
Anvil Firing - lelf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_firing
======
emptybits
> "Anvils were also traditionally fired on St. Clement's Day, honoring Pope
> Clement I, the patron saint of blacksmiths and metalworkers."

Hm. Obscure. Intriguing. Okay. Then briefly down a rabbit hole I learn that
Saint Isidore of Seville is the patron saint of "the Internet, computer users,
computer technicians, programmers, students"[0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isidore_of_Seville)

~~~
legohead
from reddit [1]:

* Saint Bartholomew was skinned alive - he is the patron saint of butcher, tanners, book binders etc.

* John the Apostle was boiled alive - he is the patron saint of burn victims

* Simon the Zealot was sawed in half - he is the patron saint of sawyers, lumberjacks and curriers (leather tanners who specialize in shaping and stretching leather)

* St Sebastian was shot full of arrows, recovered, an beaten to death by a bunch of clubs by the emperor's soldiers - he's the saint of archers and soldiers

* St Barbara was tortured and then beheaded, when they were carting her body off, the cart was struck by lighting, catching fire - she's the patron saint of firefighters, artillerymen, and those who work with explosives

* St Lawrence got cooked to death over hot coals. After being roasted for a while, he told his executioner "I'm done on this side, turn me over" \- patron saint of cooks and barbeque and comedians

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/b9u3d8/statue_of_sain...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/b9u3d8/statue_of_saint_bartholomew_an_early_christian/ek7bzg6/)

~~~
pm90
This seems like Polytheism to me.

I find it deeply amusing how much Mankind loves polytheism and yet most of
today's major religions are monotheistic.

~~~
jdietrich
That's the essential genius of Catholicism - it is monotheistic in doctrine,
but polytheistic in practice. It absorbed and adopted the most compelling
aspects of pagan practice. If the people want talismans and relics and patron
saints a midwinter feast, let them have it.

------
Millennium
Since we're apparently all posting vids, here's what happened when the Finnish
hydraulic press guy learned about anvil firing:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=S8HbhiRlgM0](https://youtube.com/watch?v=S8HbhiRlgM0)

~~~
arxpoetica
I love that YouTube channel..."and here we go!"

~~~
bitdestroyer
“Lets.... deal with it.”

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jancsika
UK: This is a great way to test anvil quality.

US: This is a great way to shoot heavy shit really high.

~~~
jtms
UK: let’s shoot heavy shit really high but pretend we aren’t at all amused by
it

~~~
village-idiot
This is serious business chaps, I don’t know why you’re grinning so much.

------
cs702
"Dangers: Individuals may be crushed by a falling anvil. The black powder can
also prematurely ignite when the top anvil is placed. As in any case where an
explosive is confined on all sides by metal, shrapnel presents a hazard. If a
damaged or structurally weak anvil is used, the anvil base may shatter upon
ignition."

~~~
YjSe2GMQ
If there's one thing anyone that plays with explosives should know is the
lethality of flying shrapnel. A simple mix of KNO3 with sugar, when ignited
inside a metal pipe, is a very effective killing device. Please take hard
cover (hill, thick wall; with distance) when exploding anything that's not
paper.

~~~
noahl
Hi! I enjoyed reading your comment, but please be careful before posting
working explosive recipes on the internet nowadays. It's sad that we have to
think about it, but we do.

(Unless you deliberately posted one that doesn't work, in which case, you got
me :) )

~~~
BenjiWiebe
"Rocket candy" is very widely known already, and HN is probably the last place
terrorists will look. And terrorists won't use rocket candy. Hey, did you know
you can react nitric acid with glycerin to get nitroglycerin?

~~~
wazoox
You can even react nitric acid with all sort of oily things such as benzene
and toluene and get various explosive. Isn't that common knowledge? I remember
being taught that in chemistry back in high school (nothing lights up interest
of pupils in chemistry like things that go boom).

------
oflannabhra
One of my favorite videos of anvil firing:
[https://youtu.be/lKjpgCraVGk](https://youtu.be/lKjpgCraVGk)

~~~
dmckeon
The series of videos from Scott & Nate Wadsworth, aka "Essential Craftsman"
with several featuring Cy Swan, are good example of some of the best YouTube
has to offer: great content for makers and DIY folks, well produced, well shot
and edited, and they have very little extraneous framing - don't start them
with the sound muted, because whatever they are talking about starts right at
the top. That they (probably Nate) time-lapse/fast-forward through most
anything repetitive shows just how to save the viewers' time while still
showing the work.

~~~
Griever
The "Spec House" series is incredibly valuable if you're even remotely
interested in building your own home. I'm incredibly excited to see how that
series continues!

I consider Essential Craftsman to be one of the best YouTube channels out
there. If you're interested in tools, construction or history in heavy
industry, definitely give it a look.

------
userbinator
Try to lift an anvil by hand, then watch it get rapidly thrust dozens of feet
into the air by a really small quantity of explosive. Demonstrations like this
really put the power density involved into perspective.

------
mikeash
“Individuals may be crushed by a falling anvil.“

Life imitating art once again, I see.

------
jcims
Also known as anvil shooting. Some great vids on youtube.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuQy0mqW5I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHuQy0mqW5I)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKjpgCraVGk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKjpgCraVGk)

~~~
swayvil
The sound! It's like Thor's hammer cracking a frost giant's skull. I wanna see
it in irl.

~~~
creddit
Ah, yes, a sound we are all of course much more familiar with.

------
golemotron
It's nice that the 'Dangers' section of the article tells you exactly what
hazards to avoid if you're going to do it.

