The following is for informational
purposes only don't be idiots like we are
Hey it's me Destin. Mechanical Engineer University of Alabama
Big loser, likes to play with rockets. This is
my buddy Stephen
Electrical engineer, not as much of a loser as I am. This is my other buddy Steve-o
wait, wait... Ok, this is my buddy Steve-o. And as you can tell from the red suspenders he's not a loser at all.
This is my cute little three month old daughter Sadie.
She helps out a lot ... [Louder and Deeper] because she's a pyro.
Alright let's talk about stuff
you're gonna need to make
A cool bonfire. First find lots of a nice
lightweight string. You'll need a few strips of
glass tape,
some refrigerator water supply line, an
unburned bonfire,
an electric match, a rocket igniter,
rather large bottle rockets,
and of course every twelve year old's favorite accelerant
"La Gasolina." Ok, first things
first you gotta build the devices.
Take an 8-ounce bottle rocket.
First, remove the stick and also remove the paper.
Then, retrieve a one-quarter inch refrigerator water supply line.
Then, tape it to the rocket.
In the front,
and in the back. Make sure to
offset it so that when the rocket burns
it won't burn through the string.
There, you made the rocket. Yeah, you're
a mega genius.
Now there's only one other thing to do, make more... lots more.
Now that your rockets are ready,
prepare the target. As Steve-o demonstrates here,
secure the denim string to the base of the bonfire. And then pull it back to a safe location from
which you can launch the rocket.
Keep in mind that some rockets fly a
little farther before they go boom.
Use the sitck that you broke off the
rocket to push the string
through the tubing. It's important that the
tubing has a chamfered edge on its inside,
so that it can funnel the string through itself, rather than cutting
it as it flies down the line.
Put the gas at the base of the fire, and remember [laughs] more is better.
[Unknown announcer voice] Remember
kids, don't try this at home, [Destin] try it at someone else's home.
Think that's enough? [Unknown] Add a little bit more. [Destin] Yeah... that's enough.
Now that the target's set,
here comes the hard part. Tape the electric match to the fuse on the rocket,
making sure that when the fuse burns the
wires can fall freely.
For this particular demonstration
We're going to use four rockets. That of course means we're gonna need four strings.
You may wish to position the rockets from
different angles.
For instance, here's rocket one, here's rocket two,
here's rocket three, and here's rocket four. We've got them all set
and we're using, as all Alabamians do,
my truck as the command center.
Now, if you wanna somewhat
synchronize the rocket firings, you've gotta
run all the wires back to a central
location from which
you can fire them all at the same time. Now this isn't exactly
rocket science, now, if it were rocket science
we are rocket scientists. So that would be handy, but anyway,
I digress. This is the hard part, make sure you wire
everything up safely, making sure you keep a short on the match at all times
until the moment you're ready to fire it. You can see here we've run everything back to a control
box so we can fire it at the desired time.
If you have any doubts get your friendly
neighborhood electrical engineer
to wire everything up for you. Of course,
when he has trouble you can just go call a Mechanical guy to help you
since we're using the tailgate as a
staging point for the Rockets,
we here used the truck battery to power the circuit. After a few last minute electrical
checks, you're ready for one of two things, either A: fame and immortality in redneck lore, or B:
a Darwin award. 3... 2...
1... Fire!
So there you have it. I don't really know what you were expecting, but I'm sure this was
probably anticlimactic for you. But anyway,
there you go, that's how you light a bonfire.
Oh and by the way, this is just another
example that Christians can have fun
to, if you're interested to see how God lights bonfires,
go to your Bible, read 1st Kings Chapter 18.
