I don't now, since the filth have been (completely wrongfully since what they accuse me of is simply not in existence, here or anywhere else) trying to pin stuff on me for pyro and terrorist-y stuff. But as a kid I was a right pyro enthusiast. One of my favourite pyro-related memories was building my own pistol-grip RPG and using it to shoot down 'conkers' (what we brit kids call horse chestnut seeds, used in a traditional game where they are dried, and occasionally treated in various ways, some traditional some less so, by the kids in question, and hung on strings, then bashed in turns against each other's conker until one breaks. The object being basically to score as many kills as you can before your seed gets smashed to bits by a superior one, its simple, but traditional and probably I'd guess dates back to as long as we've had the trees here.)
Usually either fallen ones are scavenged or kids throw sticks. I fired canisters of either copper pipe, with rocket engines strapped to them, fired from a muzzle-loading wide-bore pistol-like doohickey, or larger shot featuring various payloads, usually whatever it was that would accept the most nitro groups along with a booster charge. TNT plus various boosters for the detonator were used, as were polynitrated sugars alcohols (like PETN), guncotton (nitrocellulose) and all manner of exotic primaries, such as tetraammoniumcopper complexes with counterions such as chlorate, perchlorate, nitrate and others, or other tetraamine (transition metal) (II) energetic salts.
Made a couple of shoulder-mounted rocket launchers too, those were great fun. Of course I never did anything to hurt anyone, and never let anything off near where people might suddenly appear.
Lol a funny ass incident, was when I launched a pistol-mount RPG shell down a storm drain. Should have thought better of it, the charge being, IIRC a chlorate and either aluminium or magnesium dust mixture, sensitized with a litlte hydrocarbon fuel, and without thinking, crouched, took aim, and fired the rocket-propelled grenade right down the other end of the sewer, only for the shockwave from the detonation (and to say the least i was NOT stingy with the primer/detonator portion:P) to come roaring back at me and leave me literally seeing nothing but white-out, near knocking me to the floor, and leaving my ears ringing loudly for the next half an hour to an hour at least, after the closed off (at one end) tunnel funneled the blast wave right back at me.
Or making mortars using a thick-walled steel pipe, and as a shell, empty CO2 canisters packed with various explosives, both of the fuel/oxidizer type and HE charges like TNT/nitrobenzene mixtures, with a little separator between the majority of the fuse, which it enclosed, and the igniter at the bottom of the mortar. Those things would throw a shell quite some distance that with the right filling would go off with an almighty bang, especially if the kind of CO2 bottle used were the big ones used for paintball guns etc. TNT can be melt-cast safely, and needs a primary HE to set it off, indeed it can even be put into a fire and will simply burn. But given the impetus of a HE shockwave from a primary, kablooey it goes.
I still remember the smell of nitrating toluene in my bedroom, like bitter almond/marzipan/benzaldehyde/cyanide kind of smell. Sweet, fragrant, sort of like a cherry bakewell tart fresh from the oven mixed with a hint of the more chemical sweetness of chloroform. Smelled absolutely delicious. That and containers full of yellow, oily, partially nitrated toluene (it needs doing in two steps, first can be done with concentrated nitric acid, but the nitro group is highly electronegative and withdraws electron density from the benzene ring in toluene, making it harder to undergo electrophilic substitution, so a method like using mixed nitrating acid such as concentrated sulfuric acid plus conc. nitric acid is needed to add the final nitro groups to get from toluene to TNT)
And of course both dissected and made lots of fireworks back in my childhood days. I just LOVED hearing the crack of a shaped charge going off and finding a previously locked off area now mysteriously without the metal door it had to begin with, only tattered remnants and the smell of spent munitions smoke. All of this, though was done under the age of criminal responsibility in this country. And like I said, I never, ever hurt anybody, I just simply loved the bangs, the cracks the whopping great fireballs made by strapping oxygen and acetylene or butane/propane canisters together and strapping my own recipe of wax-bound salt-phlegmatized chlorate-fuel based slow but intense burning incendiary version of plastique in big square blocks to the bottom of the things, and lighting it with multiple fuses stuffed into straws full of chlorate or perchlorate and sugar, buried into the resultant melt-castable mixtuer so it all took at once, evenly and would then burn through both canisters of gas simultaneously and the result.....damn. Those things go flying HIGH into the air if blown from the bottom, and make both a big bang and a huge, satisfying fireball while they do it.
Or even just blowtorch gas canisters or even hairspray cans or deodorant cans with a bit of plasticized incendiary strapped to the bottom or side.
Those had to be put behind something and WELL away from people though, because the thin walls, once the thing blows, they wind out into a long, razor-edged strip that can go flying fast enough to bury itself into a tree trunk. And I don't doubt would slice an arm off given the chance, and certainly if hit in the neck would kill the person who set the charge and got hit.