~~~
Millennium
I wonder: they mention that the powder can ignite prematurely when you place
the top anvil. Could you prevent that by putting a piece of paper between the
anvils? It seems to me that the paper should prevent sparks by preventing
direct contact between the anvils, but be weak enough that it shouldn't affect
the deflagration too much.

Then again, I'm not an expert in this kind of thing. Would this somehow make
things way more dangerous in a different way?

~~~
snazz
I’m not an expert either but I would have guessed that the force from the top
anvil acts like a hammer and detonates the gunpowder that way instead of with
sparks.

------
gaze
“On September 5, 2011, The Science Channel premiered Flying Anvils, a reality
television series about anvil firing.[6]”

They really seem to be scraping the bottom of the barrel.

~~~
chrisseaton
Seems like a legitimate and interesting scientific and cultural topic.
Probably fun to watch - bigger than life, noisy and exciting.

Sometimes the most interesting programs go into depth about some esoteric
topic and can end up revealing a lot.

What’s your problem with it?

~~~
agency
Is there really enough there to support an entire reality television _series_?

~~~
whatshisface
It is once you start including all of the personal details and daily lives of
everyone involved. That's what separates reality TV from documentaries.

~~~
gaze
This is essentially my problem. Every reality TV show is the same. Every
esoteric subcommunity has the exact same pattern of drama, competition,
cliques. Take it from someone that did everything from competitive yo-yo to
ham radio. I just don't want to see the same reality tv show again, but about
anvils. I want to see something that focuses on the science.

------
Waterluvian
I hope if aliens size us up, it's by a random sample of Wikipedia pages. That
would be a lot of fun.

------
angry_octet
A similar experiment, called a plate test, is used to evaluate explosives. A
small charge is detonated under a very heavy steel plate, often 100mm thick.
The height the plate is blasted gives a comparitive measure of power, and the
size of the dent tells you about brisance, related to the speed of detonation.

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370652.2016.11...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07370652.2016.1143059?journalCode=uegm20)

------
mikece
My high school chemistry teacher told our class that in the very-old times at
the county rodeo the trick was to coat the top of one anvil with
nitroglycerine then VERY carefully place another anvil on top... then a sharp-
shooter would shoot the anvil stack, igniting the nitro and shooting the upper
anvil "at least 150 feet into the air."

The dude seemed old enough to have seen this done in antebellum days so we
believed him.

------
PopeDotNinja
"The private citizen who carried out the order to fire the anvil was seriously
injured."

------
jtms
I love that “Dangers” gets its own subheading, though it probably could fill
its own dedicated page

~~~
haihaibye
[Roadrunner citation missing]

------
JustSomeNobody
I honestly thought this was going to be a new business slang for reducing
workforce numbers.

~~~
OneWordSoln
You're not the only one.

------
raverbashing
Science(-like) projects with little regards (but not too little as to become
dangerous) for safety regulations are a great way of bonding between father
and son.

(Though I never did such things with my father or alone, as I did not have
access to the needed equipment)

~~~
philipkglass
My father demonstrated the combustion of a mixture of potassium nitrate and
sugar to me when I was 7 or 8 years old, and I was instantly hooked. The
effect is spectacular: thick white smoke, hissing pink flames, a huge charred
mass of fluffy carbon, and the smell of burnt sugar in the air. My interest in
chemistry up to that point had centered around growing crystals. After that
first smoky demonstration I wanted to make _fireworks_.

It's still possible to have that bonding experience today if you have some
open space where there is nothing flammable. I see that Amazon has multiple
sellers of saltpeter (potassium nitrate), the key ingredient. As recently as
last year I have also seen it sold as stump remover in the gardening section
of Fred Meyer (Kroger).

Potassium nitrate plus various fuels like charcoal and/or dusting sulfur,
sugar, and iron filings is great fun and relatively benign. Do any grinding by
hand in a porcelain mortar and pestle and there's really no risk of mechanical
ignition. The mixtures don't burn fast enough to risk explosive effects unless
ground very finely or strongly confined [1]. I had to photocopy the black
powder and pyrotechnics sections of The Chemistry of Powder and Explosives
from the library, but today you can find a full scan of that book (and much
more) online.

[1] You can also make more vigorous mixtures with potassium nitrate by using
powdered metal fuels, but you're not going to find those fuels just sitting on
the shelves of ordinary retailers.

~~~
raverbashing
Yes, yes, though the potassium salt is restricted in some places, the sodium
salt not so much (and it works almost as well, though it's hygroscopic as F)

Those were cool experiments :) though I never got much bang for the buck (more
like a schwoooooo)

------
Endy
I am suddenly reminded of the one Animaniacs skit - "Let the anvils ring!"

------
mojomark
Anvil firing clip from Sweet Home Alabama movie:
[https://youtu.be/WqAo_AJHnf4](https://youtu.be/WqAo_AJHnf4)

~~~
mcguire
I have been living in Alabama for 12 years and I still haven't seen any any
anvil launches. I am beginning to wonder if the rumors about this state are
false.

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HankB99
This is done (or was done) every year at the Falling Leaf BMW Motorcycle rally
in Potosi Missouri. It's pretty impressive to see how high the anvvil goes.

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honksillet
Why doesn't th eycombinator link actually take you to wikipedia?

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rkagerer
Wile E. Coyote approves.

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warp_factor
I thought this was a joke. Seems to be real though.

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rhn_mk1
That explains the cartoon gag.

