
For people in the Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow, Pullman area this may be of interest. Others, not so much.
If any Boomershoot staff wish to attend the class Boomershoot will pay the class fee (but not the USPSA membership fee) and provide transportation between Moscow and Lewiston on the days of the class.
If you are interested but don’t have John’s email address send me an email (ROClass@joehuffman.org) and I’ll forward your email on to him.
I’ll be attending the class if that makes any difference to you.
From: John Grimes
Sent: Tuesday, January 17, 2012 4:37 PM
Subject: USPSA Range Officer 1 class in Lewiston on March 24 & 25!Hi folks,
The Lewiston Pistol Club will be hosting a USPSA Ranger Officer 1 training by our own Kevin Imel, the newest instructor for the National Range Officers Institute, on March 24 & 25, 2012 at the LPC Indoor Range (2419 16th Ave., Lewiston, ID).
Those who complete the RO training will become official USPSA certified Range Officers. For those who don’t know, ROs are the ones who run each shooter and do all the shouting at our monthly matches (the shouting is my favorite part). Here are some more details: http://www.uspsa.org/about_NROI_new.php.
You do have to be a USPSA member to become a USPSA Range Officer when the class begins ($40, https://www.uspsa.org/uspsa-join-renew.php). You will be able to join or renew and pay for a USPSA membership on the morning of the class (via a separate check made out to USPSA). There are some other advantages in joining the USPSA, most importantly, showing the number, variety and integrity of people who shoot. The magazine’s kind of nice, too.
This is also a great opportunity for seasoned ROs who have let their credentials slide to get right with the Range Gods. You know who you are.
The class itself is $40 payable by cash or check made out to the Lewiston Pistol Club at the door on March 24th. The class starts on Saturday at 8:30 AM sharp and runs through about 5 PM. The Sunday class start time will be set by the instructor and will end in the afternoon, probably before 5.
All participants will need to bring a rulebook and a notebook for use during the seminar. You can print your own copy from here: http://www.uspsa.org/rules/2010HandgunRulesProof3web.pdf.
The Sunday class includes some hands on practice running shooters, so you will also need your eyes and ears, firearm and 100 rounds of ammo. You will not need your own timer for the class, but in practice, most ROs buy them at some point. We have examples of all three main brands at our monthly matches.
[…]
Questions – send them in.
John Grimes
LPC Action Match Director
As Ry reported yesterday we verified the KClO3 we currently have in Boomershoot storage has much larger particle size than what we know has worked in the past. I purchased a cheap blender and tested a sample of KClO3 to see if we could reduce the particle size.
I’m happy to report that it appears “blending” it did reduce the particle size significantly. Looking at it under the microscope shows there are still some particles that are larger than the “old stuff” but most of the particles are more like powdered sugar than granulated sugar.
Further evidence that we are on the right track is the dust generated. Even after a minute or two of waiting for the dust to settle in the blender just gently taking the lid off the blender gets a cloud of dust flowing through the air from the blender to the air cleaner:
Another interesting thing is that the volume increased significantly. My guess is that it about occupies about 40% more volume than previously. The container on the left had about 1.5 inches of air above the KClO3 before blending. After blending it would not fit and I had to put some of the material in a different container.
It blends, but will it detonate? We have more tests to run the next time I visit Idaho.
Dave has a bunch of nice things to say, along with some great pictures, about Boomershoot.
Update: Link fixed. Sorry about that.
Yesterday Barron and I went out to do more tests on our Boomerite mixture and packaging. It failed the last time we tried it and we want to get the problem solved.
We tried both the new packaging and the old from about 20 yards with .223 Wolf hollow points. All were complete duds. There was not even a hint of reactivity.
We were quite perplexed. What could have changed? Thinking that maybe some water had gotten into the old stuff we mixed up a new batch with some fresh ethylene glycol. Still absolutely nothing.
Barron was measuring the KClO3 and reported the powder didn’t seem quite right to him. There was no dust! I had three air cleaners in the shipping container because we knew the KClO3 generated a lot of dust and it wasn’t healthy to breath it. But there was no dust. Something was wrong. Could it have gotten wet? Maybe it could have drawn moisture from the air.
