My explosive didn't work...any tips?

[townshend88]

I'm trying to create a shotgun slug bullet hit on a wooden beam by drilling a hole and inserting a black powder tube inside to blow the hell out of it. i tried it out but all it did was put off a lot of smoke. its called "pyrodex" and it says its a safer alternative to black powder.

anyone know if real black powder will actually explode under pressure?

[crossfire]

not if there is any way for the pressure to escape, wat you would do is drill the hoel a bit deeper then put in the Pyrodex, then plug the hole with sawdust and the sawdust will fly out and thatll look alot mroe like a shotgun slug hitting a wooden beam

[townshend88]

yeah im def going to do that with regular bullet hits, but for the shotgun i wanted a huge blast to destroy the thing. does anyone know if you can make a pipe bomb out of stuff other than metal?

[Grant]

of course black powder explodes under pressure!

[OutcastJiob]

Don't make a pipe bomb unless you're actually trying to kill yourself. I'm serious. Not even if you're not going to use metal. You can blow it up putting the caps on a PVC pipe even. Pipe bombs are not to be messed with.

How big is the beam? Any way you can do some "doctoring" on it beforehand? Like cut it apart with a saw, then glue it back together with your explosive device in the middle? Weakening the beam before you try to blow it up is going to make it a lot easier. You could even make a fake (hollow) beam out of cardboard if you're any good at texturing with paints, then fill the beam up with sawdust and some thin, long pieces of wood running in the proper direction. As long as the shot of the beam being blown apart isn't too long, you should be able to get away with it.

Also, get behind something big and fairly protective when you fire the explosive. It could throw fairly large splinters from the beam around and cause quite a bit of bodily injury if you're not being careful.

[El Brenty]

First of all, have a thought about this:

With all the focus on terrorism, do you really want to start making pipe bombs for effects in your movies? What happens if someone (Like a neighbour or friend) formed the opinion that you wanted to blow somewhere up?

Grant and I could tell you how to make pipe-bombs, but considering how sensitive things like that are becoming (You just can't have good old-fashioned boyish fun these days), why don't you turn your attention on how to create the effect of a pipe-bomb visually, but without having an actual bomb. After all, unless you have ulterior motives, you just need the effect of an explosion for your film.

I'm yet to hear about some kid who has been arrested for making bombs for his movie, but who knows, will there be a first.

Infact, I'm going to split this off into another thread for more debate.

Otherwise back on topic! - Add some talc into a section at the top that'll blow out first, that will give the impression of more "clean" smoke.

I have an idea for something - Take a 1m (3ft) coil of garden hose-pipe, block one end. Pour in a small amount of petrol, add a battery detonator (Some in the tutorials section), and shake it around a bit to disperse the petrol into the hose. Add some talc into the open end, and place into position. When ready, the fuel vapour will have mixed with air inside the hose, and the ignition will cause combustion, with a pressure build-up that will eject the talc, along with a small flash flame.

This will give the impression of something exploding, which linked to a couple of camera cuts of debris in the air could become an effective and reasonably safe way of creating an explosion effect.

[jcdenton]

black powder and other oxidizer mixtures will not explode when they are NOT in a closed cover. So you have to seal them kind of. well not too much, just think of a firecracker. A few layers of paper will do the job. You may put some other stuff onto this firecracker thing, like sawdust, talcum etc. In fact the cover will explode, not the black powder, due to gas pressure. But in the end it's the same.
Oh yes, and be careful.