We took a couple of pounds to my parents house and dried it in the kitchen oven. Still no dust when handling it.
We ground some in the mortar and pestle. There was a little bit of dust but I could tell it still wasn’t as fine as what we usually have. Usually it it is so fine you cannot feel any grittiness. With this you could.
The Boomerite we made with the dried and ground KClO3 didn’t go boom with Wolf 60 grain .223 HP’s from Barron’s rifle. I had him try some 50 grain VMAX that I had. With the non-dried (or ground) we got a little bit of detonation but still not normal. With the ground and dried it went boom.
I put some of the KClO3 under the microscope. The crystals are average about 1/3 as large as granulated sugar. It should be much smaller than that.
It turns out there even though I was getting “MIL-SPEC” KClO3 “just like” always before there are various “Classes” within that spec. I strongly suspect we got a different class with this drum of KClO3. That could explain, rather than the plastic deli containers, why we had problems with a lot of the targets at Boomershoot. At the private party we had last summer it didn’t detonate very well either. We used the 50 grain VMAX bullets from fairly close and about 20% did not detonate properly.
Ry posted a video on YouTube of the new shooter shooting our defective boomerite:
I’ll probably be doing more testing tomorrow.
The potential new shooter I mentioned yesterday actually came through. It is a friend of Ry’s daughter Arden. So today Ry and I took Arden and Megan for a small private Boomershoot party.
The new shooter aspect went very well. Once she figured out a couple things with the first magazine she nailed three clay targets in a row from about 40 feet away then started nailing the steel swinger target we had set up. That was with a suppressed .22 LR with a red-dot scope. She probably went through 30 or 40 rounds with my iron sighted Ruger Mark II as well. She fired a couple magazines from the AK (and took the USPSA target home) . She went through another magazine with the AR-15, two rounds from the 12-gauge Saiga (she said she really liked it but the recoil was a little more than what was comfortable), and about 15 rounds from my STI in .40 S&W.
On the Boomershoot side we tried a new packaging method. We put the Boomerite directly into the cardboard boxes then wrapped them in Saran Wrap for protection from air and moisture. The packaging didn’t go as smoothly/quickly as I had hoped but I think with the proper equipment it could work. We didn’t bother to make up any of the old style targets with the Boomerite in a zip-lock bag and putting the bag inside the cardboard box. What could go wrong?
Megan hit her target on the first shot and it went off with a boom that wasn’t much more than the muzzle blast from a shotgun. Hmmm… almost a dud. Well, the others will probably be better. They were all worse. Some of them just barely popped and blew off a corner of the box.
Ry’s guess was that we had messed up the mix some way or another. Perhaps the batteries were bad on one of the scales (which we didn’t bother to check the calibration on). I wasn’t so sure. The mix looked normal to me. I’ve seen many thousands of pounds of the stuff and I can usually tell when something isn’t quite right just from looking at it.
Ry then did a very “Ry thing” (he has an extremely powerful CPU but it’s running a buggy software). He asked me to put some of the spilled Boomerite in a position where he could shoot directly at the cup or so that was in a corner of a box without going through the Saran Wrap or the cardboard box. I figured he would do this from 10 yards away or so. Nope, he walked up and got far more than “Entertainingly Close”. I’m not going to say how close but I will say that I was evaluating the ground near where he was shooting to make sure I could get my vehicle in there to roll the remaining body parts into the back and haul them to the hospital. The cup or so of Boomerite detonated with the normal BOOM! we all know and love. Ry still had all his limbs attached but he said his head hurt. He asked if the left side of his face was bleeding. It was red but not bleeding. He did have what looked a lot like a zit on his forehead that was bleeding slightly.
What we concluded from this admittedly small sample is that the packaging made a difference. How having a few layers of Saran Wrap on the outside of the box instead a zip-lock bag on the inside of box makes such a big difference is something we don’t understand. More tests are needed to confirm the results and that the old packaging works as expected with the same batches of material used with the new packaging methods. Assuming the weather cooperates I’ll do that next weekend.
As we have said many, many times before, “We don’t have enough columns on our spreadsheet to model this behavior correctly”.
